Ummmm, forgot to say, there's some soreness of course, but the stretches weren't at all painful til I tried to go from 6 to 4. I know that there are some tricks for helping to stretch gradually, like wrapping teflon tape around your jewelry and slowly adding more and more. (Teflon tape sticks to itself by static, so there's no adhesive or anything toxic or icky.) And I actually tried that at one point but like I said, my holes were so tight it really didn't work for me. Maybe it'll work for the 2-0 or 0-00 stretch though...