Cotton buds? Be cautious!

This is for you if you are a ‘fan’ of cotton buds. Anytime you feel an urge to poke your ear with a cotton bud, understand that more people are injured by it than razor blades.  According to recent research, 36 per cent of adults use cotton buds to clean their ears, and most of them know that it is potentially dangerous. Nobody should put anything smaller than a finger inside their ear.

While the use of cotton buds does not always lead to severe problems, regular use can lead to skin irritation, infection and permanent hearing loss.

In most circumstances, wax could actually benefit your ears. How? According to a private nose and ear consultant, Dr. Remy Byrant, “It causes foreign bodies to adhere to it, preventing them from going further into the ear, and it has anti-bacterial properties. Removing it is like taking the wax off the surface of polished wooden furniture. It makes the delicate underlying skin of the ear more susceptible to infection,” Bryant says.

Adding that wax consists of a mixture of exfoliated skin, secretions and is produced in the outer third of the ear canal, Bryant proffers that some people produce large amounts, which can affect hearing, especially if the wax becomes waterlogged and expands after swimming.

If excessive ear wax tends to run in families, it is best treated by having the ears syringed with warm water under medical supervision. Removing wax with a bud can leave the skin of the ear feeling irritated.  This leads people to twiddle about even more, so they continue to fiddle with the ear until injury is sustained.

Even the most experienced cotton bud user will tend to push significant quantities of wax further in as well as removing some. They ram the bud inside the ear, like a soldier pushing gunpowder down cannon. This ends up in parts of the ear where it should not be, and thus affects hearing.

If the bud is inserted too far, there is a risk of perforating the eardrum, causing sudden pain, bleeding and temporary hearing loss. In most cases, the injury heals itself. Should the bud damage the ossicles (the tiny bones deep inside the ear) it results in dizziness and permanent hearing loss.

Bryant  is of the view that most people have no need to clean out their ears, no  matter how therapeutic experience is.