Nose Piercing Healing Issues

This Hub is for people who already have their noses pierced and think they are having some sort of healing issue or other type of problem with their pierced nose. If you don't have your nose pierced yet, the All About Nose Piercings Hub has better info for you.

Please note, if you *just* got your nose pierced, it perfectly normal for it to be red, swollen, tender and maybe even bleeding a little. I mean, you just got a sharp object shoved through part of your nostril, that sort of reaction is to be expected.

If you are worried that something about the piercing wasn't done right, go back and see your piercer. After all, it's their work. If you are really worried you have an infection, go and see a doctor. They are the best at recognizing that sort of thing.

If you are looking for some other sort of information, you may find what you are looking for if you read below.  The blue box to the right here offers some shortcuts to the specific topics.

Here are a whole range of problems that people have with brand new nose piercings that are related to their choice of jewelry. All of these can be avoided if you get picked a hoop or ring to start with, and make sure it is gold or surgical steel.

Too tight a fit - Many nose studs, especially those from the evil piercing guns, are very short and fit too tightly to the nose. The initial swelling that follows a piercing can make them sink deeply into the nose, cutting off air to the healing piercing and make it impossible to clean properly. This can add to the chances of forming scar tissue (bumps) or getting an infection.

No backing - I get email frequently from people who put a backless stud into a nose piercing and then wrote asking for help after the jewelry fell out or was pulled out accidentally. The moral of the story here is that jewelry without a backing often doesn't stay in place. Initially it might, especially if the new piercing is swollen, as that can cause the jewelry to fit very tightly, but once that goes down, backless studs can easily drop out, especially at night when you are asleep.

Black marks - There's really only one situation that causes this, and it's wearing sterling silver in a healing nose. The silver tarnishes (that's the black) and that tarnish rubs into the healing skin, leaving a stain that will be in the skin forever. I believe the only way you'd get rid of this would be to see a dermatologist who might have some method for removing the stained skin, but you'd probably have to give up the piercing to be able to heal the wound from the skin procedure.

If you have a brand-new nose piercing and the jewelry has sunken into it or even one end has vanished inside it, it means you picked a poorly-trained body piercer to do your nose. Sad but true.

Pierced noses swell up and the size of the piercing channel is not stable, and back when I first started getting pierced in the late 1980s, body piercers seemed to know this. Now so many people doing nose piercings have almost no training and it's literally hurting the customers. The jewelry that you start out with for a new pierced nose should NOT be the smallest you can get. This is why a reputable piercer will refuse to put in a teeny stud and why ring-style jewelry is really recommended to start. This prevents the jewelry from being pulled inside the piercing. Once your nose has healed (3 months later) then you can re-evaluate the size of the piercing and pick smaller jewelry.

If you have a stud that is disappearing into the piercing, you need to go back to where you got pierced and have them switch the jewelry to be something with a longer post and with a larger outside bead, or better yet, get a proper nose ring.

If there's one question I get asked more than any other, it's about bumps, keloids and scar tissue. As the popularity of nose piercing has spread, so has an unfortunate amount of piercers who just never got trained for how to truly pierce properly (no ear piercing guns!), how to fit jewelry (rings really are best to start with) or how to care for healing noses (many piercers tell people they are just like ears, but they aren't).

Due to a lot of trauma in piercing, too tight a fit of starter jewelry or even just plain old genetic heritage, some people get bumps of scar tissue that form right next to their nose piercings. These can start to show right away, or they might suddenly appear days or weeks later. It's not uncommon for them to show up after a snag, or following a painful jewelry change.

IF IT'S NOT A PIMPLE, DON'T POP IT!

It would seem a lot of teens think that any bump that forms on their face is meant to be popped. Pimples are pores that are blocked by a build-up of dirt and skin oils. They are frequently red from inflammation, or white as the oils build up into a head. The bumps that form next to nose piercings are very often NOT pimples, and the best evidence is that they bleed when squeezed. If this happens, DO NOT EVER DO IT AGAIN! Apply some anti-bacterial ointment to the wound and once it heals, if the bump is still there, start treating it as a "keloid," which is the most common form of scar tissue that forms alongside nose piercings.

The tissue trauma of getting a nose piercing causes some redness, tenderness and swelling and these may not show up for a day or two after the initial piercing. Being sore and a little red after getting a nose piercing is completely normal.

It's when you've got all of the following going on that you most-likely have a problem.

Infections are most-often characterized by:

• increasing redness
• increasing tenderness and pain
• increasing swelling
• discharge that is yellowish or greenish in color

To treat an infection, you need to keep the piercing clean (this includes your hands that touch it and the pillowcase you sleep on!) and apply an anti-bacterial treatment (ointment or cream) to kill the infection. 

If you think you have an infection, you should really go back to see your piercer again or go see a doctor! I am not a medical professional and cannot tell you for sure if you have an infection or not based on a comment or description!