How can I wear earrings again?

July 15, 2015 9:21 PM

I got my ears pierced more than 20 years ago. Within the last two years or so, every time I wear earrings, they start bothering me after six hours or so. When I take them out, the area around the piercing is swollen and hard but does not hurt if I push at it, and the actual piercing may have a bit of dried blood. Because of this, I haven't been wearing earrings more often than once every two or three weeks, so that may be contributing to the bleeding (I often have to poke and prod a bit to open the pierced hole all the way to get an earring through). What should I do to be able to wear earrings regularly again?

I have tried, halfheartedly, putting some Neosporin on the earring posts and it hasn't seemed to help much. I have earrings with stainless steel posts, with gold posts, and with silver posts; the stainless steel are my most "everyday" earrings and so the ones I've tried the most. Before this all happened, I had no problem wearing earrings all day long, almost every day.

posted by jaguar to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (29 answers total)

Best answer: You gotta get through it man! You're basically going through the healing process all over again. Also see if you can find some continuous hoops or studs that you could wear constantly it will help. (Maybe these?) Otherwise you're just closing and reopening a wound.

You basically have to treat them as if they are fresh piercings. (Which means it's best to not switch them out at all for 4 to 6 weeks) A saltwater rinse will help with keeping them clean while they goop up.

My second piercings do the same thing if I don't wear earrings in them regularly and it took a few months to train them to be useful again. I didn't have as severe of issues as you're having which is why I recommend wearing earrings in them and not switching them out.
posted by Crystalinne at 9:31 PM on July 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

A Dermatologist told me, Neosporin bad, Triple Antibiotic ointment good. He said sometimes people.react to Neo by shedding the skin in the area. Little hoops good.
posted by Oyéah at 9:34 PM on July 15, 2015

Response by poster: A Dermatologist told me, Neosporin bad, Triple Antibiotic ointment good.

I think I actually have a generic triple-antibiotic ointment, but I'll double-check.
posted by jaguar at 9:36 PM on July 15, 2015

Best answer: You might have developed a nickel allergy. (A lot of stainless steel has nickel in it, unless it's surgical grade, and there might be some nickel in the gold and silver earring posts as well.) I have that, and can only get away with wearing solid gold earrings (unfortunately, would love to wear funner stuff). Maybe try wearing just 14k or 18k gold earrings for a while to test it out?
posted by cotton dress sock at 9:36 PM on July 15, 2015 [24 favorites]

It sounds like you've somehow damaged the skin on the inside of the piercing at some point and haven't allowed it enough time to heal properly. Alternatively you may have developed a sensitivity to something in the jewellery (maybe nickel). Each time you shove an earring through you're aggravating it again and going back to square one.

You need to get the skin tube through the piercing to heal up properly, to do this you need a more inert metal and time.

Go to a decent piercing studio and get narrow titanium rings. Titanium is much better for healing than "surgical" stainless steel which still has nickel in it. Put them in and leave them in for at least a month, preferably six weeks. Don't put anything on them besides rinsing any crap off them in the shower and giving them a little swivel through the skin to get any gunk out (that's why you're getting rings, they're easier to swivel around through the skin). Most importantly keep your hands off - the healing will be slightly itchy but don't scratch!.

If it was a tear then once the skin tube is healed then they should be fine forever unless you tear it again. If they start to act up when you put your old jewellery in then just abandon any metals going through your skin apart from titanium.
posted by coleboptera at 9:51 PM on July 15, 2015 [9 favorites]

I can only wear 14k or sterling earrings. Stainless steel earrings of any sort leave me with scabbed, painful piercings. I've had my ears pierced for 10 years, and it's been like this the whole time.
posted by purpleclover at 9:53 PM on July 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Best answer: If you have a (or more than one!) good body piercing shop where you are, I would go ask them. They will almost surely be able to advise you how to get your ears earring-ready again, and with what jewelry. Here in SF, we like Body Manipulations.
posted by rtha at 9:55 PM on July 15, 2015

From what I've been told by various doctors, straight vaseline is apparently preferable than any antibiotic ointment, but if you are convinced you need extra measures then bacitracin ointment is okay.

My parents had my ears pierced when I was 8 and I was able to wear earrings until about 15. After that, no matter what the earrings were made out of (silver/gold would just be a bit slower) they irritated my ears horribly. I haven't worn earrings in over a decade.
posted by vegartanipla at 9:59 PM on July 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

This sounds exactly like nickel allergy behavior to me. You're going to have to make really sure that you're using nickel-free posts. (Like, go out and buy some specifically nickel-free earrings and see how it goes.) I wear dangly earrings only pretty much at this point because stick posts jammed right up tight on my ear give me reactions like yours pretty quickly as well. They seem to need to breathe some. When I get another infection I stop wearing earrings for a few days to a week and swab them with peroxide until it goes away.

