Jewelry is vital when it comes to healing your new piercing. In Today’s blog we gonna talk about the best piercing materials and how you select them.
In my opinion, there are four types of metals that you can use for your new piercings. Implant grade steel, Implant grade titanium, 14k or higher gold, white gold and rose gold, and niobium. You want to make sure all are cadmium, nickel, and lead-free. Being exposed to lower levels of cadmium over a long period can cause damage to your kidneys and bones.
Choose the right metals
Nickel is one of the most common metals to have an allergy to it will cause your piercing to heal very slow if at all. Lead is toxic, and with a fresh piercing, you are risking it getting into your bloodstream even once you are fully healed lead can still be absorbed through your skin. They should never be plated or overlayed as it will rub off in a very short time, and the material under the plating is generally very low quality.
Use piercings with no threaded ends
All jewelry should be internally threaded or press-fit jewelry (no threads on the exterior of posts and barbells); if you are getting a piercing with jewelry that has a threaded end that is placed through the hole, it can create micro-tears in the tissue. Piercings are foreign objects in your body, and our bodies are amazing at self-healing. If we have crappy or low-quality jewelry, it is more likely our bodies will not accept the piercing. You will have issues such as piercing bumps, migration, and full rejection. We want to use the best materials so our body doesn’t attack it and will heal around it.
Don’t search for the best and “cheapest” deal
Everyone is always looking for a deal, but when it comes to your jewelry, you get what you pay for. I can’t tell you how many clients I have had come in with messed up piercings from other studios that they got for cheap and included the jewelry. Then they end up having to either get better jewelry from me or take the jewelry out and let it heal to redo it. It ends up costing a lot more then if they just went with the better jewelry in the first place. All shops with quality jewelry will have two separate pricings. The cost of the piercing, paying the piercer for their time and experience, and the cost of the jewelry. If the jewelry is included you can almost assume that it will be low quality.
How can you tell if you are getting quality jewelry?
Ask! If the piercer doesn’t know what type of metal it is, run! You can sometimes tell by looking at the jewelry. You want to make sure it has a mirror finish, and there are no threads that will be entering your piercing. There are some brands that you will know you are always getting high-quality jewelry. Here are a few of the top brands for initial jewelry. NeoMetal, Industrial Strength, BLVA and Anatometal there are more, these are just the top. Once your piercing heals, you have a little more freedom with quality, but quality jewelry is always recommended. When you buy a high-quality piece of jewelry, it will also last longer. Most cheap jewelry will tarnish, change colors, and turn you green; then you end up buying more and more.
If you invest in lifetime jewelry pieces, you end up spending less money in the long run. Remember, these are my options from my ten years of experience. Every piercer has different ideas of that is the best, and everyone’s bodies are going to react differently to each metal. If you only take away one thing from this, make sure its implant grade!
If you are currious what you need to do after you get a new piercing, than you’ll need to read this blog: Blog #1: What to do after you get a new piercing?
Written by: Erica Bautista
www.instagram.com/ericathepiercer
