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How else are we supposed to clean our ears?
with a paper clip or bobby pin, of course!
Car keys do the trick.
Am I an idiot if I say I`ve always thought that was the purpose of the q-tips?
No, because that’s what I thought they were for too. I’m actually fighting the urge to go check the box right now.
Specifically, it says you can’t shove them into your ear canal. I’m pretty sure the reason for that is because some moron shoved one in too far and punctured his eardrum.
Holy moly. I just checked the box… Who knew!?
I just checked too, i’ll b damned! i never knew! Always assumed they were for ears about 99% and detailing Military Uniform brass 1%
No you couldn’t actually puncture your ear drum it would become
way to painful before hand, what happens is it just shoves ear wax
back further and eventually it can create a blockage and you won’t
be able to hear very well until you pour some time of chemical in it
“Some chemical” being hydrogen peroxide. I use qtips for my ears quite often and use the hydrogen peroxide once every couple months at most. My ears are clean AND healthy (and hear quite well).
I saw this post, and you are absolutely right.
I use q-tips to get smudges off my brass, too
Nope. As per Wikipedia (keep in mind not everything may be true), note that when using Qtips you might push the ear dirt back into the ear, when inserting the Qtip, causing a congestion. I guess that if you clean it regularly, dirt cannot build up and as such there is nothing to pushback into the canal.
Yeah carkeys and pens, what else? *-) Babyfingers?
Hydrogen peroxide…it makes a snap, crackle, pop sound. the next day
the wax comes out!
arg.
i tried to do it the other day with a bobby pin and it didn’t work, my ear just itched.
haha.
I use a lit match. Burn out the dirt!
What if it’s already petrified? You may need a drill.
I’ve always found that a pressure washer does a good job of cleaning my ears AND removing all traces of make-up. Failing that, I think a good propane torch would solve that nasty build-up of earwax. It IS flammable, isn’t it?
YOU DON`T CLEAN YOUR EARS, IT`S BAD FOR THEM!!!!
how can CLEANING ears be bad for them?
ear cleaner? xD
I don’t exactly have a package of Q-tips handy, anyone care to enlighten me here?
There are instructions on the package?!?!? Where?!
FAIL. The average Q-tip package says to use it to clean your ears, just not to stick it past where your finger could go.
What is an “average” pack of Q-Tips?
about 6 inches *rim shot*
Well played!
5.5, actually.
actually, they do seriously say not to clean your ears, but they don’t mean it
even the people who made the rules used it for that!
The instructions say to never insert cotton swabs into your ears for cleaning. Medically, our ears are supposed to clean themselves, with excess wax working its way out to the opening, where it can be wiped away externally with a damp cloth. They say inserting cotton swabs into your ears can actually push the wax further in, creating a blockage.
But we all do it anyway.
And kids seem to pick up on it really early. I have to hide my box from my nieces, because they see the swabs there and they just WANT to clean their ears like crazy.
On a semi-related topic, ever heard of ear candling? That is some weird stuff. Supposedly it works, though.
Ear candles rock! They look like long sugar-cones, but with a hole at the bottom. You put the skinny end in your ear, light the other end ON FIRE, and the smoke draws all the wax out of your ears.
When you’re done, if you look inside the “candle,” the whole inside is lined with earwax. It’s disgusting, and I LOVE IT!!!
Actually, I NEVER get ear wax. My ears were itchy one time when I was in my doctor’s office & he said “Oh, you probably have a build-up of wax.” But when he checked, he was surprised & said my ears were really clean.
Of course they would be!!! When I wash my hair, I always wash inside my ears & tip my head under the tap to rinse them out good too. I thought everyone did but I guess not. How else do people keep their ears clean??
Q-tips.
I can’t do that, my ears are really sensitive and I go nuts if I get water in them. I stick to…Q-tips, of course.
Same. Water in my ears makes me go RAWR.
I use this:
http://www.dizziness-and-balance.com/disorders/hearing/images/mimi2.jpg
Just don’t stick it in your ear too far… but it’s so fun to scrape the ear wax away.
Which end goes in your ear???
the curved part
but i’ve tried putting the fluffy part in as well
tickles > <
me too hehe
The big “evidence” people have is that, once the linen is burnt, there’s a huge glob of “wax” inside that “came from your ear”. Except that it’s a wax soaked linen. So if you lit an ear candle and let it burn on a table, it would have just as much “earwax” in it when it was done as if you put it in your ear.
If you’ve ever actually done it, it’s pretty obvious that it’s not (at least, mostly it’s not) wax from the candle. It’s an entirely different color and consistency and it looks, well, like earwax…
Ahum, click the name for a word from people who know what they’re talking about.
suuuure….
