Healing Nose Piercings

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Kerri at Zebra in Berkeley, and I'm here to talk about nose piercing and the healing process. When you get your nose pierced, initially, the pain is pretty minimal, it kind of actually feels like popping a zit. That first day you can notice a tiny bit of bleeding and a little bit of inflammation. That's to be expected. During the first two weeks, your nose is going to swell up slightly on the inside, no one's going to notice. Once that swelling goes down, your jewelry might move around a little bit because it's now looser due to more space. At that point you're probably going to want to go see your piercer and have it adjusted so it fits a lot more tightly. If your jewelry moves around too much for the rest of the healing process, it could cause irritation and that could result in an infection. So, if you go in and have it adjusted you can avoid all of that. For the next four to six weeks you're going to want to continue with a regular aftercare process which consists of cleaning both with an antibacterial solution. Non-alcohol based. And also soaking with salt water. I cannot emphasize enough how important soaking with salt water is to the healing process and keeping your nose nice and healthy. Nose piercings have a very hard time healing because of their cartilage, and so if you're noticing a little bit of redness or tenderness or tenderness or uncomfortableness it's actually pretty normal. All in all, it's an easy process and compared to other things in life, but with a nose piercing you should expect that it's not going to look perfect until it's done healing."