Nipple Piercing Questions in Sacramento
Nipple piercings in Sacramento are popular with men and women alike, but people tend to have a lot of questions before and after getting them. We’ve compiled a list of the most common ones and answered them here, so you’ll have all the info you need if you’re considering having your nipples pierced or want to know how best to care for your newly-pierced nipples. If you’d like to read about other people’s nipple piercing experiences and get additional info about this popular type of piercing.
1) What type of starter jewelry is best for nipple piercings? Straight barbells made of either high-quality stainless steel or titanium make great starter jewelry for nipple piercings. Some piercers prefer to start their clients off with captive bead rings (CBRs), but they can pull on your delicate, healing fistulas (i.e. the inside of a piercing), especially if you’re getting pierced at a heavier gauge. If you decide to get barbells, make sure that they’re long enough to account for swelling; if the balls press on either side of your nipples, you’ll need to get longer barbells before necrosis (i.e. tissue death) sets in.
2) What gauge jewelry should I ask for when I get pierced? Many piercers recommend start at 14g for nipple piercings, because there’s a high risk of migration/rejection with anything else. Getting pierced with a thicker gauge will reduce the likelihood of your jewelry migrating or being rejected by your body.
3) How long does it take for nipple piercings to heal? Nipple piercings can take anywhere from 9 months to a year to fully heal. They have a longer healing time than most other piercings.
4) What’s the best way to care for my healing nipple piercings? You can use a homemade sea salt solution (SSS), a piercing aftercare spray such as Deep Seas, or both to keep your new piercings clean and healthy during the healing process. Ideally, you should do SSS soaks for at least the first month or two after getting pierced. To prepare your SSS, boil water for 5 minutes, pour 1 cup of it into another clean container, stir in ¼ tsp. of sea salt (preferable to table salt, which contains iodine), and let the mixture cool. Fill the container with cotton balls, and then apply the saturated cotton balls to your piercings one-at-a-time, throwing each away after 1 application. Alternatively, you can fill a shot glass or other small container with some of the solution and actually soak your nipples in it by leaning forward into the glass. As your nipples heal, you can reduce your daily SSS soaks to 1x/day, then just do them periodically or when your nipples are especially irritated.
5) What’s the best store-bought nipple piercing aftercare product? If you don’t have time to do SSS soaks as often as you should, consider buying some Deep Seas piercing aftercare spray available at Stylz Piercings and spritzing it on a few times a day. Deep Seas piercing aftercare spray that contains the perfect mixture of Sea Salt, which will keep your piercings clean, refresh the skin around them, and soothe your tender nipples. It’s a great product to use in between SSS soaks, too. H2Ocean is also a good piercing aftercare product, but more piercers recommend Deep Sea Spray over saline-based solutions like H2Ocean.
6) What should I do if the skin around my nipple piercings gets dry? Many people are quick to reach for vitamin E oil, heavy cream, or even triple antibiotic ointment to soothe dry skin, but that’s not the way to go when dealing with dry skin around a piercing! Creams, oils and ointments can clog your fistulas, trapping in bacteria and leading to infection. The best thing to do is to add a couple drops of tea tree oil to your SSS to moisturize the skin around your piercings without directly applying something that will clog your healing fistulas.
7) (For the ladies…) Why do my pierced nipples hurt so much during my menstrual cycle? Just before your cycle starts, your body ramps up progesterone production, which causes your milk glands to grow. Towards the middle of your cycle, your body will also start producing more estrogen, which causes your breast ducts to enlarge. These hormone changes lead to overall swelling of the breasts, making many women more sensitive just before and throughout their cycles than at any other time of month. Add to that the discomfort that comes with healing piercings, and it can be quite uncomfortable for some women. If your breasts swell a lot, make sure your jewelry isn’t too tight, and if it is, get a piercer to help you switch it for something that won’t press on your nipples. If needed, you can take a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory like Ibuprofen for the pain, too.
8) Can I change my jewelry myself or do I need to have a piercer do it for me? Although you could probably successfully change your jewelry yourself, it might be wise to have a piercer help you, at least the first time. If you want to do it yourself, just make sure your replacement jewelry has internal threading, because externally-threaded barbells could scrape your fistulas as they pass through your nipples. Consider putting a tiny drop of a water-based lubricant on either side of each nipple before inserting the new jewelry; just don’t apply too much or you could make it impossible to hold onto your jewelry. Place one end of a new barbell against one end of an old one and use the new one to push the old one out.