Can you stretch your cartilage piercing?

No. Cartilage is a fibre frame under the skin surrounding the ear passage and ear canal. This doesn't have the same qualities as skin in that it cant stretch like skin does ( 10% before tearing occures). If you want to enlarge cartilage piercing you will need to have the piercing redone with a larger gauge needle then allow the piercing to heal, this is generally a very bloody and quite painful route to go for a piercing that will never shrink once jewellery is removed, unlike regular tissue piercings that will shrink and close over time. So think twice because once you do it, you are stuck with it for life unless you know a good plastic surgeon and have deep pockets. This is based on 16 years of professional body piercing experience.

Another opinion

Cartilage is not the ideal candidate for gauging, but it can be done. Every body is different and every persons pain threshold is different. Some people will be able to tear there cartilage with moderate discomfort and others can do it with extreme discomfort but can't stand it long enough for the stretching to heal. It has taken years for me to get my conch to a 6gauge. It was extremely uncomfortable to do this and even worse weeks after. I stuck with it and plan on larger gauges in the future. The key is to know when your body has truly had enough. The point to where it can't be done is the fact that it will not stretch like fatty flesh tissue. Flesh when stretched, for the most part, has somewhere to go. Cartilage when stretched has nowhere to go. It does not get bigger, it pretty much just tears and rips. If you stick with the pain then it will eventually heal. When I went from a 10g to a 8g it took the better part of one year for it to be what could be the beginning of healed. There was god days and bad ones, but I have what I want in the end. You can go the dermal punch road and have what ever gauge you wish removed from your ear and that is a good way to go. As the other person said is is very messy and once you do it you are stuck with it for life, you can't take it out and go about your business without the hole begin covered up. There is a lot of people that have disagreed ed with what I am about to say, but oh well. Body mod is not a set thing. There are rules that are meant to keep you alive and getting the desired outcome of how you would like your body to look. The one thing that I can gauntee you is that it will always hurt. Do your reseach and search out qualified people. There is going to be a lot of people on the way that say that "it can't be done" but it can you just need to find the person that is right for the job. I pierced my conch and when it healed I went to get it stretched. Every place I went told me that it could not be done. Well I became a piercer and have my 6ga conch to prove that it can be done.