Have you ever been under stress or anxiety? I’m sure you experience it at least once in your life. As for me, stress and anxiety come whenever I have too much on my plate or something unpleasant happens. You might once think about a perfect therapy to soothe yourself from anxiety or stress, such as yoga or sitting meditation. But besides these therapies, you can also opt for daith piercing for anxiety treatment.
There are various types of ear piercing and tattoos, each of which brings both aesthetic values and medical benefits. Some popular types of ear piercing are daith piercing for anxiety treatment, shen men piercing, conch piercing for chronic pain alleviation, and tragus piercing as a weight loss method. So, what is the truth behind these types of piercing? Let’s get into it.
Table of Contents
The Ear Piercing Myths & Beliefs
As a matter of fact, ear piercing is the most common type of piercing. To conduct ear piercing, you can use a sharp tool to make a tiny hole in one’s ear, then fasten a piece of jewelry to the hole as a decoration. When it comes to ear piercing, people usually think of the piercing in the earlobe. However, it is not the only point that can get pierced in your ears. Ear piercing can be applied to daith, tragus, conch, or rook as well.
Ear piercing originates from ancient Indian customs and traditions. People also refer to it with the term “Karna Vedha”. Conventionally, 6-to-7-month babies first get pierced by their father for the sake of their safety and aesthetic values. Based on Hinduism, Karna Vedha symbolizes marks of various stages in one’s life. Also, it constitutes India’s rich cultural heritage.
Points in human’s ear for ear piercing – Source: freepik
In general, most people perceive ear piercing as a way of beautifying or becoming more stylish. Meanwhile, just a few people know about its rumored health benefits like daith piercing for anxiety treatment, although these benefits have not been scientifically proven yet.
Some people assume that ear or bottom belly piercing can exert a placebo effect on us. Specifically, a placebo effect occurs when patients of an illness get well or recover just because they think they are being cured. In this case, it means ear piercing may give illness sufferers peace of mind, thus accelerating their recovery.
Up to now, there has been no irrefutable scientific proof of how ear-piercing works as a therapy yet. However, it still appears to become more and more popular and trendy. Many believe that ear piercing stimulates our nervous system, thereby making positive changes to one’s health.
Daith Piercing for Anxiety Treatment
As a common type of ear piercing, daith piercing (pronounced /deɪθ/) is conducted by using a 16g or 14g needle to pierce through the thickest part of human ear cartilage.
Now, touch your ear with your finger and feel the crux of the helix – the thickest inner cartilage fold that is horizontally located in the center of your ear helix. It’s where daith piercing will be. That position has a curved shape, so it requires piercers to be highly-skilled at piercing.
Daith Piercing – Source: amazon
Daith piercing for anxiety relief originates from acupuncture, a Chinese traditional treatment method based on the principle of stimulating some acupuncture points in patients’ bodies to cure them. According to Chinese acupuncture, approximately 200 acupuncture points regulate the blood flow and contribute to our overall health. For daith piercing for anxiety relief, the piercing position is the acupuncture point zero in the center of human ears.
Daith piercing for anxiety treatment is to stimulate the acupuncture point zero closely linked with the vagus nerve – the tenth cranial nerve in our autonomic nervous system. This nerve plays an important role and is responsible for heart-rate regulation or perspiration. Thus, a person with daith piercing for anxiety treatment is likely to undergo positive changes regarding the relief of anxiety, to a certain extent.
However, Western medicine believers still harbor doubts about this form of therapy. They assume that migraines and anxiety are alleviated thanks to human’s natural pain relievers such as endorphins, not daith piercing.
In brief, how daith piercing for anxiety alleviation works for one’s health still remains anecdotal and controversial. But what we’re certain of is that it’s one of the most popular piercing methods these days with youngsters. It is aesthetically pleasing and is a great social media material to show on their baddie private story.
Other Piercings with Alleged Medical Effects
Shen Men Piercing For Migraines
Shen Men Piercing for Migraines – Source: Inlandacupuncture
Like daith piercing for anxiety treatment, shen men piercing is also a kind of ear piercing based on the principle of acupuncture. In terms of auriculotherapy, the Shen Men point has another name – “Divine Gate.” Shen men piercing is applied to another point located right below the top curve of our ear helix, in the upper-middle ear.
According to traditional Chinese acupuncture, we can call Shenmen as the stress-relieving point. It’s alleged to be in charge of ensuring the smooth energy flow in our body and alleviating migraines as well as other migraine-associated nausea. Therefore, some people opt for shen men piercing, claiming that they’ll be free from migraines.
