Ear Piercings Care Guideline

Have you ever felt that sometimes a perfectly healed ear piercing starts smelling awful? In fact, once we get our ears pierced, we have to take good care of them. Otherwise, our piercings might get smelly or even infection.

There are numerous reasons behind it, but one of them is a buildup of dead cells in the pierced holes. Our body secretes a substance called sebum as part of its normal everyday work.  Sebum is secreted by the sebaceous glands in the skin.  It’s an oily secretion meant to lubricate the skin and make it waterproof. 

Mix sebum with some dead skin cells and a little bit of bacteria, and you get some really potent smelling piercings!  The discharge is semi-solid and smells like stinky cheese. 

At its worst, you can even wipe this thick discharge off your plugs.

Piercings Require Ongoing Maintenance

You won’t be able to make the smell go away forever, but if you stick to a consistent cleaning routine for both your piercings and your jewelry, you should be able to keep the smell under control and much less noticeable. 

 Following the care directions can help to avoid infection.

• Leave the earrings in for six weeks or more, even at night!

It’s not advisable to change earrings too frequent once we get our ears pierced. This is due to our piercings are particularly vulnerable in the early stage, change earrings might lead to infection.

• Twist the earrings to keep the pierced hole open.

While change earrings is not advisable in the early stage, you may just lightly twist the earrings which should be done a few times a day.

• Choose Your jewellery carefully.

Many jewelry options for ear piercings such as studs can cause the dead cells to be trapped inside the piercing. There is no room for movement and the bacteria stay trapped in there for long periods of time. Try choosing rings that can move freely and hence can allow your skin to breathe. Make sure to avoid metals which can cause allergic reactions also. Many people have allergic reactions to metals like nickel. This can cause the skin around the piercings to inflame and can be the beginning of an infection.

• Carefully wash your ears with soap and water.

Cleaning your piercings regularly with warm water and soap can help prevent the buildups of gems and sebum and keep your piercings fresh and clean. If you are already suffering from case of nasty smelling ear piercing then you can wash your earlobe under warm running water, using an anti-bacterial cleanser.

• Put rubbing alcohol on your ears and also ear pin.

After taking out the earrings, put some rubbing alcohol on your ears or use a special cream or ointment to keep away germs. Also, rub the earrings (the ear pin part) with alcohol each time before wearing the earrings.