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Can Boogers Hurt a Nose Piercing?

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None of your bodily fluids – including your boogers – pose as an infection risk for your healing piercing. But they are a pain to deal with! While your boogers won’t hurt your piercing, they can create a very uncomfortable feeling. As we all know, you shouldn’t touch a heeling piercing, so removing your boogers can’t be done the way you normally might. Instead, you should blow bubbles into a sea salt solution to loosen them up and they will come out on their own.

Can Boogers Infect a Nostril Piercing?

All of your bodily fluids are sterile to you, which mean they can not give you an infection. This includes saliva, sweat, mucus, blood, genital secretions, and urine. Anything that comes out of your own body will not make you sick or cause an infection. Although it is important to remember that other people’s bodily fluids can still give you an infection. For this reason, you will need to take a break from kissing and other sexual acts if you are healing an oral or genital piercing.

So in short, no, you don’t need to worry about your boogers infecting your nose piercings.

Can a Booger Get Stuck in Your Nose Piercing?

Just like you might get crust on your piercing, you may get boogers on your piercing. If your jewelry turns, it’s possible for the booger stuck to your jewelry to be twisted inside your piercing. This can hurt your piercing because the small bumps from the hard crust will tear at your piercing. The small tears could cause an irritation bump, which are painful and will delay healing. This is why it’s so important to never touch your piercing. The safest way to get rid of these boogers is a sea salt soak, which will loosen up the crust and over time it will remove itself.

Will Blowing Your Nose Affect Your Nose Piercing?

Blowing your nose may hurt a healing piercing, depending on how you blow. Touching your nostrils may be especially painful and could even hinder the healing process. The best way to blow your nose with a piercing is to hold your tissue gently against the end of your nose and simply blow into it. Do not attempt to squeeze your nostrils at any point in the blowing process. If you blow your nose without touching your piercing it will not affect your piercing whatsoever. Although the act of blowing your nose may still cause a soreness if done early in the healing period.

How to Deal With Boogers and a Nose Piercing

If you’re a nose picker, you won’t be with a healing nose piercing. It will hurt to attempt to stretch your nostril enough to fit your finger inside. The best way to deal with boogers while you have a healing nose piercing is to fill a bowl with sea salt solution and put your nose inside to let it soak. If you can blow bubbles into the solution, it will help jostle up the hard boogers so they can come out on their own. This is the best and safest way – to simply allow them to come out on their own through soaks.

We generally don’t recommend using q-tips near a healing piercing because the fibers can become unwound and cling to your jewelry, which may cause a fiber to go inside your piercing. This could cause an infection or at the very least, an eternal irritation bump. However, we understand some people go a bit crazy with the feeling of boogers in their nose. If you need to use q-tips, find a brand with very tightly wound cotton and gently prod at the boogers after you’ve soaked them. You can even dip the q-tips in the solution so it’s not as dry and irritating.

Conclusion

In general, you don’t need to worry about boogers hurting your piercing. Your own boogers can not give you an infection. While a booger getting inside your piercing would hurt, it will eventually come out on its own and can only get inside if your jewelry is bumped. To safely blow your nose with a healing piercing, don’t touch your nostrils and simply blow into a tissue held at the end of your nose. To safely remove boogers from your nose without picking, blow bubbles into a sea salt solution to loosen them up.