Why Candling Can’t Work
Since wax is sticky, the negative pressure needed to pull wax from the canal would have to be so powerful that it would rupture the eardrum in the process. However, candling produces no vacuum. Researchers who measured the pressure during candling of ear models found that no negative pressure was created. The same investigators candled eight ears and found that no ear wax was removed and candle wax was actually deposited in some of them!
I thought you were referring to what Shrek does in the first movie. XD
ME TOO
I completely agree with that. Think about it….The candle is made of wax. What else are you going to get out of candling but more wax. How gullible are all of these people. Geesh.
It only creates a blockage if you stab your eardrums like an idiot in the “before” part of an infomercial and jam the gunk down instead of wiping it out.
I just have times where my ears feel really nasty. I don’t care if the wax does eventually blorp out, I don’t want to feel it all the time.
Plus if you use earbuds of any kind, they get really nasty with earwax unless you clean out your ears regularly.
I’m not even talking about the kind that stick into your ear canal–the iPod kind get wax on them too.
My son loves to get his ears cleaned. His eyes roll back in his head and his eyelids flutter, it’s so funny. Pure pleasure. XD I remember I used to love it when I was a kid too.
No, that’s not pleasure, it’s actually you putting the Q-tip in *way* too far and tickling his brain directly.
Should’ve mentioned something about collecting blood and skin cells and all the good stuff CSI uses them for!
W T F.
I am stunned.
In Hebrew they’re actually called “ear sticks”.
in german as well
WTF?
Wattestäbchen?
Totaler Reinfail.
i’d call them ohrenstäbchen
A few drops of olive oil into the ear with your head on its side works wonders. Much better than actual ear drops in my experience.
i thought adding foreign substances into your ear was a bad thing. plus it feels soooo good wiggling a q-tip around in your ear.
OMG.
Please, no one do this!
I bet the idea of using whiskey as toothpaste makes you cringe, too.
This is an old home remedy – been around for ever. As olive oil is natural it ought to be ok, but better to check with someone who knows about such things.
I had a very blocked ear after a cold once – this just reminded me of it. Tried everything, medicines, warm compresses, etc. Even tried some remedy that involved an onion (something to do with the fumes). I was REALLY desperate. Nothing worked, it finally cleared on its own a week later.
Made me appreciate the challenges related to being hard of hearing all the time.
“As olive oil is natural it ought to be ok”
…you really don’t know what you’re talking about, right?
First, olive oil can contain quite a few artificial enhancements, and you can therefore not be sure it’s ‘natural’ at all.
secondly, just because something is natural, that doesn’t mean it isn’t still insanely dangerous and detrimental to your health. Would you clean your ear channels with belladonna? Or even that most natural of all remedies, an unskinned branch?
Actually the first treatment in medical practice for earwax buildup is:
Olive oil drops for 2-3 days and can be picked up from any pharmacy
assumption is the mother of all FAILS!
Really? All of my doctors I had as a child told me to use hydrogen peroxide. It works way better.
I went to a first aid course where they showed us all how to apply olive oil to our ears for blockage by tapping an area of your head. It’s a fairly common practice with no bad side effects (exept Italians love your ears)
Natural things don’t hurt you? WOOHOO!
*Chugs saltwater*
Thats what my doctor told me to do, but I don’t find it does anything.
Actually, that is a common remedy for people who have “moldy ears”. It’s wen the skin sheds to quickly, you apply vegetable oil to remove it easier.
Wether it actually works…….
Heh, it’s the only thing it’s used for in my house.
My fiance is actually addicting to cleaning his ears.
Sometimes he makes them bleed o.o
He should stop when he feels a resistance
Friends reference FTW!
Person who caught the Friends reference ftw! And Chandler, ftw, for his cleverness in the first place.
friends and you guys SUCK.
Yeah, about as much as your mother does.
i think they call that OCD.
that used to be one of my OCD things…i did it several times a day, everyday..
now, maybe once a day, if that much.
yay progress!
Are you sure it’s his ears and not his brain?
Maybe it’s the roach living in his ear?
Oh, hellz yes I use q-tips to clean my ears! I like to get in deep and hit the sweet spot that makes my leg shake. That’s the best . . .
ah yessss….the power of the eargasm!
wait.. you’re not supposed to use them for your ears? wtf are they for anyways?
call this number… 469 442 7940… asshole boss
i just happened to be listening to a tribe called quest when i stumbled this site
Haha thats awesome!
ME TOO! freaky. “Find a Way.”
I thought the entire purpose of a Q-tip was to clean the ears.
