Body Piercing -What’s That?

With the ever increasing rant and rave for rock and pop music amongst the youth of today, most teenagers love to dress up in the punk style using funky colors, bracelets, chains, tattoos and body piercing. Body piercing with its own distinctive style has become exceedingly popular with today’s youth. And I must mention here, that the cult of body piercing isn’t restricted just to the teenagers, as many mid aged people are also joining the gang.

Traditionally body piercing was done only for the ear lobes and the nostrils, however today one can see ornamental studs or rings hanging on different parts of the body like lips, nipples, navel, eye brows, and neck and even on the tongue. While some use body piercing to improve their aesthetics there are others who like to exhibit their outrageous using body piercing.

The most widely used method for body piercing is using hollow medical needles. Piercing does not require any flesh to be removed, but since you’re puncturing your skin some blood is definitely going to come out. The needle makes a small slit in the skin, through which the piece of jewelry is pushed in and only after that the needle is removed. The other way is using a cannula which is a slightly different needle with the hollow plastic tube which prevents the piece of jewelry from slipping away at the time of insertion.

However when you want the piercing hole to be large enough, then the scalpel method is used. In this procedure a medical scalpel, the ones which they use in operations, is used to make a big slit to accommodate large-gauge jewelry. Since this kind of piercing makes a big hole, some skin or cartilage will have to be removed to accommodate the wide hole. And it goes without saying that it is certainly a very painful process. Usually this types of body piercing is used only for the upper ear.

When you walk into any of the body piercing shops, you’ll find that most of them make use of a piercing gun but most medical practitioners would not advocate the use of piercing gun. This method can be quite discomforting because it can lead to cartilage scarring. What’s more, a longer healing time is associated with this method. This is also not a very safe and hygienic method of body piercing because the instrument cannot be sterilized.