+ how to heal all piercings + by lish, crank@got.net follow this exactly. + general healing: my regimen is known on rec.arts.bodyart as the LIMA method, meaning "leave it mostly alone". this is a variant of the LITHA method, "leave it the hell alone", which disallows even water touching the piercing for the first several weeks. for LIMA healing, after the hole is (properly) created, you basically ignore that you've been pierced and maintain proper hygiene as any normal person would. shower daily or every other day, & give no particular care to the piercing. if it's an ear piercing, let shampoo sluice over it. if it's a navel, soap your abdomen as usual, being careful only to not bump the jewelry terribly. & so forth - when you rinse yourself at the end of your shower, the soap or shampoo will be rinsed from the piercing as well. do NOT turn the jewelry. i don't care what you've been told. it is not a requirement that soap "get inside the piercing". your body will flush out a new piercing by secreting lymph, which will dry on the edges of the jewelry. turning jewelry will only result in tears to the epithelial lining of the piercing canal & the likelihood of introducing bits of hair or other debris into the hole. dried matter on the jewelry can be removed after a shower with a q-tip, but it will have absorbed enough water to wash away on its own if you showered well. don't pick at the crusties - doing this doesn't just remove dried lymph, but also gives you good opportunity to damage the edges of the piercing, prolonging healing. after your shower, you may desire to dry the piercing more thoroughly with a piece of toilet paper. piercings should not be left to soak, & places like navels tend to hold water. so you can carefully blot it dry, & then don't touch the damned thing until your next shower. no piercing requires bactine, bacitracin, neosporin, betadyne, listerine, biotene, alcohol, "ear care solution", "ear care gel", anything containing benzalkonium chloride, or any of the thousand other things that your piercer will demand you use four times a day. no piercing requires that much attention or babying. as your piercing heals, it will become less sore & more a part of you. the ends of the hole will "doughnut in", & it will stop excreting lymph (& will switch to dead skin, which can have an odor). follow this method & it WILL heal faster than if you turn the jewelry & apply neosporin & use antibacterial soap every two hours. - notes about oral piercings: oral piercings are a little different. since you're constantly putting food & forks & glasses & paperclips & your fingers into your mouth, & since soap does not generally wash over oral piercings in the shower, LIMA cannot apply as it does with other piercings. however, you can, & i recommend you do, still follow the spirit of LIMA. this means you try to keep your fucking dirty hands out of your face, & you DO use some sort of wash after you've contaminated yourself with food & other bacteria-laden objects. this does not mean an alcohol-heavy mouthwash, but instead, saltwater. piercings DO, occasionally, require saltwater. this saltwater can be made with table salt or sea salt or kosher salt or any form of NaCl you have lying around your house. people will argue into the night about the minute amounts of iodine in table salt, or the fish shit in sea salt, or the matzo dust in kosher salt, but i promise you it's not enough to make a difference. do NOT use epsom salts, as these are magnesium sulfate, not sodium chloride. i also do not recommend contact lens solutions - most now are mixed with chemicals & preservatives designed to keep contacts moist & free of calcium, which are not problems for healing tissue. use of saltwater is detailed below, under "avoiding infection". - notes about ear cartilage & nostril piercings: (this is included because procedure WILL affect healing for these tissues.) in creating the hole, use at least one step larger needle (ie a 14ga needle for 16ga jewelry), though i've had better results with two steps (12ga needle for 16ga jewelry) & even better results with dermal punches. cartilage piercings should NOT be performed with a same-gauge needle, as this type of tissue needs room to swell & breathe & heal down around the jewelry. NO piercing should be performed with an ear gun. see http://compunction.org/guns.txt for a thorough explanation of why not. + solving problems: there are a thousand problems associated with healing a piercing. some people are more prone to some of them than others. some people will never be able to heal a piercing. some of the more prominent problems are detailed here. - scar tissue: if you have mechanical stress on a piercing, it will form a lump of tissue, called hypertrophic scarring. this is not the same as a keloid scar - keloids are genetic & if you are susceptible to them, they will form on most any wound you incur. keloids are incredibly difficult to get rid of, sometimes requiring medical treatment. so your piercing has grown this big, ugly lump & you don't know what to do. the first thing, before any sort of treatment can commence, is to determine WHY your piercing has scarred up. a piece of metal through your skin will not scar like this on its own - there is stress somewhere. if it's a navel piercing, perhaps the piercing bends when you sit, putting pressure against the jewelry. if it's an ear cartilage piercing, see if you're sleeping against that ear, or using the phone on it too often. if it's a nipple, maybe your bra is pressing against the jewerly too hard. sometimes alleviating this stress is as easy as changing the jewelry. if a ring in your navel is twisting when you sit, try a curved barbell. smaller balls on a nipple barbell will make your bra press it less. try to be intelligent about jewelry selection & you will have far fewer problems. once you've determined WHY your piercing grew the big lump of tissue, you can take to removing it. i've found holding a q-tip wet with hydrogen peroxide directly on the bump to be very effective. re-wet the q-tip as necessary to keep the bump soaking for five minutes several times a day for a few weeks. hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) eats away at new tissue, which makes it completely inappropriate for the cleaning of a piercing, but quite suitable for destruction of scar tissue. it