Piercings and Hygiene: How to Keep Your Piercings in the Best Health

Keeping your piercings and body jewellery clean is essential for the health and longevity of your accessories. To ensure that you get the most out of your jewellery, you’ll want to frequently clean your piercings and take good care of your body jewellery.

Maintaining optimal hygiene for your piercings and body jewellery is easy but it is also easy to slip into bad habits. Here we’ll take you through how to keep your piercings in the best health and maintain hygienic body jewellery that feels and looks brand new.

Hygiene for Fresh Body Piercings

Our bodies treat body jewellery like any foreign object; therefore, initially, there may be a bit of numbness, redness, tenderness, or swelling.  To prevent possible infections during your healing period, you should clean the piercing site with warm salty water or use a mild antiseptic.

You will also need to maintain a hygienic environment for your piercings. Towels harbor bacteria, so when drying the pierced area after washing, use paper towels to pat the piercing zone dry. It’s also important to regularly change your bedding and always wear clean clothing.

One way to prevent infection is to be aware of your allergies when picking body jewellery. If you have a metal allergy, (nickel allergy is common), ensure the jewellery you buy is titanium or any other metal your body isn’t likely to react to.

Ear Stretching Hygiene

The best way to maintain a stretching ear’s hygiene is to prevent potential risks. Be patient with it. Stretching your ears too fast risks injuring or tearing your ear cartilage.

The following are tips on caring for your ears during the ear stretching period and when you reach the final and desired gauge size.

• Wash the piercing at least twice daily using warm water and/or a mild antispectic.
• Massage the earlobes daily using coconut oil or any other safe oil that will help keep them moisturized and boost the healing process.
• Refrain from touching your earlobes, especially with dirty hands, as this can introduce bacteria to the area.
• Don’t panic about having a little odor. A gauged ear may smell slightly due to the dead skin cells which you can’t flush out of the piercing while the ear is stretching. However, should the smell remain even after washing, and/or is accompanied by discharge, it’s sensible to seek medical assistance.
• Generally, you should maintain an interval of at least six weeks between gauges but always keep an eye on the piercing. Do not go up a gauge size when/if you notice any swelling, irritation, or redness after the six weeks. If you do, you risk prolonged healing times or injury.
• Follow your piercer’s aftercare directions to the letter. If you suspect you have an infection, contact a doctor.
• Ensure your ear stretching kits are always sterile. Clean your plugs, gauges, and tunnels to avoid irritations and infection

How to Care for your Body Jewellery

Even the cleanest piercing will become irritated if your body jewellery is unclean. The following are tips on cleaning body jewellery. Ensure you have the minimum requirements: soap, water, and hand towels.

• Always wash your hands before handling body jewellery
• It’s advised to use antibacterial soap and warm water to clean your body jewellery.
• Regularly clean both your piercing and jewellery to minimize the chances of infection and ensure your jewellery always looks at its best.
• During cleaning, always clean all the curves, twists, and areas that may be hard to reach. Using a cotton bud can help get into those hard to reach areas.
• Clean your jewellery before inserting it into the piercings
• Always store body jewellery in a dry and safe place to prevent harbouring bacteria.
• If you plan on wearing the same piece of jewellery daily, schedule to clean it every two to three weeks.

To Wrap Up

Hygienic piercing aftercare is a crucial process after you have gotten any piercing. Besides the hygiene basics, ensure that you abide by the professional piercer’s guidelines. Keep track of how long your healing period lasts.

Avoid touching the piercings except when cleaning. Finally, be patient and kind to your body. Your body jewellery is foreign to the skin, so the healing process will heavily rely on your piercing and body jewellery hygiene.