Pierced ears continually getting infected (WITHOUT PICS!)

[pepperminttaste]

No pics please. I'll boak.

I've haven't worn earrings for at least ten years. Some of the holes have closed up but the first 2 and a 3rd on one side have stayed open. Fine.

However, over the last few months the holes (on one side mostly) keep getting infected. They get red and sore and sticky. Then a few days later, the same thing happens again. I started making a point of cleaning my earlobes with soap in the shower but it doesn't seem to make a difference.

I don't think I can get earrings in either. I'm sure I really struggled the last time I tried.

Any suggestions?

Don't clean with soap, clean with salty water a couple of times a day.

Get a saline solution. You can buy piercing one or make your own.

Perhaps a visit to a piercing salon or tattooist for a bottle of the cleaning fluid they sell when piercing ears and try using that regularly; alternatively, when I was a kid, we used surgical spirit to clean ness was piercings twice a day, that may dry them up.

God, that's so obvious. Why didn't I think of salt water?!

Thanks so much.