In most cases, no, but it’s pretty stupid.
Yeah, yeah, it’s a form of self-expression. But consider the poor Italian woman, 18, whose case was written up recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association. After getting her tongue pierced, she wound up with facial pain that her doctors described as “severe, constant and paroxysmal,” meaning she had sudden bursts of extra intense pain as well. It seems, her doctors wrote, that the piercing irritated nerves that run from the tongue to the face. The doctors noted in passing that the medical literature contains reports of several other complications of tongue piercing, all, like this one, quite rare, but noteworthy nonetheless: inflammation of the lining of the heart, lockjaw (tetanus) and even abscess in the brain.
These last three “are VERY good reasons why not to ever have your tongue pierced!!!” wrote Dr. Jeffrey Dover, a dermatologist at SkinCare Physicians in Chestnut Hill, in an email. In a telephone conversation, Dover explained that the kind of facial pain suffered by the Italian woman “can ruin your life.”
Surprisingly, the risk of infection from tongue piercing appears to be relatively low, provided the instruments used to pierce the tongue is sterile, though there are no statistics on the issue. Dr. Thomas Kilgore, a professor of oral surgery at the Boston University School of Dental Medicine, said, “To be very honest, our mouths are quite resistant to our own organisms. Most bacteria in the mouth are our own bacteria, so there is a certain degree of immunity.”
There is a risk of chipping teeth from the metal stud, and if one piece of the stud gets loose at night, it could be inhaled into the lungs, possibly triggering infection. If the stud contains nickel, as a lot of jewelry does, that could also trigger nickel allergies.
Bottom line? Pierce your ears, not your tongue.