Caring for Industrial Piercing

As we all know industrial piercing is not just an ordinary ear piercing, it needs more time to heal and more specific needs of care. Its healing time is six to twelve months, meaning more time and more attention needed. If you are worried about your sleeping position, you can use surgical tape while sleeping to protect the piercing.

Do not touch your piercing unless you are cleaning it. Our hands are basically the germs carrier, so do not touch or let others touch it while it is healing. You still have an open wound and unwashed hands carry bacteria and your piercing is in the condition where germs can penetrate below your skin and can cause an infection. Use only antibacterial soap in cleaning your healing piercing and only clean it twice a day. Showering is the most ideal time to do this. Here is the step by step process of cleaning it.

• Make sure to wash your hands first with antibacterial soap before touching the piercing
• Drip some plain water on your piercing.
• Put few drops of antibacterial soap on the piercing and clean it using cotton buds.
• Try to remove any crusted discharge from your skin and float it off the jewelry as well, loosen it using an antibacterial soap and cotton buds. Leave the antibacterial soap on the piercing for two minutes while carefully moving your piercing back and forth—allowing the soap to penetrate and disinfect it.
• Lastly, rinse it well with water and allow it to air dry thoroughly.

Avoid touching and removing your jewelry too often. It is not advisable to use alcohol swabs, betadine or hydrogen peroxide, cotton balls or cotton swabs to clean your piercing. Only antibacterial soaps will do. If symptoms like pain, redness and unusual discharge occur, consult your piercer or a physician because these may be due to infections. To maximize your healing, take vitamin C and zinc and lastly; wait until your piercing is healed until changing jewelry yourself. Until your piercing is fully healed, avoid contacting it to another person’s bodily fluid. There are a lot of sicknesses that you can acquire through bodily fluids when it penetrates your piercing, such as: Hepatitis A, B, and C, and HIV. Such viruses are present in the blood, saliva, semen, sweat and vaginal secretions of infected persons.