Avoiding Ear Blowouts: How to Keep Your Piercings Healthy
The In's and Out's of Ear Blowouts: Why Rushing Stretched Piercings Isn't Worth It
When you over stretch your piercings or even skip gauge sizes, you run the risk of blowing out your stretched earlobes! What is an ear blowout? We get down to the bottom of it! We want to prevent Ear blowouts and keep your piercings happy and healthy! Finally, lets break down how to stretch your piercings to perfection with the right body piercing jewelry methods!Â
Ear Blowouts: Breaking Down the Facts
What is an Ear Blowout?! It is a mostly irreversible thing that happens as a reaction to bad ear stretching habits. When you start skipping gauge sizes, sometimes you start getting a 'Blowout'. This is when your piercing starts to turn inside out! Yeah, we'll spare you the photos, but this is a painful and unpleasant piercing experience. Some have even said, it feels like sleeping on pins and needles!
So, you may not know, but after a certain size of stretching, gauges start skipping millimeters! For example, going from a 6gauge to 4ga is going from 4mm to 5mm, a one millimeter difference. But when you start getting to sizes over 2gauge (6mm) sizes start going by larger millimeters! 2 gauge to 0 gauge is a whole 2 millimeter difference! Stretching from 5/8ths 16mm to 3/4ths 19mm, skips a whole 3 millimeters, almost a whole size! This sizing is typical and common in the body piercing jewelry and modification community. Sometimes (when done correctly), earlobes can stretch faster or be more flexible when at larger sizes so not too many body jewelry shops carry half sizes or in between sizes. Know your size and your healing stage to prevent a piercing blowout!
Patience, Not Pressure: The Key to Safe Piercing Stretching
Stretching a piercing requires dedication, patience, and self discipline. The modification lifestyle, since ancient times, has always had a respected process to it. Even facial tattoos, face piercings and more were once used to symbolize status or a significant era in an individuals lifetime. Now a day we stretch our ears for the style of it but we should know that these modifications have some deep roots!
Only now are Gauge Punching and other intense piercing procedures becoming more popular. This procedure allows one to be pierced at a specific gauge size instead of waiting months or even years to stretch to their desired size. This is usually looked at as unsafe and not the healthiest way to achieved your desired stretched piercing. Gauge Punching and skipping gauge sizes while stretching can be one of the most painful piercing experiences.
The best and healthiest method that you'll find is Dead Stretching. Dead Stretching is way less intense than it sounds! Its the method of gradually inserting larger jewelry into existing piercings, and overtime, stretching the piercing hole. This method typically consists of Tapers or Taper Kits but are not limited to those! You can start Dead Stretching with Hoops, Buffalo Pinchers, Glass plugs, or almost any type of plugs besides double-flared plugs. As long as there is no pain, you're ready to go to the next gauge size!
 Exploring Ear Blowouts: Causes, Risks, and Treatment Options
Ear Blowouts aren't just visibly unsightly, but they can hurt, cause further infection, skin tearing, and many more complications. Specifically about a blown out ear, you'll find that the ear will have an extra flap of skin on the back of the lobe, acquired from putting body piercing jewelry that is too large in. Once you have an ear blowout, most people find that they have to get surgery to put your lobes back together. There are special modification artists who specialize specifically in this procedure but sometimes they can be costly and hard to find. You'll find horror stories all over the internet about torn or blown out earlobes.
To prevent blowouts, make sure your stretching one millimeter gauges at a time! If you're an 8 gauge, don't go straight to 4 gauge! You can prevent this by using stretching or taper kits that contain every size depending on how large you want to get! You can use our Size Conversion Chart to plan your perfect stretched piercing!
Take it slow and easy and listen to your body. If it hurts, its probably not your time to stretch up to a larger gauge yet. You don't want a piercing blowout in general! You wouldn't want your piercing feeling like pins and needles all day! This rule goes for stretching any type of piercing including nostrils, lip labrets, cheeks, septum and more. This rule of piercing stretching dates back ages before we had the accessibility of the body piercing jewelry we have no a day.
The Power of Patience and the right Body Piercing Jewelry for Perfect Piercing Results
 Slow and steady wins the race when it comes to stretching your piercings! Earlobes in particular are known for Blowouts and can easily be prevented! With proper piercing hygiene and aftercare, your perfect piercing curation wont be too far away! We know sometimes, we don't want to wait to wear our perfect look! But trust us, the patience will be worth it in the end! You can also use body jewelry to help you stretch your piercings a little faster! By using Eat Weights, Ear hangers, and heavier materials like Stone! Feel free to ask us any questions or concerns about Piercing Stretching! Whether your an experienced piercing pro or getting your first piercing, we're here to give you the best piercing and body modification advice that we can! Safe and Happy healing!
