This is what happens to your piercings when you die

We don't often think about what happens to our bodies after we die, and one autopsy technician has spilled the beans on what happens to those of us who sport piercings.

Gerald Ledford (@big_led73) has become popular on TikTok for answering questions from his 1.4m inquisitive followers about his role and all the different scenarios he's been in on the job.

One viewer was curious to find out whether their piercings would be left alone or if they would be removed during an autopsy and wrote in the comments section of a previous video: "What about piercings? When I die I absolutely need to keep everyone single one. Facial and body piercings."

“You worried I’m going to take your piercings out and you don’t get to take them with you?”

Well, it's bad news for those with a tongue piercing...

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Ledford then shook his head as he explained: “The only one that I take out is your tongue ring.

“I remove your tongue during an autopsy – we need to make sure you didn’t bite down on it, make sure you don’t have drugs in the back of your throat.

“So if you have a tongue ring, that one comes out, but nipples, nose, ears, eyebrow, private parts..." it seems that they will stay in place.

In the caption, Ledford summed up the answer: "You get to keep all your piercings except the tongue. I take your tongue out."

Although we won't know this is happening after death, it's not an ideal visual to imagine.

Since sharing the gruesome information, Ledford's video has received 2.5m views, 215,000 likes, along with thousands of comments from people who were understandably disturbed after learning about people's tongues being removed during an autopsy.

One person wrote: "Just decided I won’t be dying."

"So you’re telling me every time I’ve been to a funeral, the person was just chilling with no tongue & I didn’t know," another person asked.

Someone else added: "Looks like I’m just gonna live forever."

"Hold up wait what? People's tongues are removed for autopsies? I'm not ok with that," a fourth person replied.

Guess the only consolation is we at least won't know if this is being done to us - being dead and all.

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