Rejection: How it Happens, Why it Happens, and How to Prevent it!

I’m scared my piercing might be rejecting. This is something we hear quite often from clients, and while rejection is a real fear, it’s also less common than many folks realize. Today, lets look at rejection. How it works, what causes it, and what to look for if your piercing really is rejecting! To start, what exactly is rejection. Well, a piercing is a foreign object trapped inside a wound. The body has a few choices to make- it can either encapsulate the object in scar tissue, called a fistula, and create a permanent pathway for the jewelry. Or, it can attempt to push the foreign object out, like a splinter in your hand. Rejection is when the body is successful at pushing the foreign object out. Rejection is possible on any body piercing, but tends to be more common on anything that could be considered a surface piercing, or piercings that pass through softer, more fragile tissue. Rejection is most common with surface piercings, microdermals, eyebrows, navels, and nipples, and less common but still possible with all other piercings, including cartilage and lobe piercings.

Rejection has a few key signs, unique to other forms of irritation. To start, you’ll notice the tissue over the jewelry getting thinner and thinner. Usually, this is accompanied by irritation bumps which form, scab up, exfoliate off, and reform again. Each time they crop back up, the skin over the piercing is a little thinner, and a little thinner. Many times the edge of a piercing will have a V shape rather than a C shape, where you can see the thinning point. Just having irritation bumps does not necessarily mean a piercing is rejecting however. Irritations can be caused for all sorts of reasons, from catching or snagging, sleeping, low quality jewelry. You name it! Bumps alone don’t mean rejection. The main factor for rejection to be happening is the gradual migration of jewelry outwards. If that’s not happening, you don’t have to stress rejection. So relax, don’t panic. If you just got makeup in your nostril piercing and you have a little bump, its 99.9% not rejecting, just grumpy, and you’ll be fine.