Warning: gross subject
Image credit: The Compleat Shobba
Back when I was 23, impacted earwax caused me so much discomfort that I visited an ENT specialist. Syringing had failed to shift the blockage, and so this fearless man actually reached into my ear canal with tiny tools, and pulled out the rock-solid plug of wax mechanically. The pain was intense, and the bruising lasted several days.
I will never forget his advice and his warning:
“It’s because of your habit of using cotton buds. It’s pushing the wax further in and forming a plug. You must stop doing it.”
The trouble with this theory was that I had no such habit.
Despite always having had an urge to scoop and scratch inside my external ear canals, I had always resisted because, of course, everybody knows it’s supposed to be bad for you, and can apparently make the problem worse.
“But I don’t do that, I’ve always been very good”.
But he simply didn’t believe my protests. “Well, you must be doing something then”.
“Well, I do sometimes use earplugs when I’m riding my motorbike”.
“Why do you do that?”
“Because a minute’s riding at 70mph exposes me to an entire week’s worth of industrial noise allowance, and I don’t want to go deaf. But I haven’t used them for weeks”.
“Oh, well, if you’re stupid enough to ride motorbikes…”
And that was the end of the discussion. I was blissfully relieved; but also smarting, not from the operation, but from the unjustified telling off.
So it did make me wonder what evidence there is for the standard medical mantra, that “using cotton buds is dangerous”. Certainly there are alarmist headlines about people who got ear infections; anecdotes, in other words. As if ear infections MUST have been cause by the cotton buds.
There are various scientific studies of the cotton-bud using habits of visitors to ear-nose-throat departments, and certainly it seems from that self-selected population, that those who use cotton buds have more problems of inflammation, ear wax build up etc.
But what if it’s the other way around? This could all be interpreted as those who go to ear specialists are those with constant ear irritations, and who in desperation have wanted to pick and scratch as a natural first resort.
Does this point to a medical double standard?
What is strange is that while medical science seems hell-bent on telling us that the human body can’t be trusted – it goes wrong, it can’t function effectively without artificial support from medicine in just about every way we can think of – on this subject the message is absolutely the opposite; to trust your body and the brilliant engineering of our self-cleaning self-maintaining ear canals.
It must be because cotton buds are cheap, and nobody has yet come up with anything more glamorous, that will set them up with a life of first class travel and lecture tours. Because when that day comes, ears will suddenly be failure-prone, and in need of constant maintenance, and anybody who doesn’t keep them absolutely clean with some billion dollar innovation will be dicing with the danger of uncontrolled waxy build-up. Mark these words.
And being somewhat jaded, I have generally noticed that when it comes to maintaining health, as opposed to treatment of disease, medicine is wrong at least as often as it is right. And so I am deeply suspicious of official medical advice on anything resembling the maintenance of health. I mean, it has been completely wrong on sun, salt, saturated fats and much, much more. They’re still prescribing statins and opioids and roaccutane. They still advise icing sprained ankles, for heaven’s sake! So why shouldn’t medical consensus be completely wrong on cotton buds, especially as there is a total lack of randomised controlled trial evidence?
The good news, I have now run a pilot study lasting almost 30 years.
In the spirit of that rheumatologist (I forget his name) who decided to crack the knuckles on one hand and not the other for 50 years, I have been experimenting on myself. Since 1990 I have used cotton buds deep in my ears almost every single day. And I can tell you that my ears are objectively clear of obstruction and my hearing is faultless. Agreed, for a more rigorous trial I should have done one ear and not the other, but frankly I would have gone insane.
It is too early to say if the findings of this self-experiment are conclusive: further research is necessary.
Warning: the above is not medical advice. Never put anything in your ears. Cleaning your ears with cotton buds is dangerous. Don’t do it. Ever.
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