Daily care of your tongue piercing and jewellery!

You just had your tongue pierced:

1) The first month is the most important of all the healing phase. So take good care of your new little hole in your tongue!

- Don't take off your body jewellery even if it is to wash and clean it!!!

- Obviously, always wash your hands carefully before anything...

- Use an antiseptic spray (dyaseptil, biseptine), on your tongue piercing, and wipe it with a Kleenex to remove all the impurities. Avoid cotton as it can leave fibres.

After a few months, you are now able to change your tongue piercing jewellery!

Take care of your body piercing and your body jewellery, and you shouldn't have to have to run to the hospital with a triple sized tongue!!!! Once your piercing is well healed you can decide to put on the beautiful piece of jewellery you bought many months ago!!!!

- Clean your tongue bars with a saline washing sold in chemsits (Ask your chemist).

- Clean your new body jewellery with alcohol 70 °. But check out for acrylic-made tips and designs, they could deteriorate (roughness, loss of color).

Notes:

You can find disinfecting and cleaning wipes on the market. They are effective and not too expensive but they are not designed for Teflon or Bioplastic.

The best way to clean your item is to bath it in an ultrasound tank. This method is useless on materials such as PTFE or bioplastics. They absorb utlrasounds rather than reflecting them...

Things to do and things to avoid concerning the care of your tongue piercing:

- Things to do:

- Rinse your mouth well with a disinfectant like Listerine after each meal or after you eat any food (for 14 days). Always dilute your mouthwash at a quarter of its original concentration with water. Not doing so would start to kill your mouth flora and would delay the healing process.

- Wash your hands with germicidal bactericidal soap before any actio around your tongue piercing, and check once a week that your tongue jewellery is well screwed on.

- To avoid any swelling back of your tongue, wait at least 10 days before changing over to a shorter stem.

- Delicately remove plaque which can form on the jewellery, using a soft toothbrush. After the piercing is healed you can use an antiplaque mouthwash, and you may remove the jewellery once a month in order to clean it.

- Make sure you take very small bites when you start again to eat solid foods. Try to keep your tongue leveled in your mouth while eating, to avoid contact with the teeth and avoid biting on the jewellery if you want to keep all of them!!!... Once you insert a smaller barbell, this issue will tend to clear up.

- When waking up in the morning (or whenever you wake up, you party goer...), drink a glass of icy water. Keep some ready in the fridge and add ice cubes to make sure its bloody well cold. Due to the lying position while you sleep, more blood will come to the face and the mouth and therefore the swelling will be always more important in the morning. Sip the water slowly and try to keep it on your tongue before you swallow.

- Any kind of cold food is advised in order to alleviate the pain and reduce the swelling. You can use ice cream or really cold yoghurt for example. Ice cubes are cheap and effective, so don't hesitate to suck on them regularly throughout the day.

- Things to avoid:

- Hot and very warm food and drinks such as tea, coffee and soups are to be avoided if you don't want to be faced with unusual unnecessary pain. Avoid spicy food like Chilli and Curries as they will increase the swelling of your tongue.

- Try not to talk too much while the first (longer) barbell is in, as any movement of the barbell will delay the healing. After the insertion of the smaller barbell and after the reduction of the swelling, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

- Do not use undiluted mouthwash as this destroys the mouth flora and would delay much the healng process.

- Avoid playing with your tongue jewellery or chewing on it during the whole of the healing phase as it would delay the healing.

- This might be a stupid advice for some but avoid putting anything dirty in your mouth, such as pens, pencils or your fingernails (even more somebody else's!!!). In the same way, refrain from any oral sex and wild kissing (even for monogamous trusting relationships) for the first 10 to 14 days.

- And finally don't ever remove or replace your tongue piercing jewellery during the totality of the healing phase. The hole would close up extremely quickly. This stands for the phase after the healing, as a tongue piercing takes about one day to refill without the presence of tongue jewellery.

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