Our ears may possibly be our most abused body part. We pierce them, subject them to deafening noise, force cotton swabs inside them, and burn them with ear candling. Despite providing us with one of our most vital senses, we never give our ears, or our hearing, much gratitude or consideration.
That is, until there are problems. Then, we recognize just how important healthy hearing really is—and how we ought to have figured out proper ear care sooner. The secret is to realize this before the harm is done.
If you want to avoid problems and preserve your hearing, avoid these 4 dangerous practices.
1. Ear Candling
Ear candling is a technique of removing earwax, and additionally, as one researcher put it, “the triumph of ignorance over science.”
Here’s how ear candling is performed. One end of a narrow tube composed of cotton and beeswax is placed into the ear. The opposite end is set on fire, which purportedly creates a vacuum of negative pressure that draws earwax up into the tube.
Except that it does not, for two reasons.
First of all, the ear candle doesn’t generate negative pressure. As explained by Lisa M.L. Dryer, MD, earwax is sticky, so even if negative pressure was created, the pressure needed to suck up earwax would rupture the eardrum.
Second, although the wax and ash resemble earwax, no earwax is actually discovered within the ear candle after the therapy. Clinical psychologist Philip Kaushall investigated this by burning some ear candles the customary way and burning other candles without placing them into the ear. The residue was the same for both groups.
Ear candling is also dangerous and is fervently opposed by both the FDA and the American Academy of Otolaryngology (physicians specializing in the ear, nose, and throat), if you need any other reasons not to do it.
2. Using cotton swabs to clean your ears
We’ve covered this in other posts, but inserting any foreign object into your ear only drives the earwax against the eardrum, generating an impaction and potentially a ruptured eardrum and hearing loss.
Your earwax contains beneficial antibacterial and lubricating characteristics, and is naturally removed by the regular motions of the jaw (from speaking and chewing). All that’s needed from you is standard showering, or, if you do have trouble with excessive earwax, a professional cleaning from your hearing consultant.
But don’t take our word for it: just look at the back of the package of any box of cotton swabs. You’ll discover a warning from the producers themselves advising you to not enter the ear canal with their product.
3. Listening to excessively loud music
Our ears are just not equipped to deal with the loud sounds we’ve learned how to create. In fact, any sound louder than 85 decibels has the potential to initiate irreversible hearing loss.
How loud is 85 decibels?
A regular conversation registers at about 60, while a rock concert registers at over 100. But here’s the thing about the decibel scale: it’s logarithmic, not linear. That means the jump from 60 to 100 decibels does not make the rock concert twice as loud, it makes it about 16 times as loud!
Similarly, many earbuds can create a similar output of 100 decibels or greater—all from within the ear canal. It’s not surprising then that this can produce permanent harm.
If you want to preserve your hearing, make sure to wear earplugs to concerts (and while at work if necessary) and maintain your portable music player volume at about 60 percent or less of its maximum volume (with a 60 minute listening time limit). It may not be cool to wear earplugs to your next concert, but premature hearing loss is not much cooler.
4. Dismissing the signs of hearing loss
Last, we have the troubling fact that people have the tendency to wait almost a decade from the start of symptoms before searching for help for their hearing loss.
That means two things: 1) people unnecessarily suffer the effects of hearing loss for 10 years, and 2) they render their hearing loss much more difficult to treat.
It’s true that hearing aids are not perfect, but it’s also true that with today’s technology, hearing aids are exceptionally effective. The amount of hearing you get back will be based on on the extent of your hearing loss, and given that hearing loss has a tendency to get more serious as time passes, it’s best to get tested and treated the moment you notice any symptoms.