Let’s face it – cleaning your ears with cotton buds is pretty satisfying. But Dr Sooj has now warned against this, urging people to try a much safer alternative
Admit it – there’s something oddly satisfying about cleaning your ears with a cotton bud.
But Dr Suraj Kukadia – or Dr Sooj – has warned against this common practice, while claiming there’s a much safer alternative. He said to his 123,000 TikTok followers on doctorsooj: “How can you clean your ears routinely in a safe way?
“The answer to this is very, very simple – you do not. Don’t go inside your ears, don’t put anything smaller than your elbows in your ears or in your nose.”
Ear wax may be a nuisance, but the GP said it actually has a protective function, helping to catch germs, dust, dirt or anything that’s not supposed to be in there. Think of it almost like a fly-trap, with intruders sticking to its runny surface, protecting the eardrum that’s vital to our hearing.
When you start ‘shoving stuff’ in there – whether this be cotton buds, rolled up tissue or hairpins – you may push the wax up against your eardrums.
This has the potential to completely burst them, triggering puss and blood, along with symptoms like hearing loss, dizziness and painful earaches. Although this usually gets better on its own within two months, you may need to take antibiotics.
Moreover, aggressive ear cleaning can lead to tinnitus, a condition where you may hear persistent noises that are both bothersome and difficult to ignore.
Dr Sooj then went on: “So, what we recommend is, don’t touch your ears. You can clean the outside of your ears, that’s fine, but don’t do inside the canal.
“When ear wax does get impacted against the eardrum, it can cause things like tinnitus or ringing in your ears. It can cause dizziness, nausea, vomiting and even muffled or reduced hearing.
“If you have any problems, just go an see your doctor because we can very easily check the inside of your ear, tell you if there’s wax there, give you some simple steps to try and resolve it, if it is. Or, give you other treatment in case there’s a different reason that you’re having some symptoms.”
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