So, I was thinking about the talk earlier about some of the physical risks of stretched earlobes and I thought maybe I should bring the things that are real concerns for people with stretched lobes to get rid of some of the assumptions and give you new reasons to be horrified.
So, as mentioned before, catching your lobes on things isn't really a big concern for most. Clearly the larger you've stretched, the bigger the possibility, but as anyone with them can tell you, they basically become extensions of your mental self. You're pretty much always know where they are and they're not really at much risk. It happens, but outside of something like a car crash it's rare. Of course in those cases your ears are not really of much concern because they're not what's causing you to bleed out and die like your other injuries. The real problems tend to come from bad stretching practices and weather related conditions.
So, the most common issue with stretching poorly tends to be micro-tears and normal tearing of the earlobe's fistula (aka the skin tunnel in the piercing). These tears can not only lead to infection, but can also lead to hypertrophic scarring (which makes future stretching more difficult and can cause what's referred to as
catbutt in piercings),
blowouts (
Example 2) (scar tissue that has stretched a bit out the back of the lobe), or even
cartilage collapse. The general rule is to wait 1 - 3 months between stretches and never use acrylic, organics (such as wood) or silicone to stretch with. Acrylic and most organics are porous, so there's no way to properly sanitize them and wood tends to be a bit 'sticky', for lack of a better word. It kind of latches onto skin due to how porous it is. With healed ears, this is not an issue at all and actually does a good job of making them less likely to come out at inconvenient times. While stretching, it just increases your chance of tearing, harboring bacteria in the pores and getting an infection.
Silicone is a terrible thing to stretch with for a hell of a lot of reasons. Silicone eyelets are incredibly comfortable to wear, but they tend to draw the moisture out of the lobe pretty quickly so you have to have a pretty strict oiling regime to wear them regularly. There's also the issue that some poeple think they're clever and put the next size up in to stretch with. It sounds good on paper, but it's asking for problems. Almost guaranteed tearing, dryness, yada yada yada. Some people can pull it off, but there's always going to be someone who can heal just about anything stupid they try to do to their body.
The other big issue is something called 'thinning lobes'. This can happen when you stretch too quickly and the fistula and lobe doesn't have time to heal inbetween stretches, or even because of badly placed piercings. It's basically exactly like it sounds. A spot in the lobe is noticeably thinner than the rest, and when you stretch, it's the easiest place for the lobe to stretch, so it keeps getting a little bit thinner every time you go up a size until it's at a point where it can cause real problems. At the worst points it can snap or that area of the lobe can lose enough circulation that it goes necrotic. It's just the earlobe so it's not typically a major problem health wise, but it's incredibly gross and easily avoidable. No reason you should have to have your earlobe repaired or removed because you're an impatient jackass.
There's also a much rarer occurrence called Keloid scarring. Now, people will commonly call things like piercing bumps keloids, but they're wrong. Keloids are a type of scar tissue that has grown out of control, like
here and
here. There are much more extreme examples, but you get the idea. It's a type of scarring that is pretty rare in general, but is much more common in ethnicities with darker skin tones. They can only really be treated with surgical removal and/or steroids and aren't unique to piercings.
If you're careful, patient and make absolutely certain the jewelry you're using to stretch is the right size, and that it's good quality, there's not a lot of problems you should run into. Shit happens sometimes, but it's easily minimized. Now onto weather related issues!
This is something where it's mostly just those of us who have larger sized piercings need to worry about. Lobes are the biggest concern here, so I'll stick with them. Since the lobes have a much smaller surface area in any specific location after stretching, they tend to burn and freeze much easier than normal. The biggest concern for this is for those of us in a goddamn winter fuckery location. During the winter, we need to do several things to avoid possible frostbite on the lobes. These can include the normal stuff like wearing a hat or muffs that cover them (though our options are a lot more limited there) and wearing non-metal jewelry, preferably wood. Steel and Titanium jewelry runs a pretty big risk of getting damn cold and speeding up frostbite if you're not careful, so it's best to just not wear it during the cold season. Glass can also do so, but not quite as badly. Wood on the other hand, is a great insulator and will help keep your lobes warm. It's basically perfect for cold weather.
I think everyone here knows what can happen with frostbitten limbs, and it's no different for the earlobes. Once again, it's not likely to be a horrible life threatening experience because it's just your earlobes, but it's still pretty damn shitty.
So yeah, those are the real concerns with stretched piercings and lobes. It's pretty easy to avoid most of it, but things do happen and there are definitely stupid people out there.