My wife had her tongue pierced, and wore a stud for about 4 years. She took out the stud about a year ago.
She is considering redoing it. She is of the opinion that since if done properly, a tongue piercing removes a cylinder of meat from the tongue, the healing is really just the “skin” of the tongue healing over a hole on the top and bottom.
Thus, if she just pushes the stud through the thin membrane, she’ll be fine.
I disagree with this, but haven’t been able to find a good source for my theory that the scar tissue grows together, filling that void and making your tongue whole again.
As to the biology of it, I’m not sure. But I’ve done the same thing, had a tongue piercing that I didn’t wear anything in for a long time. The hole was still there but there was a tiny bit I had to ‘push through’ in the center. I haven’t had any problems from it.
There is no void, piercing, when done properly removes no tissue (other than blood). Tissue is just forced apart to form the hole. When it heals, scar closes it. Faults or flaws could remain behind, making it easier to tear open again than surrounding flesh.
I know, I’ve cut enough holes in people, then put them back together, or watched them close up by secondary intent.
Really? Several of the piercers I spoke with when I was thinking of getting my nipples done insisted that their piercing needles (lancets, I guess) were hollow tubes, much like an injection needle writ large.
I used to be a professional piercer. As the good Doc says there is no flesh removed in a standard piercing. The needle merely pushes it aside as it goes through.
I would not advise trying to simply push a rod through the existing scar tissue. It’s going to be both painful and, imo, dangerous. Get thee to a professional piercer, it needs to be redone properly.
I don’t believe this. If true, why don’t I have a raised “donut” on my ears where I pierced them myself? I also know with 100% certainty that when I had my tongue pierced that they didn’t use a hollow needle and there was no “plug” removed from my tongue.
I can’t speak to your experiences since I wasn’t there, but I used to work with a piercer back in the old days (about 15-20 years ago) when it was common to clean the needles and autoclave them for re-use. Part of the cleaning was to take a wire and poke out the tissue from the needle’s bore. (ick!) Happily, needles are considered single-use now.
I can also offer cites from professional sources such as this 2004 article from RN Web
(bolding mine)
If you have access to medical journals, there are lots of articles that discuss piercing and the core of tissue that gets removed.
And, even patentsfor piercing equipment describe removing tissue:
Tristan, she might try asking for advice here. These people really helped me out dealing with the hypertrophic scar I had on my nose piercing a while ago.
Mine was pierced with a hollow needle. There was, indeed, tissue in the needle after the piercing. My friend who went with me kept freaking out about it.
Well, color me surprised then. The hollow needles I’d seen used for these purposes were not of the type that cut cleanly around the circumference to remove tissue; that was left for a punch biopsy tool if such a tissue sample was needed. Instead they used the bevel edge to cut the groove, and the rest of the needle spread it apart far enough so it didn’t spring back together, sort of similar to a triangle knife: Make a big hole that didn’t close up right away.
And any tissue in the needle tended to be blood and blood products that had clotted.