I really had a reaction like yours when I hardly wore any earrings for about a year. You probably want to wear some at least maybe once a week to make sure you don't uh...lose immunity or whatever the hell happened to me.

Might I recommend looking for niobium jewelry? Definitely nickel-free and it's RAINBOW and light on top of that.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:05 PM on July 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Not being a earring wearing, I suspect you've developed some sort of allergy to the earring. Vaseline (i.e. petroleum jelly) seem to be a good lubricant for that, and may delay the onset of the allergy. Other than that, maybe you need to find jewelry made of other metals.
posted by kschang at 11:06 PM on July 15, 2015

That's exactly what happened to me when I developed a sensitivity to nickel. I buy nickel-free earrings and replacement parts (posts, hoops, clasps, etc) at Simply Whispers. The styles are not very sophisticated, but my ears are much happier.
posted by islandeady at 11:12 PM on July 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

I have a nickel allergy and you're describing exactly what happens when I try different earrings. Nickel can be pretty much anywhere, in any metal alloy, it can even just rub off one pair of earrings on to yours at some point and still cause problems. So personally I'd buy guaranteed-nickel-free earrings and try those.

My husband has really fat earlobes and you're also describing what happened to him at one point when his earring was too tight and the skin got damaged and the hole wasn't able to heal. He wore one of my hoop earrings for several weeks and it healed, and he's back to the tighter bullet earring again without trouble. So you could just be dealing with general mechanical irritation rather than an allergy or infection.

So personally I'd actually buy small guaranteed-nickel-free sleeper hoops and try those for a while. Mine are silver but they're not sterling (that has nickel) but some other alloy. The benefit is no clasp on the back pushing in to your ear but still holding the hole open. Once yours are healed you can try different metals and styles again and figure out what you can tolerate from there.
posted by shelleycat at 11:45 PM on July 15, 2015

Seconding jenfullmoon - Niobium is a great alternative to Titanium. A decent piercing studio will have both.
posted by coleboptera at 1:02 AM on July 16, 2015

I, too, have a nickel allergy, and this describes what happens to me when I wear earrings with nickel in them. I had to have my ears pierced three times before I noticed the pattern, and once I switched to nickel-free ones they healed.
posted by toerinishuman at 1:37 AM on July 16, 2015

- Into a bowl of warm water add a heaped teaspoon of table salt and stir.

- Use cotton wool balls dipped in the salty water to gently wipe both ears, back and front.

- Repeat 2 or 3 times daily for soothing relief and a return to being able to wear your earrings of choice.
posted by humph at 3:13 AM on July 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Go to a decent piercing studio

This is what I did a few years ago. I went to a piercing studio and a guy ran a needle through my already-pierced-but-slightly-closed-up-and-problematic ear holes. I wore a set of surgical steel hoops for a couple months and just left them in and did all the aftercare (sea salt washes) you're supposed to do with a new piercing. Now they're right as rain and can take even the abuse of cheap kitschy earrings from China.

It sounds to me like you're in the same place. You don't wear earrings often enough for your ear holes to properly heal so every time you put a pair in you're aggravating them. Take it to a pro!
posted by phunniemee at 5:57 AM on July 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

This sounds like me. I second humph on the idea to use a mild saline solution to clean your ears and speed healing. But for me, titanium earrings are pretty much the only thing I can wear. I can wear some surgical stainless, from a piercing studio, but even the fashion earrings that advertise having stainless steel posts irritate my ears.

I have some cute titanium earrings from Blomdahl that I purchased on Amazon. They also sell titanium earring hooks so you can attach your existing dangly earrings to new hooks that won't bother your ears.

I have never been able to wear earrings for more than a day, and then had to wait a week or two in between wearings for them to heal. I have a pair of Blomdahl titanium sleepers in that have been there for probably a year or two now with absolutely no issues.
posted by thejanna at 6:01 AM on July 16, 2015

I have exactly this problem intermittently. I've gotten captive bead hoop earrings in stainless, titanium, niobium and gold over the years (the gold ones are from before gold prices went nuts; they were $65 and I thought that was a lot). Basically, when my ears are acting up I wear the captive bead ones day and night for a few weeks. I clean with alcohol occasionally.

Here are some teal captives from Body Artforms, which is a very reliable seller - I've bought all kinds of things from the quite cheap to the relatively expensive from them over the years. If you look through all five pages of their 16-18g captive bead jewelry (ie, a gauge that will fit standard piercings, you'll see that they have all kinds of variants on the standard piercing hoop, some fairly dressy and some very fancy/expensive.