Detailing furniture? Really?
OH COME ON PEOPLE!
Detail cleaning your bong people!
Use some imagination…
OH COME ON PEOPLE!
Detail cleaning your bong!
Use some imagination…
Indeed, my swabs said that they’re not supposed to be inserted in the ear canal.
When I took a picture and showed it to people online, they said that the canal didn’t begin until quite a ways into the ear.
So now I’m not sure who to believe. :-/
I think the warning is mostly for legal reasons (hey, we told you not to do it so you can’t sue us).
On the other hand, I swim a lot and if I don’t use something to clean my ears, I will get an ear infection. I am not a fan of the alcohol drops.
Try vinegar. When I was little, that’s how we treated swimmers ear (the doctor said to) and it worked. It would also prevent it when we bothered to do it right away. Still, though, q-tips totally belong in your ear.
Torches for midgets.
Or Lego dudes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waa2ucfgVgQ
I thouht they were for cleaning ears to…oh god it feels so good when I clean my ears! I wanna go grab a few Q-tips and clean them now…
I always have a ton of wax in my ears, so I use Q-tips to gentle remove the wax. Sometimes it’s really itchy in there so I used to be really aggressive scraping the inside of my ear but avoiding going too deep. But, I got swimmer’s ear from the aggressive swabbing causing a bacterial infection, and had to take ear drops for a week to get rid of the infection. So, please, be gentle everyone!
“But, I got swimmer’s ear from the aggressive swabbing”
How? I thought you could only get swimmers ear from leaving water in your ears and having it dry slowly… More likely, the aggressive swabbing made it easier for you to *get* swimmers ear, not giving it to you directly.
Arsenio Hall used to ask people if they used Q-tips in their ears on his talk show. If they said yes, he’d say “Aren’t eargasms the greatest things!?”
On the other hand, my ear doctor has told me that all my years of drying the inside of my ears with Q-tips has permanently damaged the little hairs that reverberate sound waves thus causing the massively annoying tinnitis I now have. Maybe if the package warning had explained that little tidbit of info, my ears might not be ringing at this very moment…
Same hear… class action lawsuit anybody?
great pun–did you mean to do that?
the “little hairs” are actually on the inside of the eardrum, so unless you ruptured it with the q-tip (and believe me, you have´nt) you cannot touch the hairs. your doc sux!
Thanks, german. I was gullible enough to believe it and was about to look into it when I read your comment.
what you do is wet one end of the Q-tip, use it in your ear wet, then use the dry end to dry it. the wet part loosens the wax and its easier for the dry end to get wax
http://www.qtips.com/family_care.php
Nowhere on the Q-Tips website does it say a use is to clean ears except for “o clean your baby’s outer ear, folds.” That’s crazy lol
I used to have a cat who loved earwax. We discovered this when he started pulling our used Q-Tips out of the garbage and licking them until the cotton was all loosened.
Then he started licking directly in our ears.
That’s how I kept MY ears clean for years…alas, he eventually died of old age (no, NOT from excessive earwax consumption). <:(
omg that is hiliarious and kinda gross with the cat thing….but i do love to do the q tip tickling in my ear after showers ….
Specially trained earwigs; hence their name.
I enjoy having my ears clean quite a bit, but am I the only one who finds the act of cleaning them highly unpleasant? I always wind up hacking my lungs out with tears streaming down my face.
well that was interesting.
do elaborate.
You MUST be doing it wrong. Here are some tips:
1. put it in your ear (not throat) that should stop the hacking lungs.
2. twist it gently (don’t just jab. It should be a twisting motion and not an in-and-out thing)
3. be more gentle
Really, cleaning your ears should feel good.
You can indeed use Q-tips to clean your ears, but it’s safer using them to clean the outside of the ear, i.e. around the cartilage. Using it in the ear canal can be very dangerous, leading to impacted ear canals and in some cases infection. The safest, and most natural way, is to use warm water and a small bulb syringe like this one:
http://images.imed.com/Products/125/K7278.jpg
Note: You should gently rinse the ear canal with this. Too much pressure either way can be painful and or harmful. Happy cleaning!
Well of course, cuz we all have boxes of those lying around, and if we run out, they’re easy to find in the pharmacy…
Wow… well, rape me in the a$$, I never knew!
Still going to keep doing it, though.
well, what sucks for me is that i basically can’t clean out my ears. if i try to clean them out with water, the water does not come out for a couple of days and my ear is plugged the whole time, making it hard for me to hear. and if i try a Q-Tip, even if I barely put it in my ear just the SLIGHTEST bit, my ear is automatically plugged. it is SO annoying!