Why a Tongue Piercing May Not Be So Bad

Of all the body piercings available, tongue piercings without a doubt spark the most controversy. A search in Google will bring up a half a million hits, and if you were to go through them, you would think getting a tongue piercing is a risk just short of playing russian roulette. Some of the worst horror stories include brain abscesses, spread of deadly diseases such as HIV, large build-ups of scar tissue, "suicide disease," permanent nerve damage and fatal toxic shock syndrome. If that's not enough to scare you away, you'll notice that you could bleed excessively, develop speech problems, experience serious swelling, and or chip teeth. Sounds dangerous, right? Absolutely!

As with any popular matter that involves some risk (recreational drugs, extreme sports, etc.) the media loves to play them up. Any serious incident creates attractive headlines and prominent news stories, in turn creating a sort of media gossip. This gossip circulates through the popular mediums, and the result is that the public hears about "headline news", and never the full story.

In the case of tongue piercing, as an example, people may see that someone lost feeling in their tongue because of a botched piercing. A while later, they read that someone had a brain abscess, most likely caused from a tongue piercing. One thing leads to another, and the public comes to the conclusion that these piercings are very dangerous to get, and certainly outweigh any reason to get one. For most people it ends there.

What the majority don't realize, is that like anything that involves risk, there are ways to greatly minimize this risk. Tongue piercings are no different, and fortunately, it is possible to nearly eliminate the risks. The majority of the horror stories are either one-offs, or situations in which the people getting their tongue pierced did not make smart decisions. In fact, the only risk that is difficult to avoid and somewhat common is damage to teeth and gums. Dentists dislike tongue piercings because they receive patients coming in with cracked or chipped teeth, and/or receding gums. Again, smart and proper care greatly diminishes this risk, and with regular check-ups and advice from the dentist, this occurrence can also be minimized.

By no means are tongue piercings one hundred percent safe. There is always a slight risk involved if you get your tongue pierced, but nothing compared to what the media would have you believe. A tongue piercing is a fun, unique piercing and by doing your research and making smart choices, you greatly reduce the chance of a bad outcome.

So the next time you hear a horror story about tongue piercing, or any other thing that interests you, do some research. Find out for yourself if it's really such a major concern.

Lip Piercings

Lip piercing is a custom that goes back as far as ancient history. Some tribes believed that it would make their ancestors’ spirits happy. For some, it was a ritual or a status symbol. For some, of course, it was just a sign of beauty, of femininity, like the members of the Makolo tribe of Malawi. The Mayans and the Aztecs wore labrets or special lip pins made of gold, jade and obsidian. Among some tribes in Africa, the labrets could well be a disk, rather than simple jewelry.

Lip piercing is popular today in many parts of the world. The location of the lip piercing can vary from individual to individual. Lower lip piercing can be done anywhere from the center to the length of the lower lip and the choice of jewelry for the lower lip can be studs, rings, tusks or spikes. Upper lip piercing is supposed to be a mark of beauty and a small barbell or a stud is often worn. Labrets without a ring come in fishtail or disk backs. Fish tail backs have a wire that is twisted and lies perpendicular to the piercing unlike disks which have a metal screw or the end of a barbell that covers or caps the post.

There are various types of jewelry available for lip piercing like labret studs for instance, which are easy to remove. Make sure the jewelry is made out of titanium, niobium, surgical steel or 18 carat gold. It takes from two to six months for a lip piercing to heal completely. With lip piercing gaining popularity, there are few ground rules that one should follow. It is most important, though, to get the piercing done by a professional, so proper hygiene is ensured and the jewelry is of the right metal and does not rub against the gums.

After the piercing make sure that it does not develop an infection - either viral or bacterial. It is important to rinse your mouth with an antibacterial mouthwash, and keep away from smoking and alcohol. Some people recommend taking extra Vitamin C and Zinc in order to help the healing process, as well.

Piercing Jewelry - Body Jewelry

When you search the articles in the internet about Body Jewelry / Body Jewellery, it usually takes you to the website about Body Piercing Jewelry. Body piercing jewelry is jewelry produced specifically for use in body piercing. The materials used for production have grown from traditional precious metal such as gold and silver to widespread use of surgical steel as well as titanium, gemstone, wood, glass, even several kinds of plastics.

Body piercing is also becoming popular with both men and women. It's not just for a gang member who has tattoos and body piercing. It is considered fashionable for young adults as well as those in their careers to have body piercing in these days. Common places for them are ears, nostrils, eyebrows, lips, tongue, neck, nipples, belly buttons, even the genital areas.

