Seriously, stop putting cotton buds in your ear

Of all the cotton horror stories that appear in medical journals and online reports, few are as annoying as an anecdote report recently published in an Australian reality magazine: Prepare for a serious shower. Are cotton swabs the forerunner of infections, wounds, and other unpleasant things, or are these wax batteries simply abused?

Speaking to this is the life of a 37 - year old woman who explains as "Jasmine", as his cotton - cleaning rod obsessive ear leave a deadly infection that eroded his skull and left her with hearing loss.

The woman claimed to have her ears cleaned with a cotton swab every night until one night (her teeth clenched), noting that there was blood at the top of the bud. , It turned out that excessive use of cotton buds had caused a deep infection in his ear canal. Although the exact nature of the disease was revealed in the report, she said that the doctors told her that "the skull behind the ear was very thin" and that she was likely to lose her hearing. permanent

Although similar cases have been documented, it is of course unlikely that he has suffered such a deadly disease by as wipes every month or over the ears. However, there are certain risks regarding filling cotton swabs in the ear canal.

A case report from 2017 showed that more than 263,300 children entered the emergency department of a US hospital. UU. Between 1990 and 2010 due to cotton swabs. About 36 children a day.

"[This] highlights the misconception that adults and children need to clean the ear canal in the household," said lead author Dr. Kris Jatana, Children's Hospital Ear, Nose and Throat in Ohio, a Reuters "Although cotton may seem harmless, their use to clean the ears provides many risks." In 2017

In addition to physical trauma, Q-tips can also introduce external pathogens into the ear. Infections of the inner or middle ear may be particularly disturbing due to the proximity of the brain and the vestibular system that controls the balance .

Our ears are also self-cleaning thanks to the flowing properties of the wax , so there is no need to clean them with cotton swabs. If you feel you need to clean your ears, you are probably suffering from wax accumulation, a boring but relatively harmless condition that can easily be treated without Q-tips.

In other words, cotton swabs offer little or no medical benefits, but can be dangerous to your health. Cotton swabs are also bad news for the environment . Although paper versions are available, most still use plastic and are not biodegradable. Since people mistakenly believe that they can be flushed into the toilet, they can also penetrate water systems and contribute to pollution of the sea by plastic.

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