A story off the AP wire describes the case of a teenage girl in Chicago who suffered from stabbing pains in her face that felt “like electric shocks,” lasting anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds each and striking 20 to 30 times a day.? Doctors diagnosed her with trigeminal neuralgia, a nerve disorder sometimes called “suicide disease” because of the excruciating and dispiriting pain it causes.

After trying pain killers and stronger medication, the cure proved more simple: she removed the metal stud from her pierced tongue.? The pain vanished two days later.

These are not the only complications from tongue-piercing, some life-threatening, described in a recent article from the Journal of the American Medical Association.