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Ear infection tips?

never stick anything smaller than your elbow into your ear

  • Historically I have a bad habit of using q-tips to clean deeply into my ear. I am now dealing with my second ear infection in under a year. I am positive these two facts are directly related. How do I break my bad habit, and perform proper ear maintenance? I constantly feel like there is a tiny bit of water in my ear. You know that feeling you get after you go swimming or take a shower, where you can feel some fullness in your ear and if you move your jaw you can hear the rumble of moisture against your eardrum? I feel that frequently, or my inner ear just feels itchy constantly. This prompts me to take a q-tip and dig around in my ear to try to clean it out, which I know is a Very Stupid Thing. Last summer I got an ear infection bad enough that I had constant ringing in my ear for weeks and the ear canal was pretty much swollen shut so that I was deaf in one ear and in constant pain. I saw an ENT, he prescribed some antibiotics and ear drops, and after a few weeks it cleared up. I was good about not digging around in my ear for several months. Then the watery-ness and itchiness came back, I fell back into bad habits, and now I am on my second round of the same ear infection. I am currently on a prescription of Cipro, and the infection is clearing up. Right at this moment I am sitting here and my ear is itching like crazy and I feel like I have water up against my ear drum again. I desperately want to shove a q-tip in there to clean it out, which I know is definitely the wrong-est thing I could possibly do. So, how do I deal with itchiness in general and the sensation of moisture in my ear, while keeping to the standard advice of "never stick anything smaller than your elbow into your ear"? I know that the real issue is much more about habits than physical ailments. Please help me replace my bad habits with successful good habits.

  • Answer:

    I suspect this might be a correlation and not a causality thing. That is, when you are getting the terrible itchy feeling there is already something going on with your ear and you're on the path to ear infection whether or not you mess with it. That said, there are many great ear cleaning options that are not qtips, though I myself am an unapologetic q-tip user. People have outlined good ones - the squeezy bulb - swimmers ear stuff [I swim, I get itchy ears that makes me crazy, this stuff usually works well] - plain old hydrogen peroxide [use as directed, internet has directions] - using decongestants to make sure it's not gunk behind your ear drum causing the problems - gum and other ways to get your jaw moving. It's possible you have really narrow eustachian tubes [I do] that mean that you can get stuff stuck in them that can feel like when you're on an airplane. So try also doing the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valsalva_maneuver to make sure that is not the weird ear pressure you're feeling. Otherwise I'd just toss out all of your q-tips, though next time you're at the doc's I'd ask them about the causal relationship because it's been my opinion that, warnings to the contrary, most people use q-tips for exactly this purpose.

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I had this problem as well, though it never got to infections. I used q-tips daily after the shower because I could feel the water in there and my ears were always itchy. I swear to god, once you stop using the q-tips for a while, the watery itching feeling will stop. I WAS AMAZED. And it took a very kind ENT to sternly tell me to stop using the fucking q-tips already. Where there's some water left in my outer ear after a shower, I now use some TP or my washclot to blot it up. WORLDS OF DIFFERENCE. Just put the q-tips down. Throw them all away. Give it a few weeks/months and you will feel beter.

misanthropicsarah

Stop keeping q-tips in your house.

rtha

If you're dealing with a watery-feeling, itchy ear, you may want to try a decongestant and some Benadryl.

kate blank

Then the watery-ness and itchiness came back, I fell back into bad habits, This is the point at which you go back to the ENT.

DarlingBri

"never stick anything smaller than your elbow into your ear" This advice is not universal. Look into the Asian "ear pick" (known in Japanese as the mimikaki). Some use this little spoon to scrape excess water out of the ear canal, but I only use mine to scratch inner-ear itches. Its main purpose is apparently for removal of ear wax, buildup of which apparently varies by ethnic group. Also, this daily Q-Tip user, who's never had an ear infection, is skeptical about your hypothesis of a linkage between the two.

Rash

I was told by my ear doctor to never use q-tips, after I came in for a cleaning. Some people get wax build up in their ear and some don't, and using q-tips only makes it worse if you're one of those people. I actually got something http://www.walgreens.com/store/c/ototek-loop-ear-wax-removal-tool/ID=prod359743-product, and it works miracles though. I don't have to use it often (like once a year, at most), but if you use it right (with drops, irrigation, etc), it will completely clear out wax from your ear canal. You're basically scraping along the edge of the ear canal, and pulling it loose. If you have anything impacted down there, it'll come out in one lump if you've softened it properly and irrigate. I haven't actually had to go back for years and I used to have to go in every 18 months.

empath

They make a squeezy-bulb thing you can fill with warm water and squirt in your ear; it's meant to loosen and wash out excess wax. I got one at a drug store for no more than six bucks. I find that doing that, and then a q-tip SHALLOWLY into the ear, takes care of everything.

EmpressCallipygos

I was a hardcore Q-tip addict for years. I got bad ear infections every year or two. Last year's brought me to a doctor who actually listened to what I was saying about how my ears felt; she told me that I probably had dermatitis in my ears, and told me to use a little bit of hydrocortisone when my ears felt particularly itchy. (It's just a small amount on the end of my pinky finger, which I then stick into my ears and swish around a little; it doesn't get very far in, so you wouldn't think it would do anything about the really deep ear-itches, but it works fabulously.) I thought everyone's ear canals were just constantly itchy like mine were, and everyone else was polite/self-restrained enough not to dig around in them. WRONG.

yomimono

If the Swan's Oil idea is not to your liking, I use "Nystatin and Triamcinolone Acetonide Ointment". This ointment is a perscription product. I am not a physician. This is not medical advice. I'm just explaining what I have found helpful. It might not be helpful to you. It might be hurtful to you. Ask your ENT about it. One 5 oz, tube should last a life time. And no Q-Tips. A little 1/2 pea size blob applied with your finger each night to your ear canal. It worked great for me. good luck and I hope this helps.

Mockinbrd

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