The sweet chirping of birds, the rattling sound of a gushing spring, the musical notes of a guitar add vibrancy and liveliness to your life giving it the title of a road to your heart. What if suddenly the world becomes silent and dead and you feel as if you are in a vacuum. You would not wish to be the one falling in this category, so make it a point that you care from now onwards for those tiny little ears on the both sides of your head. Not only this, these ears have a vital role to play in maintaining the balance of your body, so if you do feel certain problems in balancing off late, it might need an ear check up.
Ear Care Tips
Ear care doesn’t only mean that you have to learn to clean your ear but ear care is a more comprehensive term that denotes that you need to know about how to protect your ears, how to prevent their problems and adopting a proactive approach in handling them with care. Only if you are aware of these steps can you claim to that you really care for your ears.
Learn to Protect Your Ear
The ears can benefit from the tender care that you can provide from it. Here are the ways that you can do it:
- Most of you forget that your ears are very much in danger of an injury, for instance through an accidental hit to the ear or a car accident injury, because we can’t see the inner working of our ears with the result that your ear drum is ruptured in the process. More often than that what happens in most of the cases is that more damage to the ear drum is caused when you put an object into your ear thinking that you might be doing the better job of alleviating the itch or taking out the wax. So follow the old folk wisdom putting any foreign cleaning aid into your ear that is bigger than your elbow.
- Move away from such a place where you can’t hear a person who is talking just a couple of feet away from you. This means that you are being exposed to more than 90 decibels which is enough to cost you hearing loss.
- Proximity to an explosion that can leave you deaf instantaneously. However in spite of the spontaneous damage to your ear, hearing loss might be on its way but it slowly as each day passes by. But today we live in such an environment where day on and off we come across loud noises be they in the form of loud music systems, election speeches or the like and the harm is done quite earlier in life. What basically happens is that loud noise damages the minuscule, susceptible hair cells that are present in the inner ear. Moreover during exercise the hair cells in your ear are more sensitive to noise and hence you double the risk of becoming permanently deaf if you jog wearing those headphones on.
- If you are listening to such music on such a high scale that even someone close to you can listen to it, then you are doing serious damage to your ear.
- If you have to work in a noisy environment then take steps to protect your ears against the noise. For this you can use muffs or auditory earplugs.
How to prevent Ear Problems
Moist ear invites trouble and problems for your ear, so you need to have a look at the measures for its prevention. After informing yourself about how to protect your ear, here is a list if the tips to be followed that can help you in preventing ear problems:
- What can be a better idea than spending a warm, sunny day on beach but what about the fact whether the water is safe for your ear or not? Beware of getting struck of ‘swimmers ear’. The disease is an outer ear canal infection with the causative agent being fungi or bacteria as they find a good nesting ground in your warm and moist ear. So you should avoid swimming in dirty water for the health of your ear. Moreover being in the water for long also means that the waxy substance present in your ear canal is washed away making the way for backing to get an upper hand.
- After a shower, there can be some water left in your ear lobes or you might have poked your ear with a cotton-tipped swab or a head pin. All this means that you are scratching the delicate skin present in the ear canal and thereby breaking the fence against bacteria. Make sure that you drain out all the water from your ear after a shower.
- If you are a regular swimmer then you are advised to use antiseptic drops that can help minimize the occurrence of infections. You can even whip up a mixture of equal amounts of rubbing alcohol and white vinegar to act as an antiseptic but avoid it if your eardrum is weak.
- Leave your earwax alone and don’t muddle with it much. Earwax traps bacteria, dust and other particles that otherwise might cause injury or infection to your ear and most of the times your jaw movements eventually push the wax to the outer ear so you don’t need to manually take it out. However, sometimes it builds up and comes in the way of your hearing capability. So the best thing to do in this case is to use a damp piece of cotton to remove it and be careful enough not to push the wax back into the ear wherein it can interfere with your hearing and in case you are finding difficulty doing it, its better to consult your ENT specialist for the same.
- It is highly recommended that you stop smoking for the fact that smokers and the people nearby are more susceptible to middle ear infections. Cigarette smoke can do much harm to the middle ear cavity and nasal passages interfering with the normal functioning of your ear tube.
Care for Recently Pierced Ears
Women like to put on beautiful earrings, dangles and almost every woman gets her ear pierced for this purpose. But if you have just pierced your ear, then there are some tips for you to keep your ear safe from infections:
- With a cotton swab, clean the pierced area twice a day with an antiseptic.
- Avoid touching the freshly pierced area with bare hands, if necessary wash your hand first.
- Avoid shampoo, body wash or conditioners as they can infect the piercing.
- Try not to sleep on your sides at night, as it might put undue pressure on your pierced ears.
- Wait for 6 to 9 weeks till you can swap those beautiful earrings of yours.
In conclusion it can be said that a suitable ear care is vital to maintain an overall level of cleanliness and general hygiene when caring for your ears. So give your ear the proper ear care that it requires, protect them from injury and take proper care to prevent their infections and take special care if you have pierced them. If you have any complication, it is recommended that you consult only an ENT specialist to treat any ear problem.
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