How to clean a lip piercing

Cleaning your lip piercing is pretty straightforward, but it will require non-iodized salt, alcohol-free mouthwash, and a mild, fragrance-free soap. Pick up a new toothbrush as well—one with soft bristles—and replace your old one after getting your piercing. Recognize the signs of infection.

Lip Piercing Aftercare

The lip takes approximately 2-3 months to heal and during this time it is important to clean the inside and the outside of the piercing 1-2 times daily.

Dipping swab cotton in water and applying a small drop of antibacterial soap can also go a long way in making the piercing heal faster. Use a cotton swab to thouroughly clean the jewellery of any dried blood or crust around it as well.

Clean the exterior portion of the piercing with a mild soap twice a day. Soak the exterior portion of the piercing in sea salt water twice a day. After the first week, rinse your mouth out with salt water twice a day. Do not touch the jewelry except for washing.

Lip piercings may be more prone to infection — especially during the initial healing stage — due to regular contact with saliva, food, makeup, and other bacteria. Snagging the jewelry on your hair or clothing can also irritate the piercing and introduce new bacteria.

Any ointment, such as Neosporin, Bacitracin, Vaseline or triple antibiotic should be avoided. The large amounts of petroleum jelly will block oxygen to the body piercing and allow bacteria to breed.

Keep the area moisturized

If the skin around the outside of your lip piercing becomes dry, moisturize with tea tree oil-enhanced sea salt solution rather than using creams, oils or balms that could clog your fistula, trap in bacteria and make you susceptible to infection.

General Care for Body Piercings

Always wash hands thoroughly before contact with piercing. Do not use rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide. (Both slow the healing of pierced area by drying and killing new healthy cells.) Do not use bacitracin or other ointments.

After cleaning the site for a few weeks, you will see less and less crusting until, eventually, it all disappears. This is not a process of one-size-fits-all. For some people the crusting goes away in two or three weeks–for others, it can take four or five weeks.

After the first few days your body will excrete lymph as it begins to form the fistula inside your piercing. This lymph ‘crust‘ will likely collect on the jewelry or around the piercing. Do not pick at it. Piercings do tend to swell slightly — some more than others — during healing.

It is very normal and healthy for a new piercing to ooze some clear or straw-colored fluid that then might crust around the jewelry. This is lymph fluid, and it is a part of the healing process. See your doctor if your piercing has pus around it.

If your piercing jewelry is starting to sink into your skin/tissue, see your piercer right away for a longer bar. Some piercing do embed slightly, we refer to this as ‘nesting’. Lip and tongue piercings tend to do this as our oral tissue is very soft. Oral tissue regenerates much quicker than other body tissue.

During the inflammatory phase of healing, the permeability of the vessels increases, permitting fluid to accumulate in the tissue around the wound. This is when you may start to experience the signs of healing such as redness, soreness, drainage that is clear/white-ish in color, and swelling.

Symptoms of piercing rejection

more of the jewelry becoming visible on the outside of the piercing. the piercing remaining sore, red, irritated, or dry after the first few days. the jewelry becoming visible under the skin. the piercing hole appearing to be getting larger.

Embedding occurs as a result of your body allowing the skin to grow over the top of a piercing. In simple cases, it can be caused by swelling from an initial piercing occurring to a degree which means that the jewellery you were pierced with is now “too short” to accommodate the swelling.

Sucking on ice chips will help, too. If it’s been that deep for more than three or four days, the front is starting to nest as well, or the pain is becoming a major irritation, head back to your piercer and see what he/she thinks. You may just need a slightly longer bar.

If your lip piercing is increasingly swelling after the first few days of healing, you may have an infection. You may also be facing an allergic reaction to the metal in the piercing. Even though about 20% of people pierced report that they’ve experienced an infection, this is usually a localized infection.

Lip Piercings

You might experience swelling (usually 2-3 days after the piercing) this swelling can last 7-10 days.

Although you may love the look of your new piercing, you will need to change it out two to four weeks after you get it as the initial studs used for lip piercings are larger to accommodate any initial swelling. Wash your hands thoroughly with antibacterial soap and water to prevent infection as you change the piercing.

Pain and Healing Time

A lip piercing is going to hurt, but it’s tolerable. “You’re healing a fistula, and that’s a tunnel of scar tissue being built around the jewelry, so it takes time. The body’s going to seal off the exterior first to prevent bacteria, then it’s going to start healing inwards, so it takes a while.”

Get the Look

Dahlia piercings will emphasize the corners of your mouth, and has the effect of making full lips look fuller, but thin lips look particularly long and thin.

Treatment: The infection may take a long time to heal, depending on the area of the piercing, and it may also be accompanied by severe pain and discomfort. Lip piercing normally takes 6-8 weeks to heal completely. If the discomfort continues, it is advisable to consult your piercer.

After a piercing, get into the habit of brushing your teeth after every meal if possible, but at least two times per day. Avoid brushing the area where you just received your piercing. This could aggravate the area as it heals.