There are several ways to prevent getting knocked out of commission by a nasty cold: get a good amount of sleep each night, take vitamin C, and routinely wash your hands are all ways to keep your immune system strong.

Getting a tattoo, however, probably isn’t on that list. But a research team from the University of Alabama found that they might be able to give you a higher level of resistance over a longer period of time.

The researchers found that getting a tattoo can temporarily lower your resistance because your body’s defense systems are lowered due to the stress of getting a tattoo.

However, they believe that once the body returns to normal levels, it’s actually sets itself at a higher resistance level. They say this is especially true for people who have multiple tattoos.

“After the stress response, your body returns to an equilibrium,” Dr. Christopher Lynn, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama, told the American Journal of Human Biology. “However, if you continue to stress your body over and over again, instead of returning to the same set point, it adjusts its internal set points and moves higher.”

Dr. Lynn equated it to how your body responds to exercise. If you are sedentary, your body will be extremely sore after that first workout. But if you make the exercise a part of your daily routine, your body will get stronger and that will eventually become its new normal.

Dr. Lynn and his research team studied levels of an antibody called immunoglobulin A and cortisol – a stress hormone that is believed to suppress immune responses. They found that levels decreased when a subject got a tattoo, eventually increased, and the decrease was at a lower amount for each subsequent tattoo.