tongue piercing

I received this message from a piercer:

Hey Elayne! I know you hear this all the time but you are amazing! I love the piercing bible and your blog is such a great resource! I have an aftercare question for you, any information you can provide would be such a help. Im a piercer and I recommend Biotene to all my clients with oral piercings, Today I did a piercing on a client who is a representative for Listerine Zero, We spent quite a while discussing the both Biotene and Listerine Zero, She told me Listerine Zero contains four different essential oils and no alcohol but can kill germs, Biotene cannot. I compared the ingredients and they share the same common main indgredients(propylene glycol, sodium benzoate, poloxamer 407 etc etc) but they have many different indgredients. She gave me a case of Listerine Zero, really nice of her, anyways before I start recommending it to clients I'd like your thoughts? My concern is since we recommend clients rinse 4-5 times a day and listerine zero has the ability to kill germs could this to irritating to a fresh piercing? Would you recommend I dilute the Listerine Zero with water to make it milder? I trust your opinion and I hope to hear back from you! thanks for reading this Elayne! M.

My reply:

I received a message from a piercee who is concerned about the size of the tongue jewelry in his new piercing:

So recently i got my tongue pierced, and ive been taking care of it rather well if i dont say so myself but something is bugging me, and i have asked my piercer and he says its fine but it still bugs me. You know how when you get your tongue pierced the ball of the barbell creates that crater? well the ball of my piercing is all the way sunken into it and i can't see it when my tongue is laying relaxed in my mouth. But i can push the piercing up and the ball will pop out of the crater just fine but will always sink in after. Now the guy who pierced my tongue said that this is fine and that my tongue is just swollen and this will go away, but for some reason the people I talked to about this ( who have their tongues pierced as well) hasnt encountered their ball sinking into their crater this badly. So im just a over worring person.Im wondering if something happened or im just that small percent of people where this happens all time and im just not aware of it.

If you can help me thank you so much !

Sam

My reply:

An article recently appeared in the Huffington Post with the headline: Tongue Piercings Could Lead to Severe Brain Infections. Clearly this was most unfortunate for the individuals who were described in the article (and their families), but these types of extreme complications are very rare. I penned a response and posted it to their site.

I just received a brief message about tongue piercing:

Hi!
A few days ago I got my tongue pierced and I am still very swollen. What can I do for that?

Thank you, Liz

I received this message from a piercer with a question about tongue piercing:

Hello Elayne,
I'm currently a body piercer in NY, I have recently returned to piercing after having been out for some time. My question is, I pierced a womans tongue over a month ago and she returned with a hard bump inside her tongue after a night of drinking she said. There doesn't appear to be any puss or leakage of any type, however, she said it is slightly tender. I have never had this situation before and I have done several tongues in the past. It is not discolored either, do you have any suggestions for this situation?..Mick