Can I still workout with an infected belly button piercing?

Question

I am a cross country runner and I just got my belly button pierced last week. It got infected after I had a race on Friday. I always do situps and pushups in the morning. Can I still do this if my piercing is infected? I clean my belly 3-4times a day with an antibacterial liquid soap. I clean it after every run and workout. But now it is infected. I have redness around the top part of my bar.

Answer 1

you should have received something like this after you got your piercing:

Aftercare Instructions

1. You must clean your belly button 3-5 times daily with: Bactine, anti-bacterial soap, or ear-care solution. Make sure you rinse off all the soap.

2. Salt water really helps, so buy non-iodized sea salt and put about 1/2 tsp in 1/4 cup of cooled boiled water. Put this in a shot glass or small medicinal cup and bend over. Place it over your navel and lay down and kill 15 minutes.  This helps the healing process and will get rid of any pending infections.

3. Avoid swimming pools and spas. If you must, be sure to clean your navel immediately afterwards with the cleaning solution.

4. Don't mess around with it! Do not move it around or turn your belly button to look at it. If you want to see it, look in a mirror.

5. Don't touch with dirty hands!

6. Don't let people touch it, or l**k it. (Ew!)

do you know for sure that it's infected? redness around the bar is quite normal for any piercing... it could be simple irritation.  if it's infected there would be discharge (puss) along with the redness.

after you clean the piercing and it's dry, you could  apply some triple antibiotic ointment (neosporen, bacitracin or any generic brand) again with a q-tip so you get close enough.  

as far as the work out, you should be fine.  situps work out you ab area obviously, which is where your piercing is located.  so that may cause a little more irritation. belly button piercings are famous for taking a long time to completely heal.  It takes about 3-9 months for a navel piercing to heal.

I hope this helps.  

Answer 2

Exercise during healing is fine, just “listen” to your body. Try to avoid activities that put undue stress on the area. Your own sweat and bodily fluids are not harmful to your piercing, provided you clean daily as directed.

Answer 3

If you sweat during push-ups and sit-ups or the weather is extremely humid this might cause your infection to get worse.  If you clean your infection on a regular basis then I dont think you have to worry about sweating.  Some people take one shower a day or even less.  They hardly clean themselves when necessary and they are the ones that should worry.

Answer 4

Okay if the liquid soap you are using is fragranced in any way (even if it says it's antibacterial) that is most likely the cause of your infection.

Fragranced soaps are VERY irritating.

Try using Dial Unscented antibacterial bar soap, but only once per day in the shower.

Soap can be a little too harsh if used too often, and once a day should be plenty.

What you should be cleaning it with 3-4 times per day is sea salt water.

All you need is about one half teaspoon of sea salt (not table salt) dissolved in one full drinking glass of warm water, soak a cotton ball in the solution and soak for about 2 minutes about 3 times per day.

It's much less irritating.

And the race may have contributed to it as well because sweat can irritate fresh piercings also.

Try using a peice of gauze (you know, the little squares of white puffy cotton type stuff you can get in the bandaid isle?) over your piercing and tape it down on the sides. This will soak up any sweat that could drip into your piercing and since they come already sterile in their package you shouldn't have to worry about germs on those. Just use a fresh one every time you run.