“How you do anything is how you do everything”
Hey everyone! I’m really excited to get this blog up and going! It has been a long time coming. My intention is to create content that will support your piercing’s needs, address frequently asked questions, and offer insight into how we Chief.
Transitions: Salt soaks to soap washes
I touched base on this topic in an instagram post titled Healing 101 @chiefpiercing, but I wanted to go a little deeper on this topic. On our aftercare page, I go over the initial healing care with salt soaks and healing oil, but what I don’t go over is the importance of switching the care routine up after the first 1-2 months. There are different healing stages your new piercing will undergo, and we want to honor these changes by changing the care as we journey with our new piercing into healing. Let’s jump in!
The initial healing stage: Salt soaks!
The initial healing stage is ruffly the first and second month. During this stage, warm salt soaks are the Chief preferred way of treating your new piercing as heat works with your bodies innate response to healing tissue. Our focus on care at Chief is based on the idea that the way you treat your piercing during your initial heal predicts the healing experience. The sooner you heal, the better! In order to achieve this goal, we recommend warm salt soaks over cold soaks. Heat helps with tissue repair, so we believe that warm salt soaks speed the healing process. Cold is excellent to reduce the inflammatory response during the first week, and we recommend ice compresses when feeling swollen or tender anytime during the initial healing stage.
The secondary healing stage: Soap washes!
The secondary healing stage can be from the second through fourth month depending on the piercings location. This stage requires mild soap washes to remove sebum from the piercing. Sebum is a sign that your piercing has skin developed on the inside of your piercing and this skin is scar tissue, which sheds dead skin mixed with body oil into a pasty substance called sebum. Now, more about the newly developed skin cells on the inside of your piercing, they are highly reactive and not resilient. This is the stage that people get raised tissue at the borders of their healing piercing or granulomas/ healing bumps that look like keloids but are rarely, rarely keloids.
After the last 18 years of being a professional piercer, I have come to recognize the healing bump as a normal part of the healing process with certain piercings because your body is protecting itself after catching, bumping, or changing the jewelry too soon. The way you treat this stage also predicts how long your journey will be. If you are dealing with a healing bump and you were pierced at a professional studio with professional grade jewelry, the best advice I can give is not what many want to hear: The less you mess with the piercing the better and try checking in with how much you trust your bodies innate ability to heal <3
Frequency of soap washes will be determined by you. Some people develop sebum faster than others and wash their piercing every other day in the shower, while some people who have a slower production of sebum, wash their piercing once a week. We only recommend gentle, natural or organic unscented soap. Dr. Bronners baby mild soap is very easy to find online or at your local grocery store. Our very favorite, which we sell at Chief, is the Dead Sea Warehouse Original salt soap that has a coconut oil and olive oil base. It is a local company too <3 You can email us to set up a time to stop by and buy a bar or you can stop by the Natural Foods Coop to grab either of the soaps we recommend.
The Tertiary stage: HEALED <3
The Tertiary stage is your final stage of healing. This is the stage where the tissue on the inside environment of your piercing has become super strong and resilient. You can catch and sleep on the piercing and it doesn’t become reactive anymore. The time it takes to get here is different for everyone and depends on the specific piercing you are healing. It can be 4months to one year, although some people experience a little tenderness even after one year with a cartilage piercing if they sleep very hard on their side or if they change their jewelry too soon, which can prolong healing. The care during this stage is identical to the secondary healing stage as you only need to wash the sebum out of the piercing as needed.
Healing oil, my true love!!!
MMM…. my absolute love affair, healing oils. I found through my own healing journeys with my piercings and through positive feedback from my clients that coconut oil has supported the healing process significantly. I recommend an organic unrefined coconut oil in a very thin amount applied near the surface of the piercing. For my clients who are allergic to coconut oil, I recommend almond oil, jojoba oil, and aloe vera with vitamins A, C, and E.
That’s all for now <3 Please email us if you have any questions. I deeply appreciate your time and your support.
OM MANI PADME HUM
