Bill i would respectfully disagree with you on the color changing part, depending on what specific colors you are referring to.
I'm new to the forum, and dont know if linking outside sources (like other forums) is allowed, so i will just talk about what i have seen while researching SMP. It may be wrong to even quote input from other sites, and if it is, just let me know and i will restate it in my own words.
When most people talk color change in regards to SMP, they are referring to it turning blue or green, like you sometimes see in regular tattoos. Reputable SMP companies (both permanent and temporary) use a specially designed scalp pigment that will not turn blue or green. Briefly, it has to do with the size of the pigment, how deep it is inserted, and its specific makeup.
Here is a more technical comment made on the forum of a reputable permanent SMP company, by a professor of biomedical engineering, who has close knowledge of the pigment this company uses, and who also has the treatment:
Additionally, on another forum, a temporary SMP expert discussing the color change issue in regards to permanent SMP, had this to say:
So will permanent SMP from a reputable company eventually turn blue or green? No. At least according to these experts, as well as the companies themselves, and it isn't being reported by clients.
What does happen, is that over time, the pigment dots get smaller as they fade, and as they do so, the eye may perceive them as being more grey than black. The temporary expert also touched on this:
So if anything, it may drift to a more grey look over time, but this isn't really a big issue since a normal head of hair that has been shaved has a grey tone to it.
I should note that if you read enough feedback, on rare occasions you may find someone who had a treatment at a reputable clinic complaining that it turned blue. I've seen it happen with both permanent and temporary, but again, it is rare. Often, the person that is complaining is merely moving through a normal part of the healing process, which isn't uncommon, where bruising or some other issue may give the treatment temporarily a slightly blue hue. Many times i've seen people panic that their treatment is blue, and then a week or so later report back that it looked perfectly normal once everything settled down.
The rarest reports are where a patient feels that it stays blue (and while it may be somewhat subjective, perhaps it does), but this would be due to a unique issue with that specific patient -- whether it's an immune response or reaction to the ink, or the pigment was applied improperly by the technician, or something of that nature. These are extremely rare situations, and im actually struggling to recall a specific case in my mind, but nonetheless, it should be mentioned. As far as a normal patient receiving a normal treatment, you will not find reports of blue ink from a reputable clinic, at least with the data we have now, which comfortably takes it out 4-5 years.
Finally, even if a worst case scenario happened, and a permanent or temporary SMP treatment from a reputable clinic degraded in such a way that it looked bad, remember that laser removal is an option, which greatly mitigates any long term risk.
Also, speaking of laser, keep in mind that even though temporary is temporary, it still takes 1-2(+) years for it to fade based on what i have read. So if someone received a temporary treatment, and 3-6 months later (or whatever) it degraded to a point where it looked bad, then unless they were okay with walking around with the bad treatment until it naturally fades away, they would be looking to laser removal as well. That's just a point that a lot of people miss when comparing the two types of SMP, in regards to bad treatments and laser removal.
Temporary obviously has an edge over permanent when it comes to removing or adjusting a satisfactory treatment, as it would require no laser to accomplish this, as long as the patient was okay waiting for it to naturally fade to the desired state. The trade-off, of course, is that temporary requires more frequent touch ups.
Personally i think either option is fantastic, and equally viable (SMP in general has drawbacks, of course), depending on the needs of the client. Starting with temporary, then if you like the look, progressing to permanent, sounds like a great way to go, but it might be a bit difficult to accomplish currently, as most reputable clinics that im aware of only do one or the other, so you would have to switch companies. I know of one reputable permanent company that is offering temporary, but i haven't seen enough feedback on how their temporary pigment performs to recommend it yet.
Hey LT. The way i understand it is that, yes, permanent SMP ink is absorbed by the body in a similar fashion as to how temporary SMP is.
It isn't extremely uncommon to see people report that their lymph nodes temporarily swell up after a treatment, due to either the trauma of the needle injections, or ink passing through them, or both. However, SMP pigments are made differently than normal tattoo inks, and smarter people than me say that the risk of cancer would be extremely low. Also, there is certainly no data to support a correlation at this time with either SMP pigment, or i believe even regular tattoo ink.
There is some great discussion in other places about this issue, with more technical specifics, but ill summarize what the biomedical engineer i referenced earlier had to say about it.
He surmised that decades down the line, there may be a slightly elevated risk of cancer correlated with tattoo/SMP pigment, but that it would probably be comparable to the link between drinking too much Pepsi and cancer. In other words, not a very significant one. He also points out that there is a statistical correlation between depression and cancer, and that if SMP causes someone to be less depressed, it may negate some/all of the increased risk. This is all speculation from him, but it is based on sound reasoning and the current data.
One additional thing worth mentioning is that i came across a thread once concerning permanent SMP clinics, where someone who is extremely anti SMP was adamantly claiming that it would lead to cancer. A former member of this website, who is now very involved with temporary SMP, stepped in to point out that there is zero evidence of what he was claiming, and said that there are more documented cases of people developing cancer or other diseases from drinking tap water, than there are from scalp pigmentation procedures.
Okay... well i might have said a little more here than i intended to do when i first started this post... haha. Oh well, hopefully it will be helpful to someone.
I guess i should add to anyone reading this that i am not financially tied to the SMP industry, nor would i really consider myself an expert. I'm someone who has been researching/following it for years online, and i try to spread the knowledge from other experts around. What i say is based on what i read from the experts, and more importantly, on the feedback i read from clients. Dont rely solely on what i say, do your own research, and most importantly try to see it in person as much as you can. SMP isn't perfect, but it is proving successful in many cases.