PIERCING: FACTS AND MYTHS

11 June 2019

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You’ve always felt tempted to have your eyebrow pierced but you’ve heard that you could end up with a facial paralysis? Or maybe you’d rather see a beautician who can pierce your tongue and make your nails pretty at the same time? If you are thinking of making more room on your body for another batch of bling, it is vital that you can tell facts from myths. You will then not only avoid disappointments and unnecessary pain, but also enjoy beautiful results sooner. First off, you are probably asking yourself….

Is piercing painful and … dangerous?

Piercers often come across this question. Unfortunately, in this case there is no clear answer.

– Pain is a very subjective thing. Inserting a needle into the body, regardless of where, is nothing pleasant. However, by choosing piercers with considerable knowledge and experience, we can narrow it down to a mere discomfort – explains Mick Piercing from Tattoo Zone, one of the best piercers in Poland.

– An incorrectly done piercing may lead to either temporary or permanent damage to our body. We should pay extra care to the condition of the studio where we get our piercing: any break in the continuity of skin tissue exposes our body to infections or diseases transmittable by droplet spread. Therefore, each tool should be sterilized and individually packed and marked with an expiry date – adds Mick.

If you want to keep pain and the risk of complications to a minimum, it is best trust a professional. To say that ‘it makes no difference whether I go to a piercer or beautician’ belongs in the realm of fantasy. A beautician does not usually have the proper knowledge nor the tools to pierce. It’s also not uncommon that beauticians perpetuate myths that may be simply harmful to you. So you’d better turn down the option of getting a piercing in between getting hybrid nails. Instead find yourself a good piercer who has completed and graduated from specialist courses. Especially that…

Piercing should not be done with a piercing gun, typically used in beauty parlors. Such guns cannot be properly sterilized, and an abscess can form around the site on your body pierced with such an instrument and it won’t heal well. Also, that type of piercing will usually use earrings based on the length of the pin or the material they are made of and that are not suitable for piercing procedures. A professional piercer doesn’t use a piercing gun, but uses a sterile needle instead, and selects a piece of jewelry suitable for that particular piercing.

Another myth is that silver and gold are best for a freshly done piercing. Unfortunately, silver or gold of lower purity may contain nickel, so if you reach for gold, use the 24-carat alloy. This, however, can be quite expensive, so piercings made of titanium or bioplast are the most often recommended ones for piercing. Mick recommends titanium G23.
– It is light and very resistant to scratches, which makes the healing process so much easier. Additionally, it can be anodized which means produced in any color, which is impossible in the case of the often-recommended surgical steel. Steel earrings are usually covered with a low-quality varnish that wears off quickly and stays in the wound. Also, contrary to titanium, surgical steel also contains nickel, which can cause strong allergic reactions – explains Mick.

Since you now know how to take care of your safety, it’s time to think of where you want your piercing. You will come across several myths here as well. You may have heard that piercing a nipple will make it impossible to breastfeed. That is not true. Piercing a breast may only compromise the patency of a few milk ducts, but one breast has about 20 and not all of them are needed to feed a baby. Rarely does it happen that the nerve endings in charge of the release of prolactin, the hormone responsible for the glands in the breast to produce milk, might get damaged upon piercing. Should that, however, happen, breastfeeding might be slightly more difficult, but still not impossible. On the other hand, it is true that a tongue piercing may have an adverse effect on the teeth. It can damage, weaken, or even chip a tooth and promote cavities.

Regardless of where you chose to get your piercing, it is extremely important to look after the wound properly after piercing. Have you heard that it should be treated with rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide and covered with a band-aid? Au contraire! Neither rubbing alcohol nor hydrogen peroxide are suitable for regular disinfecting of the wound. They will dry it out and make the healing take much longer. What’s more, any type of dressing is not recommended as it impedes oxygen access to the wound. Do not believe that the wound should be treated with a Tribiotic cream. It also blocks oxygen access, which would be a perfect way to infect the wound. So what should you do? Octenisept is your best bet to ensure that the wound has been thoroughly disinfected. Physiological salt will in turn help clean the wound of any dirt specks. When it comes to healing there is one more myth to bust: moving jewelry around in a pierced spot does not help the wound to heal at all. Also, keep in mind that piercing, especially in cartilage, can take up to several months to heal.

Piercing leaving no trace? Another myth. If you get bored with your piercing after a while, you should know that as much as you can easily remove the earring, the skin will always remember the piercing. It hardly ever happens that the wound seals completely. Usually the body is left with souvenirs: smaller or larger scars. Some are so small that they are not really an issue, but others may require an intervention of a dermatologist or even a surgeon. Saggy skin left after removing a tunnel will require a surgical intervention. In this case, you may just need to have the earlobe restructured. Each piercing decision should be carefully thought through several times. You need to bear in mind that removing an earring will not necessarily remove the effects of your piercing.

pics11: Mick Piercing