Don’t stick anything into your ears until you read this!

You know that old cliché about never putting anything smaller than your elbow in your ear?

Well it’s silly, of course, but it gets the point across. You can really damage your hearing by poking swabs, fingers and tissue into your ear.

That’s all because of cerumen. You’ve probably never heard of it…it’s more commonly known as earwax.

That’s something you may regard as an unwanted annoyance. But it’s actually there to protect your eardrum from dust and dirt, and to keep your ear canal clean.

And one of the worst things you can do is to try to remove it with a cotton swab or Q-Tip.

That advice comes straight from the hearing committee of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.

Once dried, earwax will work its way out of the opening of your ear by itself. That happens whenever you use your jaw to chew or talk, according to Dr. Douglas Backous, the committee’s chairman.

But sticking a swab in your ear only pushes the wax deeper inside, where it gets stuck and can affect your hearing, he warns.

Doing that also brings along fungus, bacteria and viruses that ear wax would ordinarily remove and which can cause the ear to become infected. Impacted wax can even cause a painful rupture of the eardrum.

If you think your ears do need cleaning — because excessive wax buildup seems to be blocking them — it should only be done by a medical professional, the group warns.

If your ears seem merely irritated or dried out, it may be a result of your attempts to clean them, which Backous compares to scratching a mosquito bite.

In that case, he suggests a few drops of a mixture of one part white vinegar, one part rubbing alcohol and one part lukewarm tap water be applied in each ear.

Sources:
“This will make you never, ever want to clean your ears again” Sarah Klein, July 21, 2014, Huffington Post, huffingtonpost.com