Remarkably, despite no scientific confirmation, a number of people still believe in Shen Men piercing for migraines. They argue that using medicines to treat migraine pain for a long time may harm their health. Moreover, since shen men piercing can stimulate the vagus nerve permanently, those suffering from migraines or anxiety no longer have to receive regular treatments that are costly and time-consuming.
In a nutshell, shen men piercing makes people look cool and may offer health benefits for those suffering from migraines. More importantly, it doesn’t cause much pain since the piercing is at the ear helix instead of the helix crux.
Conch Piercing For Chronic Pain
Conch Piercing – Source: cosmopolitan
Apart from the above piercings, conch piercing for chronic pain alleviation is also popular. Many people choose this method since they hope it’ll ease their chronic pain as much as possible.
The conch is at the middle of human ear cartilage, resembling a conch shell’s spiral shape. People often choose to apply it either on the higher ear fold (which looks great with studs) or the lower ear fold (which is suitable for hoops).
To pierce your conch, the piercer will move the needle through a hard plate of your ear cartilage, the hardest part of your ear. As a consequence, those getting this type of piercing may have to sustain pain.
Conch piercing may help alleviate both chronic and acute pain. It has become popular and trendy among young people. However, similar to shen men and daith piercings, whether conch piercing for chronic pain relief is effective or not still depends much on personal experiences.
Tragus Piercing For Weight Loss
Your tragus is located above your ear canal and below your daith point. Rumor has it that the tragus piercing can help people take the edge off their appetites, hence losing weight. Nonetheless, this piercing should be combined with an appropriate diet or exercise to achieve desirable outcomes.
Tragus Piercing – Source: cosmopolitan
When it comes to tragus piercing, people commonly get pierced in only one ear. In terms of piercing position, if you want to try tragus piercing, there will be more than one option.
- Standard tragus piercing: This piercing passes through your tragus from the outside to the inside. Only one end of the jewel appears on your tragus.
- The vertical tragus piercing (a.k.a surface tragus piercing): Instead of going through your ear cartilage, this piercing is just applied to the top of your ear skin. This way, the jewels’ two ends emerge on your tragus.
- Double tragus piercing: It’s similar to the standard tragus piercing, but the number of jewels is more, usually 2 or 3.
In general, like daith piercing for anxiety treatment, tragus piercing is becoming increasingly popular despite its unproven health benefits. Notably, though more women than men opted for tragus piercing in the past, the number of men getting tragus pierced is increasing recently. In fact, men began to be curious about their appearances and the rumored health benefits of tragus piercing.
Pain and Healing Time for Daith Piercing
Not only piercing but also anything related to a needle causes people to be nervous or even obsessive. The level of pain you have to tolerate for ear piercing varies. In general, daith piercing is a little more painful than that of other kinds of piercing, like shen men piercing.
The table below shows a nonscientific pain level of common ear piercings on a 1-10 scale, with 10 as the most hurting.
The pain level of common ear piercings. Source: Healthline
The healing time varies from person to person depending on the kinds of piercing, each person’s health condition and immune system. For example, if you decide to have daith piercing for anxiety treatment, it would take you approximately 3-12 months to heal the wound left by the piercing. Also, how long it takes the wound to be healed is greatly influenced by how you take care of it.
Aftercare for Daith Piercing
Aftercare is essential to protect yourself against the potential risks ear piercings may pose. Also, great aftercare can help accelerate the healing process.
During the healing process, you need to keep the wound clean to prevent it from infection. To get rid of bacteria, the primary cause of infection, you should clean the pierced point with a high-quality medical wound wash twice per day.
Moreover, avoid touching the wound as much as possible and wait for it to heal naturally. It’s also necessary to keep your bedding and bathing utensils clean. For instance, you can wash your pillowcases and towels regularly. Besides, you shouldn’t let your hair touch the wound because it will slow down the healing process. In a nutshell, you should keep your wound and surrounding environment sanitary.
Disinfection after getting pierced – Source: piercee
For any problem related to the wound after piercing, don’t hesitate to contact your piercer or see your doctor as soon as possible. Also, to minimize the risk of piercing, you’d better select a reputable and reliable piercing center to have your ear pierced.
For further reference, you can watch this detailed video: How to care for pierced ears. Source: Youtube
The Final Thought
All in all, you can get health benefits with piercing methods such as daith piercing for anxiety, shen men piercing, conch piercing for chronic pain relief, or tragus piercing, etc. However, when you go for one of these piercings, make sure that you’ve got an insight into its effects and understand how to aftercare it. Also, you should go to a reputable and highly-skilled piercer instead of piercing your ear at home. Hope that you’ll be satisfied with your new look when piercing.