Navel piercing
Outline .
* Healing Time : six months to one year.
* don’t touch your piercing, or let others touch it even though it is healing.
* Clean your healing piercing only once per day, with antibacterial soap.
* Never use alcohol swabs, Betadine or hydrogen peroxide to wash your piercing.
* Ideally soak your piercing in saline solution daily.
* Take care when swimming, avoid spas.
* Discomfort , rosiness and peculiar discharge could be due to infection. Ask your piercer or a consultant if you develop any of these symptoms.
* Wear loose clothing to avoid your jewellery ‘parking’ to the side.
* Take vitamin C and zinc to maximise your healing.
* Wait until your piercing is healed before changing jewellery yourself. Care Routine.
* don’t touch your piercing unless you are cleaning it. Unwashed hands carry bacteria and your piercing is a point where these bacteria can penetrate below your skin and cause an infection.
* While healing, your piercing will have to be cleaned once daily - while showering is excellent. You’ll need to use an antibacterial soap that contains triclosan ( e.g.Dettol Liquid Soap ).
The step by step process is :
1. Scrub your hands with antibacterial soap.
2. Wet the piercing with plain water.
3. Put some drops of antibacterial soap on the piercing and work them into a lather with a cotton bud.
4. Try and loosen any crusted discharge and float it off the jewellery and your skin with the cotton bud.
5. Leave the antibacterial soap on the piercing for 2 mins while revolving the jewellery forwards and backwards, permitting the disinfectant to penetrate the piercing.
6.Wash with water and air dry completely.
* Also of proved efficacy is soaking the navel in saline solution.
This takes ten -15 mins but is really worth the effort.
The step by step process is :
1. Put 50mls of Saline solution in a little glass tumbler ( ideally contact lens sterile saline solution, or otherwise a touch of salt in a pitcher of cooled boiled water ).
2. Holding the glass upright, bend over the glass and press the edge around your piercing.
3. Lie down on your back and hold the glass against your navel for ten to fifteen mins. Read, hear music…
4. Stand, bend over, and release the glass. 5. After, dry totally with a clean tissue or cotton bud. Piercing Options and
Jewellery Decisions .
* Acceptable Positions : the general public select a vertical piercing entering within the navel and exiting thru the skin above the navel. This is most unlikely to be squashed by clothing.
*Acceptable Types :
1. Caught bead rings. Rings are much less expensive than bar bells, but they do have a tendency to park flat against the skin.
Special pliers are customarily needed to get rid of or replace the bead.
2. Curved bar bells.
Either select internally threaded bar bells or be particularly certain that no threads are exposed.
3.Jewelled bar bells.
Look for jewellery where the gems are mechanically set into the metal instead of stuck. Stuck jewellery can’t be sterilized.
4. Spirals.
These can be positioned in numerous ways. Check with your piercer.
* Appropriate Sizes :
Only fourteen gauge or heavier jewellery should be used. Smaller gauges will migrate out thru the skin.
* Acceptable Materials :
Surgical stainless-steel, eighteen carat gold, titanium,niobium. Don’t use nine carat gold, silver ( which can stain the tissues permanently ), or gold plated jewellery in new piercings. In a healing piercing the gold plating will wear off the jewellery before the piercing is healed. This isn’t such a difficulty in healed piercings.
* Changing Jewellery :
It is feasible to change jewellery in the first six months, but this is best done by a pro piercer. Once a piercing is healed anybody can change the jewellery.
Other Issues.
* Bacterial Contagions .
Contagions are maybe the most typical complication with body piercings. Symptoms may include increased discomfort, increased rosiness and a rise in the amount and thickness of the discharge. The infected discharge is generally thick and yellow, green or gray and could have a peculiar odour. Talk to your doctor or piercer and don’t remove the jewellery until you request advice. Removing the jewellery can permit the piercing to shut over the infection and create a worse problem : a closed pustule underneath the skin.
* Cleaning Agents.
Never use alcohol swabs, Betadine, hydrogen peroxide, methylated spirit, or tea tree oil to scrub your piercing. These do kill bacteria but they also destroy your healing flesh. Dead flesh then becomes simply infected.
* Clothing.
Tight clothing rubbing against your piercing is not recommendedit interrupts blood flow and can delay healing.
It also increases the likelihood of your jewellery ‘parking’ or folding to the side, especially with rings. * Exercising. Take care on hot days and when exercising as sweat has a tendency to collect in your navel. Wash or soak the navel thereafter.
* Lavender Oil.
This oil lubricates the piercing and is said to reduce scar tissue and forestall tightening. It has got to be employed in its water down form, a drop applied to all sides of the piercing with a cotton bud, the surplus removed, and then the jewellery moved forwards and backwards thru the piercing. The right dilution is ten drops lavender oil in 15mls grapeseed or sweet almond oil.
* Pregnancy.
You can continue to wear your navel piercing up until about the 6th month of pregnancy. Once the skin starts to stretch the jewelry should be removed or upsized. When necessary the piercing can be reopened at a later date.
* Smoking.
1. Smoking slows healing by suppressing your immunological response and blood flow to the skin.
2. In a navel piercing it’ll add months to the healing time.
3. If you can’t quit smoking then you need to rethink having any piercings.
* Swimming.
Swimming isn’t taboo while your piercing is healing, but you must only swim for brief periods in pools that are totally chlorine- or ozone-treated. Don’t let your skin become wrinkly and soft. If you swim in the ocean or waterways, don’t swim after torrential rain. Hurricane water run-off regularly contains bacteria and bugs.
* Viral Contagions .
Viruses like Hepatitis A, B, and C, and HIV can penetrate a piercing which has not healed. These viruses could be present in the blood, spit, semen, sweat and vaginal secretions of infected folks. Till your piercing has healed avoid any other person’s bodily liquids contacting your piercing.
* Vitamins.
Research has proven that vitamin C and zinc promote wound healing. Shoot for about 2000-3000 mg vitamin C and 100 mg zinc daily. Note that these amounts aren’t available in multivitamin capsules.
Ask at your chemist or health-food store for recommendation on appropriate products. If you’re taking any medicines, ask your chemist to be sure there are no interactions between them and the vitamin C and zinc you plan to take. For instance, vitamin C can delay the assimilation of the contraceptive tablet - they deserve to be taken at different times.