"My friend said..."

All of our “friends” mean well when they attempt to give advice on your piercings. HOWEVER, their opinions are largely based on their own personal experience. (Or worse - something they “heard”…) This is called “anecdotal information”. And it is a real problem, even though it comes from a kind place.

The problem is that one, single experience with something is just that one way. That one, single outcome. My experience is that of helping heal somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000+ piercings over the course of my career. And counting!! I see many, varied and vastly different ways that people heal, as well as the effects of well-meaning but misguided information. Piercing healing is complicated. There are no easy fixes when an issue arises. There are, however, a ton of bad ideas out there…

Here are the most common of these and why to not listen:

“Use [insert various brand name] antibacterial soap on it” - Soap just does not belong INSIDE the body. We don’t eat it. We don't clean any inside parts - think the back of your eyeballs, which is one of my favorites to use as an example - with any type of soap. Yes, we do brush our teeth (I hope) with a soapy-type of product. But we are all told from childhood to not swallow this stuff because it is “not good for us”. Case made. Lol!

“Use saline on it” - My basic thought about saline is that it is only really effective when heated to around 110F and used as a soak for 10-15 minutes. Honestly, this is just a pain in the rear. And many piercings just cannot be soaked. (Imagine soaking a septum piercing!! Waterboarding, much?!) As for expensive sprays that claim to be this or that for piercings, well, truth is that they mostly just evaporate off the surface. Saline is a salt-based solution, or sodium-chloride. Salt is a desiccant (drying) and very alkaline (caustic). We use salt to melt snow and to preserve meat… Now, to be fair, saline is a very dilute solution. But a simple flush of the site with plain warm water is much more effective for rinsing away the little bit of serous fluid that is normal with healing piercings. (Except for that septum piercing! Lol!) And, best part, you’re already doing this by normal showering or other routine care.

“Turn your piercing 3x a day to keep the skin from growing into it” - This gem of ill-wisdom comes from “the mall” class of healing instructions and is absolutely one of the worst things to do to a healthy, healing piercing. Within the first hour after a new piercing, the skin seals off the tiny gap between the skin and the jewelry with serous fluid. This yellow-to-orange translucent fluid is the skin’s automatic response to small holes or breaks. I always refer to what happens with squeezing pimples - the slight hole left behind stimulates the skin to block the hole with that crusty stuff everyone picks off right away. Then it comes back. And we all pick it off again. Lol! Definitely part of a grooming instinct in us! With a piercing, this blockade is just under the surface, so it’s not even noticed. It keeps microscopic junk - bacteria, dead skin, hair, fibers, dust, etc, all too small to see - from getting past it and causing havoc inside the piercing. This is a very cool process! The skin protects itself by literally trapping things that could cause infection. Moving or turning the jewelry results in this junk being pulled into the piercing openings. Your skin knows the jewelry is there and it will grow a layered tube of skin along the piercing channel. This is piercing healing! Super cool. And super weird. So, just hands off and let it do its thing.

“Change to gold. I can only wear gold” - Gold is not used for medical implantation for a reason. A piercing IS implanted in the skin. Wear gold if you want to once its healed - buy good gold, not cheap stuff! However, a healing piercing needs a more stable and inert material. This is why we follow the medical industry’s use of surgical steel and titanium. The truth about gold is this - beyond the karat number (which only tells the % of gold in the mixture) gold manufacturing does not have to disclose what other metals and materials are in the mixture. Yikes! So, there’s usually a relation between someone having issues with the “traditional” (aka terrible) aftercare instructions of turning & cleaning, and the changing to gold. Most people change jewelry and then leave off the turning & cleaning part… It seems as though it was the gold that fixed things, when it was actually that the piercing was finally just being left alone.

“It’s infected - use [insert various chemical products here]” - As above - these harsh chemicals are made for the OUTSIDE of us, not the inside. Many of them warn against misuse right on the label - DO NOT USE in puncture wounds. Always check the label. Many also state to not use in a body piercing after years of others misusing the product. Other products, like hydrogen peroxide, can actually result in causing an infection due to how it drives oxygen into a wound. (That’s the bubbling action you see with it.) Great for a good case of road-rash - or to get blood out of fabric! - but not good at all for a healing piercing.

I’m sure there are more of these that I’ve not listed. Suffice it to say, if someone says “Well. That’s not what I did. I did…x, y, z…” be polite. Say “Thank you!” and smile nicely. And leave it at that! It’s nice that others care enough to try to help. But that’s what Kutters Edge is here for! Send a message or set a care appointment and lets work together to get that piercing back on track.