Stretching, Plug Expanders in the context of body jewelry, is the deliberate expansion of a healed fistula (hole in the skin) for the purpose of wearing body jewelry. Ear piercings are the most commonly stretched piercings, with nasal septum piercings, tongue piercings and lip piercings/lip plates following close behind. While all piercings can be stretched to some degree, cartilage piercings are usually more difficult to stretch and more likely to form hypertrophic scars if stretched quickly. Healing is very important in between stages of stretching.

Stretching is usually done in small increments to minimize the potential for damaging the healed fistula or creating scar tissue. In North America, most stretching methods go up by a single even-sized gauge at a time. In Europe and most of the rest of the world, jewelry is metric, but the increments between standard sizes are similar.

Health Issues

There are few health issues directly related to stretching piercings. Most stretching methods do not create a wound, and properly stretched piercings will heal after stretching, although if an individual's skin elasticity and vascularity allow, most pial size. 0g is normally seen as the "point of no return" as over this size there is a significant risk that the hole will never shrink back to the size of the original piercing. However, each person's tissue will differ and many variables affect whether or not a stretched piercing will return to its original size, such as the length of time taken to stretch and the amount of time the piercing is fully healed at a particular size.

After stretching a piercing, a slight pain may occur, but any bleeding or tearing or pus leaking is unnatural and indicates that the body jewelry is either not ready to stretch or that the stretching has been done incorrectly. The tissue may swell a bit, although it shouldn't happen when the stretch is done properly on healthy tissue.