Most piercing is done by a professional who uses sterile equipment for the process. He will gives you instructions on how to make sure your new piercing heals correctly and what to do if there is a problem. Always find out the risks involved in body piercing, and what is best to protect yourself from infections and other complications. The professional instruct the individual on the proper care for the piercing and send them on their way with signs of infection to watch for. It is your responsibility to make sure the place is very clean and sterile. The needle should be in a package and opened in front of you as well. If you are not satisfied with the sanitary process of the person doing the piercing then do not allow them to proceed.

A little fluid produced by the body when you get the piercing done. This is typically a milky white and it is created because there is a foreign object in the body, which is normal. Care should be taken if it turns into yellow or the pierced area turns to red, then you should seek immediate medical attention.

Be careful when you put the cheap body jewelry into your piercing since your body may reject it, or it could cause an infection. Saving a few bucks will mean nothing if you get sick. It might be the best to save the body jewelry until after you've had piercing for at least six months, even a year. Make sure it totally healed before you put anything in there. The cheap body jewelry can be okay after a period of healing is over. Anyway, you have to keep a close eye on things when you put the jewelry in for the first time. You should be able to see that the body jewelry they will be inserting is sterilized in front of you.

Nape Piercings

Nape piercings, informally called Neck piercings, are very new to mainstream culture. While it has been accepted for some time in body modification circles, people not stereotypically into bod-mod are getting their napes pierced. It is a great piercing for many people, because it can be exposed or covered according to a specific occasion with great ease.

This ability to hide or display the piercing is quite an attractive "selling point" to people, and when done correctly, this piercing can look fantastic. Nape piercings are surface piercings located on the lower base of your neck (although many people get multiple nape piercings that ascend up the neck) and they are usually pierced with surface bars. Sometimes barbells are used, but surface bars are de rigueur for this area of the body. Once you and your piercer have decided which piece of jewelry is best for you, you will most likely be asked to lay down on a table, cinch your shoulders together so that the piercer can clamp your skin at the base of the neck, and on your exhale the piercing will commence. Before the actual piercing occurs, you will be able to see where the piercer has marked you, and you can adjust the location from there if you so desire. Once the needle is through, the jewelry will be secured, and your piercing will be finished! The entire process takes about ten minutes, but the actual piercing action and jewelry insertion shouldn't even take a minute - it's very fast! Your first jewelry will be a bit larger to accommodate the swelling, but after a couple months (three months roughly, give or take) you can have the jewelry replaced to something that fits more snugly on your neck. There are many different types of jewelry for nape piercings, as any surface bar or barbell will do.

Nape piercings, being that they are on your neck, should not be attempted by amateurs. Even though the risk of nerve damage is practically nonexistent, you don't want to be jabbed in any of the nerves - or even worse, your spinal cord!- running down your back. A professional piercer will miss all of these nerves and you will not have any nerve damage. A drunken buddy with a sharp piercing needle, on the other hand, is nothing short of an accident waiting to happen. Besides, a professional piercer with experience in nape piercings will be more adept in proper placement of the piercing, and the depth they will pierce at will be more successful in staving off migration and rejection.

Migration (where the piercing moves from its original position) and rejection (where the body literally pushes out the piercing) are the two biggest threats of piercings in this area. All surface piercings are prone to migrations and rejections, and the neck piercings are no exception. However, if your nape is pierced at the right depth, and you follow all aftercare instructions and use common sense, you have a good chance of garnering a successful nape piercing. Besides cleaning it thoroughly, try not to sleep on it for the first week, don't wear helmet that rests directly on it, put on and take off shirts delicately, and just be very mindful of the area when using a towel to dry off. Many people report that the first week is the hardest - you don't realize how often the back of your neck is used until it is pierced, trust me - but after that the piercing does not hurt at all.

Body Modification Or Body Mutilation?

Today's society is full of people looking to push the boundaries in whatever way they can. This is true in just about everything, and body modification is no exception.

Body modification involves any permanent or semi-permanent change to one's body for a non-medical reason. When it´s done for aesthetical reasons, it is known as body art, which includes piercings and tattoos. One of the newer, more extreme piercings are horizontal tongue piercings, which are creating a lot of controversy, similar to when vertical tongue piercings first became popular.