will fizz & burn, & eventually your scar tissue will probably scab over. keep up the treatments, & you should see results. & yes, you can do this on healing & new piercings - in fact, sooner is often better when it comes to treating hypertrophics. NOTE: hydrogen peroxide CAN DEAFEN YOU. be especially cautious if you're treating a conch or tragus. do NOT let the h2o2 run into your ear canal. other methods include vitamin e massage (use the oil from a capsule) or olive oil massage. really, any sort of massage will help strengthen blood flow & stimulate the tissue to act as it should. another suggestion is to soak the piercing in highly salted water (table, sea, kosher, NOT epsom; see above for explanation), which will dry out the tissue & sometimes rid you of the hypertrophic. for oral tissue specifically, powdering an aspirin & putting that on the bump is known to have favorable effects, but i've never had problems with oral hypertrophics & thus cannot back this firsthand. - soothing irritation: if your piercing is red & inflamed, it's not necessarily infected, so don't go crying to your doctor about antibiotics or put any sort of antibac crap on it yourself. a new piercing WILL be angry for a while - you just drove a metal rod through yourself & your body will react to that. if it remains red & sore for more than a week or two, you're reaching the realm of true irritation as opposed to irritation-as-a-given. you could have a metal allergy, a low-quality polish on the jewelry you're wearing, or you could be smacking the thing six times a day with a hairbrush. or about a million other things, but these are the most likely to be your issue. first, inspect the finish on the jewelry. if there are scratches, dents, or other imperfections, they could be moving through your piercing & causing the irritation. look closely, but also run your fingernail over the metal, especially at inside curves - if your nail catches against anything, that could be the problem. the fix: buy a higher quality piece of jewelry from a reputable maker. be prepared to spend more than ninety cents on a captive ring. when you've determined it's not the finish, test yourself for a metal allergy. take a similar piece of jewelry & tape or otherwise strap it to the inside of your wrist for a day. the thin skin there will quickly become red &/or itchy if you're reacting to the metal - which usually means to the nickel in the metal. upgrade to a better grade of metal to solve this problem - titanium & niobium have no nickel, or even a better steel might work for you. if you're hitting the piercing six times a day with your hairbrush, stop hitting the piercing with your hairbrush. if you're sleeping on it, stop sleeping on it. et cetera, et cetera. irritation is NOT infection; however, irritation weakens your system & leaves the door open FOR infection to set in. - avoiding infection: if your piercing starts to feel warm, is more sore than the previous day (without reason - if you caught it on a towel yesterday & it's sore today, it's not likely to be infected), has red lines radiating out from it, or is leaking something OTHER THAN white or off-white clear-ish fluid, you may have an infection. saltwater is your immediate action, & if you catch an infection quickly enough, it will be the only action necessary. mix a quarter teaspoon of salt (table, sea, kosher, NOT epsom; see above for explanation) into eight ounces of water (preferably purified, but whatever will suffice). the solution should be as salty as your tears. using too much salt can dry out your skin. i prefer to use water as hot as i can stand it, as the heat helps to soothe. soak the piercing in this solution for ten minutes a few times a day. it may be easier to use soaked cottonballs for some piercings. if you don't see improvement within a day, you may need a stronger course of treatment. a competent piercer will have more experience with piercing-specific infection, so if possible, you should seek a bodyartist's professional opinion before heading to the doctor. some doctors are still recommending "take it out immediately" to any sort of problem; while it's unlikely an abscess will form within a piercing canal, it's still a possibility, & no [minor] infection will cause trauma any less readily to a piercing without jewelry as opposed to one with, so you may as well keep the hole open while you handle your issue. - staunching bleeding: piercings will often bleed. it doesn't mean your piercer isn't qualified or that something was done wrong. dermal punches will always bleed. this is generally not problematic. if you're inexperienced with blood, you will likely think there's far more than there is; it's rare you'll lose any meaningful quantity of blood from a piercing. but if the damned thing won't stop bleeding on its own (seeping, not spurting), there are some ways to help it stop. if you can apply pressure to the hole, do so. this won't work for most piercings, though - how do you apply pressure to a conch piercing? so i've found the easiest way to stop the bleeding is to just let a giant scab form - let the blood build up on the jewelry without blotting it, & it will come to a stop... & will leave a giant, nasty-looking clot for you to enjoy. if you had particular trouble getting it to stop dripping on you, leave the clot, as ugly as it is, in place for several days. after that time, it will fall off on its own, or you can GENTLY knock it off in the shower. i don't recommend packing gauze around anything - even the non-stick stuff sticks, & then instead of having a big clot glued to your body, you have a big clot within a big, bloody clump of gauze. attractive. if your piercing is spurting, the piercer did something very wrong, & you should not have left the shop in such a condition. + in conclusion: to best use the LIMA method, you have to know how to listen to your body. these instructions WILL allow your body to heal as fast as is possible, but regardless as to which set of instructions you use, you must pay attention for signs of irritation & infection. anything you need to know about healing is evident in your body's reactions - the LIMA method works best because it allows your body to heal on its own, with minimal assistance from you. i also recommend healing tattoos with minimal assistance: http://compunction.org/healing.txt