You have a piercing that you love — but what happens if your body has a different opinion? Sometimes, your body can misidentify your piercing as a threat to your health and attempt to push it out. If a foreign object pierces your skin, your immune system works quickly to push the object out of your body and seal the wound.
However, sometimes your body can misidentify a piercing as a threat and that can cause problems. Migration is when your piercing moves within your body. While rejection results in migration, sometimes migration occurs for other reasons too.
You need to keep an eye on whether your piercing changes location in your body, even subtly, as it can potentially lead to rejection or other problems. Piercing rejections are a bit of a mystery. While nobody knows exactly why or when a rejection will occur, a few factors do tend to contribute to their likelihood:.
In some cases, piercing rejection can be caused by a combination of these factors. Truthfully, most people are unable to pinpoint the exact reason for a piercing rejection.
The most commonly-rejected types of piercings are surface piercings. They usually have a distinct double-pierced look. Popular surface piercings include:. Surface piercings typically go through thin, flat skin. By comparison, standard piercings pass through the plane of the skin. Jewelry in earlobes and cartilage have a much lower chance of rejection.
Your body will only build up scar tissue around a piece of jewelry if that process is easier than pushing out the jewelry entirely. In the case of surface piercings, the body is often tempted to push out the jewelry rather than wall it off with scar tissue.
Part of wound healing involves contraction, which means your skin is pulling itself back together. This is what allows holes to close up when jewelry is removed. It happens due to a combination of factors, including:. Excessive scar tissue at the piercing site makes re-piercing difficult. The most important thing you can do before getting a new piercing is to research the best piercers in your area.
Piercings are a way to express yourself and adorn your body, but they do come with risks. Migration and rejection are some complications that can result from a new piercing. If you suspect something is wrong, take out your jewelry and talk with your piercer.
A new piece of jewelry is often enough to stop migration and prevent rejection. A dermal piercing starts with an anchor that's inserted underneath your skin. Once the anchor is in place, your piercer will top it off with the…. Hypertrophic scars are thick, raised scars that develop when cells make too much…. Industrial piercings are more prone to infections than other ear piercings. Having two holes doubles your risk, and the hole that's closest to your….
Daith piercings may get infected easily because your ears are constantly exposed to bacteria. While rejection can happen anywhere, some areas of the body are more prone to rejection than others. Thus, in order to protect itself, your body slowly fights the object by pushing it and healing the skin behind it, which eventually forces the piercing back out through the skin. On the flip side, when your piercing is migrating, it's attempting to move from its original spot to a new one, and in some cases, can result in a full-blown rejection.
It's definitely something to look out for because if the jewelry is not removed in a timely manner, it can get completely rejected and may result in scarring from the puncture and put you at risk for infection. Piercings that only break through a small amount of surface skin—aptly named surface piercings—are most at risk for rejection and migration.
This is because the less skin there is to help keep the piercing secure, the higher the chances are that your body will find a way to push it out.
Of course, this totally depends on the person, as some people are simply more prone to rejection than others. The most common surface piercings are belly button and brow piercings. However, the piercings most likely to reject are those that reside closer to the skin's surface, such as sternum, nape, and Madison piercings. A skilled and experienced piercer will know how to pierce through enough flesh for a secure hold without causing tissue or nerve damage, albeit even a perfectly placed piercing can still be rejected if your body doesn't want it there.
Because migration is such a slow process that can take weeks or even months to play out, it can be tricky to tell for sure if your piercing is actually changing.
A few symptoms to look out for are constant soreness and sensitivity, the skin over the piercing getting thin enough to see the jewelry through it, the jewelry hanging more loosely than it used to, and the hole around the piercing appearing larger. This can start as a gradual widening of the hole, or stretching of the skin around the piercing," Dr. Cheung explains. You should go see a doctor ASAP to keep it from getting worse.
Unfortunately, once a piercing has begun to migrate, there isn't too much you can do to stop it. It's kind of like a relationship gone bad. What you can do, however, is prevent it from getting worse. If you leave the piercing, you may develop unwanted build-up of scar tissue," she says.
Some fear that if their body rejected one piercing, it might reject all of them, which is not a crazy theory but also not necessarily the case. Above all, be sure that a professional does your piercing so you can trust it'll be done properly, and make sure to keep a close eye on it afterward.
If re-piercing, opt for a different kind of jewelry material, like niobium or titanium.
0コメント