So what's the big deal about this piercing? A horizontal tongue piercing is just like it sounds. A bar is pierced horizontally through the entire front tip of the tongue, with a ball on each side to hold it in place. It is an extremely painful piercing, and involves a lot of skill to be performed properly. Healing time is quite slow, and some people have found their tongue never healed fully until the piercing was removed. These reasons, combined with the lack of knowledge for this type of oral piercing, make it a rare piercing to get and some piercers will refuse to do the piercing.

The risks involved are similar to those of a vertical (standard) tongue piercing. However, some of these risks are more inclined to happen. One of the most common problems with a horizontal piercing is that people are often unable to speak without a lisp, due to the location of the piercing at the tip of the tongue. Chipped and cracked teeth are also relatively frequent, as they are with any oral piercing. Horizontal piercings also tend to flare up and become infected much easier than a vertical piercing, which makes proper aftercare imperative.

If you are wondering why anyone would want to get a horizontal piercing, you are not alone. To the majority of people, the piercing resembles body mutilation more than any kind of art. Nevertheless, to some people, having such a rare, extreme piercing is worth the pain and inconvenience. They enjoy the originality, and bask in the "wow" factor that they are bound to receive.

Whether you think a horizontal tongue piercing is a valid type of body modification or borders on body mutilation, it is a piercing growing in popularity. People continue to push the boundaries, and you can be sure this piercing will become more common in the future.

Risks of Breast Implants

Women wanting to enhance their breast size, lift their breasts, or otherwise have reshaping and contouring breast implant surgery want to know the real risks involved. With all of the conflicting information out there about whether breast implants are really safe, it's hard to tell fact from fiction sometimes.

The fact of the matter is, a staggering number of women are now opting to have this surgery to enhance their appearance and many times their self esteem, since many women view small or unattractive breasts as a detriment to their femininity and beauty. It certainly doesn't help that the female breast has become an iconic symbol of beauty and womanly attraction.

We are going to examine some of the risks involved in getting breast augmentation surgery from an objective perspective. This includes the risks of the surgery itself, as well as the risks of what may happen to you or your implants after surgery.

Breast implants have been on the open market for almost three decades now, and the FDA was charged with regulating them as medical devices in the year of 1976, when they had already been on the market for ten years. While it is true that breast augmentations have come a long way in the realm of safety and longevity, there are still some people who may just not do well with a foreign object in their body.

These are the people who normally will have the most issues with their procedure after it has been done, since their body esentially rejects the implant and fights hard to "mend" the area by creating excess amounts of scar tissue, causing a painful condition called capsular contracture, or hardening of the implant and tissue around it.

Saline implants are believed to be safer than their predecessor, the silicone implant, due to the fact that saline is simply a salt water solution that is harmless when released into the blood stream if the implant ruptures or leaks.

The contrary was true as contended by thousands of women with silicone implants, who claimed they suffered irreparable nerve and musculoskeletal symptoms that could not be explained by doctors after their silicone implants had either leaked or ruptured.

The risks involved with saline breast implants are as follows

1.) Capsular contracture, as discussed previously, this is the hardening of the implant and the excess formation of scar tissue around the implant resulting in a painful condition that usually requires a second surgery to remedy the problem.

2.) The "ripple effect". This is VERY common on women with implants. When turned to the side, many times you can see a clear rippling of the saline bag on the side of the breast clearly visible through the skin. This is usually a dead giveaway a woman has implants. Other related effects are dimpling, puckering, and wrinkling.

3.) Implants can change shape, move around and migrate to different areas of the chest area, making the breasts appear deformed. Many times a second surgery needs to be performed or the implants removed when this happens.

4.) The implant can rupture from too much pressure, or simply can rupture on it's own depending on the strength of the implant and the length of time in the body. It is recommended women with the devices get them replaced roughly every ten years to avoid rupture.

5.) Infection. This is one of the risks that can occur directly after the augmentation surgery. Infection of the surgical area may occur.

6.) Loss of feeling around the nipple and areola. This can especially be a frequent occurrence with women who choose areolar entry for the implant due to possible nerve damage(the implant is actually inserted through the nipple).

7.) The implant may interfere with the detection of breast cancer, and also can interfer with breast feeding, depending on the technique used to perform the operation.

There you have it. These are the most common risks and unpleasantries involved with surgical breast augmentations. If you want larger breasts, but don't find the prospect of these possible risks particularly inviting, there are other natural options for you to pursue that are effective and are 100% you.