WKOW 27: Madison, WI Breaking News, Weather and SportsBody piercings freeze flesh faster

Body piercings freeze flesh faster

By Bob Schaper

ROCKFORD (WREX) - When the temperature dips below freezing we all have to watch out for frostbite. But doctors say that's especially true for people with body piercings.

Remember the scene in "A Christmas Story," when the kid gets his tongue stuck on a freezing light post? Imagine having a freezing piece of metal inside your skin.

"The metal pretty much amplifies the cold," says piercing aficionado Jay Pratt. "It's so cold that the piercing pretty much freezes up and literally starts stinging the skin so bad it's almost unbearable."

That's not surprising, says Dr. John Underwood, medical director of SwedishAmerican Hospital's emergency room. He says metal body jewelry definitely increases the risk of frostbite.

"Metal's a great conductor of temperature," he says. "It'll actually decrease the temperature in that tissue much more quickly."

And then there's the problem of blood flow.

"If we jam a piece of metal through our skin we obviously disrupt some of the circulation in there," Underwood says.

Besides the pain, there are other signs of frostbite.

"The first thing you're going to see is a color change around that piercing," Underwood says. "It's going to look white, it's going to look dead around that piercing."

And if you let it get worse, Underwood says it will worsen until tissue loss occurs.

"And the piercing will fall out, too," he says.

But injury prevention is simple says one local piercing artist.

"Generally people do pierce extremities, like nose and ears and such, so generally we keep people covering themselves up in the winter," says Marissa Best, of Dreamline Tattoo. "It's the Midwest."

Underwood says the best treatment for mild frostbite is to soak the affected area in bath water between 102 and 104 degrees.