Piercing Aftercare English

Congratulations! You just received your first (or fifth or tenth?) piercing and are now part of our community! Exciting times!

To make sure that your piercing is healing well and stressfree, there are certain things you should put into consideration.

 

1. The proper aftercare

Since your new Piercing is a fresh wound you will have to be prepared for swelling and a slight redness around the piercingside for the first days, as well as some zellowish discharge that might form a crust. This is a perfectly normal phenomena and no reason to worry - on the opposite, it is a sign for a healthy healing process. The wound is cleaning itself and discharging the dirt and bacteria trying to enter the wound, which results in this crust - you go, body!

To help your body in the cleaning process, we recommend rinsing the piercingside with sterile saline solution, removing the crusted up goo. You just want to soak or spray the area enough to leave the piercing wet and the crust softened up, following with a strong second spraying to wash off the crust. You can dry it or remove residue with some sterile gauze. Do this twice a day, in the morning and evenings.

Keep on repeating this ritual until the woundside is not red any more, not swollen and the skin looks exactly like intact, normal skin.

Since a piercing is done in an aseptic procedures, the fresh wound is likely not infected, for which reason we don’t recommend you experimenting with any disinfection sprays. Most of these can dry out your skin, some are toxic for cartilage piercings whilst anything that is not clearly marketed for woundcare can irritate your piercing tremendously – all factors that can lead to creating more problems in the healing than solving them.

We also don’t recommend any antibacterial creams or lotions altogether, as those can clog up your piercing channel, leading to less oxygen getting to the healing tissue.

If you truly believe your piercing might be infected, please simply book an appointment with us so we can have a look and see what is going on, finding a solution together.

 

2. Keep your piercing dry!

 

Since the area around your piercing is not yet as stable as healthy tissue, we want to make sure it is kept healthy. Just think about it as an adopted kitten or puppy – those make far more trouble than an adult animal and need us to pay them extra attention while they are growing up.

One big issue we often see occurring is a piercing not getting dried properly after cleaning or showering, which leads to the skin being softened up too much. Especially if you have fresh earpiercings, make sure you don’t push your wet hair behind your ears after washing it but rather dry it with a hairdryer or put it up to a bun for drying. Dry other bodypiercings with gauze or a hairdryer set on the “cold” setting after washing and cleaning.

 

Other big no-nos:

• Please don’t sleep on your piercing! Doing this you risk your piercing to be end up crooked by putting constant pressure on it.
• Don’t touch your piercing, don’t twist it, don’t push it back and forth through the piercing channel. This can lead to bacteria entering the fresh wound, as well as scratching it open by the crust (you remember, from the initial healing phase?) entering the wound.
• We don’t recommend you visiting the sauna, solarium or swimmingpool within the first month of healing your new piercings. You should also not visit a lake or sea, also shower instead of taking baths.
• If you got a fresh earpiercing, avoid going to a hairdresser in the first month. Also use a fresh pillowsheet the first night after getting pierced.
• Neither use Make-up or strong facial cleansers or lotions near your piercing. If you want to use those types of products leave out a space in the size of a 50 cent coin.
• Please don’t change or, worse, remove your piercing by yourself before your piercer tells you the time has come. When that exactly will be varies from person to person.

 

3.Down-sizing

 

As you may have noticed, the jwelery in your fresh piercing is a little longer than you might have expected. This is a necessary precaution to accommodate the swelling which will occur in the first week. After the swelling is down again and the first step of healing over, we recommend you to come by to get some shorter jewelry inserted by us (or, if you are not located in Berlin, get some shipped and put in by your local piercer) to prevent getting stuck on your jewelry.

Especially in oral areas too long jewelry can lead to issues like tooth- or gumdamage.

We usually recommend you to book a check-up appointments after 14-21 days so please follow up on this!

 

4.Oral Piercings

 

We recommend you to keep away from certain foods after getting a fresh oral piercing, these being anything spicy, quite salty, sticky foods with a high sugar content and of course citrus-fruits. All those food options can irritate your piercing. You may hear oftentimes that milk products can irritate a new oral piercing, it is not quite clear though to which extend this is true – if you want to be sure, just avoid the milk products for the first two weeks, as there are many plant-based alternatives on the market nowadays.

Should you be a smoker, try to avoid cigarettes for the first days or at least cut down as much as possible (and wash your mouth with some thinned listerine after smoking). To avoid infection, please avoid exchanging bodyfluids with other people for the first two weeks. Further brush your teeth after every meal or at least rinse it with water. And last but not least: don’t play around with your piercing – the more you move it around, the longer healing takes.

 

5. Genital Piercings

 

As a healthy genital area has many small bloodvessels and a good circulation, there is some good chance for a little bleeding in the days after. This is quite normal and no reason for concern. To avoid your underwear getting stained by this we recommend you to use panty liners. (If you don’t have any experience using them, the packaging has clear instructions.)

Many customers are wondering, how long it takes until they are allowed to be sexual active again. The answer is easy: As soon as it feels right! If there is still swelling, redness and oozing at the woundside, you probably don’t want to try if you don’t want to irritate your piercing. If it doesn’t hurt and looks happy – well why not, under the right safety precautions. We don’t want to risk infection, so we recommend you not to touch the area with unwashed hands or get any bodyfluids from other people on it, so definitely use condoms! Safesex practices also include Sextoys, also don’t use any lube that is anything but simply waterbased. (All of the above count at least for the first month.)

 

6. Nipple Piercings

 

Two words: Breastfeeding Pads! You can get them at any drugstore and putting them into your bra doesn’t only give the piercing some extra padding but also some hygienic protection. They can collect the goo coming out of your fresh piercing without staining your bra and keeping the bacteria in there (ugh!) – just change them once or twice per day until the piercings are healed. We also recommend you to wear a fresh shirt per night when you go to bed.

 

7. Last but not least…

 

Try to make sure to drink plenty of water and eating a lot of Vitamin C plus getting plenty of sleep to help your body regenerate and built up some healthy new cells. Try avoiding emotional stress as it weakens your immune system and can slow down healing for around 40 %.