formenteralady
Posts: 76
Joined: 8/4/2006 Status: offline
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Don't fear, I can answer this question for you, and the good news is, it is nothing to worry about. I have a septum pierceing, and much to my upset I noticed after it healed up (after I stoped cleaning it out with a mild anti-bacterial soap twice a day) that sometimes I'd get this rather nasty smell on it. So I looked up some info to make sure my nose wasn't going to fall off, and, well, I think this will explain it far better then I will: What is this gunk on my jewelry? I thought my ears were healed... If your ears are healed and you seem to have some funky suff on your jewelry when you take it out, this is most likely dead skin cells. Your entire body sheds dead skin cells as it grows new skin, you just don't see it (guess what a good part of the dust in your house is!). Since there's a signifigant amount of skin touching your plug, those dead skin cells don't have anywhere to go, so they build up on your jewelry. This effect and the smell that goes along with it varies from person to person and from material to material, with metals generally seeming worse than other materials, like organics. See the materials section for more information. (taken from http://www.onetribe.nu/catalog/stretching.php ) Honestly the best way to deal with this dead skin build up is to just use a mild soap while you have posts in (I do this inj the shower), and turn and move the posts around so the soap gets in thier pretty good, then stick your ear in the shower stream and twist it around more to make sure i rinse the soap out. Then yay! squeeky clean! If you don't have/don't want to use posts you can just soap up your finger and make sure to massage your lobe really well, then do the same when rinsing. Now the big NO-NO's here are useing things like neosporin, alcohol, oils, astrengents, or anything like that. What will happen if you use these things is that your skin will dry out, and your body will go into oil over production, which will also make the situation worse, and actualy opens you up to the chance of infection. So as you can see, it's natrual, it's normal, and easy to fix. :D
< Message edited by formenteralady -- 8/16/2006 1:29:20 AM >
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