Proper cleaning and care?

[Rachidee]

It seems HiMyNameIsMegan was right! As soon as i took the steel taper out and replaced it with a titanium tunnel it was fine, stopped leaking and was almost instantly less painful :s

The salt soaks is usually 4 twists of a sea salt grinder into a cup? it seems ok so far, *touch wood*

I did lube before i stretched, why i was a bit worried was it was fine for 3-4 weeks, then it all of a sudden flared up, got hot and itchy and leaked all the time. :[

My left ear is getting quite dry so I'ma try the vitamin E oil massages, is that the best way? After the soaks i've just been using E45/Sudocrem

And yeah i've had my ears pierced since I was about 5/6, and Im 19 now (:
Im not sure I was at 1.6mm, I thought that was the standard size for a normal ear piercing, but Ive also read that 1.2mm is the standard?
I went from whatever the normal piercing size is to 2mm in both ears, then my left i went upto 2.4mm.

Thanks for all the help guys its much appreciated

[twosharks]

"Normal" is often 1mm or 1.2mm, so it's very likely you skipped a size, and you stretched quickly. So I'm gonna lay the blame for any problems on that, especially if your leaking was creating crust. Constant crusting is a warning sign.

But cheap steel often pissed my ears off, and they will feel leaky or weepy. Like ear cheese, but more liquid like, and they'll usually be tender and pink if I'm wearing a crappy metal. And my piercings don't all agree with each other either. Most of the small ones only hate cheap steel but tolerate high grades, the largest one mostly hates all steel, and one of my 8g piercings is fine with low grade casted steel. So just because you've worn something in the past or one piercing is ok with it, that doesn't mean you can't start having problems with the lesser piercing materials.