Even as I type, I am wearing copper-colored niobium earrings from them precisely to deal with one grumpy piercing.
posted by Frowner at 6:49 AM on July 16, 2015

Hydrogen peroxide swabs for those infected earlobes.
posted by Carol Anne at 6:54 AM on July 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Another nickel allergy here, saying this sounds all too familiar. The only solution I've found is hoops that I put in and leave there. I've had these gold hoops in for two or three years. The hoops I got from a professional piercing shop worked, too, for several years, but I had to take them out for some dental x-rays or some such and couldn't get them fastened again.

So it's not just my nickel allergy; it's the changing that also sets the reaction off.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:07 AM on July 16, 2015

Definite metal allergy. I followed this exact trajectory and was half convinced that I was going to have to have my ears re-pierced.

I got a pair of ball studs from Sensitively Yours, which specializes in earrings for sensitive ears. The backs are large and snap in firmly enough that they're quite comfortable to sleep in, and I just wear them all the time. They were quite inexpensive and 100% worth it.

The posts and backs are surgical stainless steel. I put them in and have never had one bit of a problem since.
posted by telepanda at 7:17 AM on July 16, 2015

My sister had a near impossible time healing after she first got her piercing, even with the hypoallergenic posts. I think it was because once she got irritated she started reacting to almost everything, which caused infection, which meant the holes would start to sort of heal closed without something in them, but having something in them irritated them. My mom eventually threaded her ears with surgical suture (looked like black hoops) and after the irritation/infection cleared, went back to surgical steel posts for a while. Now just basic hypoallergenic stuff works for her.

So if switching to some of the suggested metals doesn't fix it, may be worth getting a suture kit.
posted by ghost phoneme at 7:20 AM on July 16, 2015

This sounds like a combination of nickel allergy and healing over to me. I've got both problems, and I've dealt with them by cutting (and filing the cut ends. Seriously, file the cut ends) plastic retainers down to the thickness of my earlobe or cartiledge, and leaving them in all the time.
They happily sit there unnoticed for months at a time, until I decide to wear my earrings. I lose one a couple of times a year, but they only take a minute or two to make.
posted by Kreiger at 7:48 AM on July 16, 2015

Many dept stores and even cheap accessory stores often have a nickel-free section, so there are fashion options at low prices if you wanted to try out that theory.
posted by bizzyb at 8:33 AM on July 16, 2015

Response by poster: Thanks, all. I'll try some of the home-care remedies and then try to find a piercing shop for advice or other earrings if that doesn't work. I have some nice semi- and precious-stone jewelry that I'd like to be able to wear again, and if the choice is "Always wear one pair of surgical-grade earrings forever" versus "Let the piercings close up," I think I'd actually rather not wear earrings, but I'm hoping it doesn't come to that.
posted by jaguar at 8:54 AM on July 16, 2015

Best answer: Just to be clear again: surgical grade stainless steel has nickel in it. So does sterling silver. Even titanium and niobium can be alloyed with nickel although it's not generally done. "Hypoallergenic" can mean anything, you want something literally labelled or sold as being specifically nickel free.

I have one steel earring and two silver ones that don't contain nickel but they are all specific alloys designed for that. Given the range of metals you've tried already a gold or sliver allergy is less likely, that's why I'm focussing on the nickel (although you can be allergic to other things too). Just be aware that it's actually harder to avoid than many people seem to think.
posted by shelleycat at 9:02 AM on July 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: There can be ways around a nickel allergy to let you keep wearing your other earrings assuming that turns out to be the problem. It depends on the strength of the potential allergy, some people are fine with a bit of nickel occasionally while others react to even a wiff of it (I'm the latter).

I think that getting your ears to heal first is important because that will make any potential allergy worse. And you may not even be allergic at all once they're healed. Then, if you are, you can do things like swap out the posts/hooks of your earrings for better metals, coat them with various things (e.g. nail polish), buy plastic covers for the part going through your ears, probably other ideas. Also there is lots of really nice jewellery that is nickel free, it's a really common allergy so there is a decent market for it. So don't give up hope!
posted by shelleycat at 9:08 AM on July 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

My mom has really bad metal allergies. She coats the posts with clear nail polish every few weeks and that does the trick. Stick the earrings in a bar of soap to keep the posts up while the polish dries.
posted by Promethea at 9:14 AM on July 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Seconding titanium. It's the only thing I can wear after my pierced ears suddenly became sensitive after many years. To avoid wearing the same expensive titanium earrings over and over, I got a few pairs of titanium French hooks. So, I can basically take any inexpensive dangly earrings, remove the hooks they came with, and attach them to the titanium hooks.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:22 PM on July 16, 2015 [1 favorite]