PIERCING CARE INSTRUCTIONS

These suggestions are based on our experience. By no means are these to replace a doctors instructions. If any serious problems were to ever occur, consult your family doctor immediately. Lifestyle Tattoo takes every step to ensure the health of our staff and customers.

1. NEVER handle a new piercing with dirty hands! Wash hands and fingertips well.

2. Avoid any introduction of foreign bodily fluid to the area (sweat, blood, saliva, etc.).

3. Do not harass the piercing's healing process by wearing constrictive clothing or allowing repeated bumping and knocking around the jewelry.

4. Use caution when swimming during healing; poor water quality and high bacteria presence will infect your new piercing. Some people will run Vaseline or Neosporin liberally through the hole prior to a swim in order to seal off the exposed tissue temporarily. In this case, soak well with salt water and clean immediately afterwards.

5. Listen to your body's reactions to various products. Some ingredients commonly found in skin care products can irritate the vulnerable tissue in new piercing's. Eliminating variables in product exposure will often solve occasional irritation.

6. ALL new piercing's will secrete a gooey, sticky fluid called lymph. This will dry up and form a ring of crust on the jewelry at the piercing's holes, making moving the jewelry painful. Soaking and cleaning this lymph DAILY (or as the build-up requires) is necessary to avoid any problems with bacteria populations.

7. Don't remove the jewelry until well after the piercing is completely healed.
8. Once healed, a piercing is permanent, although when the jewelry is removed, the displacement will cause the hole to shrink, making jewelry reinsertion difficult without first gently stretching the hole back up to size.

9. New piercing's heal the best when the aftercare products do not interfere with the cell regeneration process. Products like ALCOHOL and PEROXIDE are not recommended as they often harass the newly-healing cells. Salt water is by far the least-reactive and most effective cleaning solution. Bacitracin Zinc is one of the best antibiotic ointments. Some people have also successfully used Bactine, Betadine, Hibiclens, Benzalkonium Chloride, Campho Phenique, and D-Alpha Vitamin E oil as part of their cleaning regimen. No product is universally good for all types of skin, except salt water.

10. If an irritation persists despite eliminating product types, a metal allergy may be the culprit. Try changing the jewelry with the help of a piercing professional.