16 ms·
Poor evidence that Q-tips are harmful
- Kikawala 6y agoI suggest using Debrox then flushing with warm/hot water.
- giantg2 6y agoThere are many things that doctors do not recommend because they don't believe the average person can use it correctly. For example, a doctor prescribed two medications (A, B) to take twice per day. Yet there is an alternate medication (C) for one of them (B) that can be given 3 times per day, which reduces blood level fluctuations resulting in better symptom management. She told me that they don't usually prescribe that one because they don't trust the parents of their patients to correctly administer one drug only twice per day (A) when giving the other drug (C) 3 times (they are worried about overdoses of the twice daily medication A).
- Spooky23 6y agoExactly. Anytime you are giving guidance to the public, you need to factor in that the average punter is capable of incredible feats of stupidity or craziness. If you've had issues with your ear, you'll know that many treatments sound alot like the problems describe. People with lots of issues will have a procedure where they cut the eardrum and insert a tube. Or have a vaccuum or waterjet pull out earwax. Are there people who will compulsively clean their ears and cause a buildup of wax? Probably. The only difference between that and people who damage their teeth or nose by picking is that they are using an implement to do so.
- ardy42 6y ago> There are many things that doctors do not recommend because they don't believe the average person can use it correctly. > ...She told me that they don't usually prescribe that one because they don't trust the parents of their patients to correctly administer one drug only twice per day (A) when giving the other drug (C) 3 times (they are worried about overdoses of the twice daily medication A). I wonder if they're not even worrying about "the average person", but a kind of "lowest common denominator" person. Depending on how severe an "overdose" is, that might be totally the right call. Even if only 1 in 100 patients would mess up and OD, prescribing the less-effective combination would actually end up helping a lot of patients. IMHO, software engineers also end up infantilizing their users with similar "lowest common denominator" thinking, but usually with less justification.
- vlovich123 6y agoHave you ever dealt with support tickets or read "normal" user forums for a consumer product that you work on? PEBKAC is often times a kind way to describe the problem. Now engineers can (& do) get the analysis wrong (the famous "I can't send e-mail more than 500 miles). I don't think it happens with any less regularity than doctors. Thankfully our problem domain allows us to adjust the guard rails for a problem domain, or build better guard rails.
- ardy42 6y ago> Have you ever dealt with support tickets or read "normal" user forums for a consumer product that you work on? PEBKAC is often times a kind way to describe the problem. I totally understand that, but I think it's far less justifiable to design non-safety-critical systems for a brainless lowest common denominator user than it is for things that are arguably safety-critical (like the dosing mentioned in the GGP), because then you end up with something like a world where the only books available (even to adults) are children's books.
- vlovich123 6y agoUsers also want free support. The more knobs you add the more complex your support becomes (both front line and automated tests) and your support costs skyrocket (now 1% of your users are turning on knobs you haven’t tested and those are 30% of your support costs). There’s a balance to be struck for sure and OSS can some times try to ignore the support cost because it’s just “spare time”. There’s still a cost though. There’s also something to be said for sensible abstractions. Even if the power users don’t have the control they want, the solution works for 90% of all other users. For an example of this look to Apple. They regularly sacrifice the power users for the security and convenience of the general customer. From a profit, support and just pure “% of satisfied users” that’s the right balance. Don’t get me wrong. They don’t get it right for every single little thing, but in aggregate when there’s a conflict and your market is the “general” user, trying to stay appealing to the power users is still likely the wrong choice.
- bigbubba 6y agoI believe an example is the use of alcohol to delay the onset of frostbite, at the cost of hastening the onset of hypothermia. Given the later is more immediately lethal and is accompanied by a loss of rationality, it would be irresponsible for doctors to admit that the vasodilative effects of alcohol will stave off frostbite by increase bloodflow to extremities (the same effect that hastens the onset of hypothermia.)
- auganov 6y agoIn this case there's no upside to doing it "correctly". Or at least that's what many doctors think. So have no reason to care about overstating risks.
- tzs 6y agoFor prescriptions that are pills, I'd like to see a smartphone/tablet app to help with things like that. At the simplest, it would just remind me when it is time to take pills and tell you which pills to take. That could help with the confusion of having pill A on a twice a day schedule and pill C on a thrice a day schedule. Better would be if you could also show the app your pills using your device's camera when you first start a new prescription. Then when you take your scheduled doses you could show the app what pills you are going to take and it could check that you have the right number of pills and they are the right colors and shapes and sizes.
- learnstats2 6y agoWeekly pill organiser boxes mostly solve this problem already, e.g. https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=weekly+pill+organiser&form=QBIL&qs=n&first=1&cw=1416&ch=693&tsc=ImageBasicHover https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=weekly+pill+organiser&f... You can already get technology-supported boxes but it seems to me that each extra 'check' step is likely to contribute to more failure cases.
- ElDji 6y agoLifeProTips : Don't ever use a Q-tips while walking ... you'll understand why when you'll hit a wall or a door with your elbow.
- whalesalad 6y agodon't ever move when using them, period, lol
- kgwxd 6y agoAnd make sure the bathroom door is locked. I know someone that has permanent ear damage because her boyfriend bumped the door open and it hit her elbow.
- bigbubba 6y ago'Choke up' on the q-tip, holding it closer to the business end such that your fingers prevent it from being inserted further than intended. That's what I do anyway. YMMV of course, particularly since earwax consistency is apparently something that varies considerably between different populations.
- 83457 6y agoAlso don't jump on a couch at the dentist with your new tooth brush in your mouth and land face first requiring an emergency room visit to stitch a hole ripped into the back of your mouth.
- gridspy 6y agoIndeed. It could also enter your brain from there.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago>There’s that pesky left/right ear difference again. The left/right ear differences may have to do with the majority of people being right handed. If you are using a Q-tip on your own ear, you have to use the same sided hand to clean the ear. Thus, you probably do a better job with your right ear than with your left ear, if, like most people, you are right handed.
- kgwxd 6y agoI use my dominant hand for both ears.
- yboris 6y agoI use both hands on both ears. Going cross-ear lets me get a different angle I can't seem to match with the corresponding-side hand.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- junga 6y agoJust asked my significant other about this. She uses her right hand for her left ear.
- bluGill 6y agoThe study was specifically of children, including enough that are too young to clean their own ears. So this handedness theory doesn't check out.
- hnracer 6y agoThe study mixed older children with younger ones. The younger ones have no handedness bias but the older ones may have. The presence of these older children may have been sufficient to cause the asymmetric p values that we saw.
- dtech 6y agoHe literally addresses that in the article
- lutorm 6y agoMy small population study (size: 1) showed a clear causation of cerumen impaction after Q-tip use. Your results may vary, but they don't work for me.
- kgwxd 6y agoI've cleaned my ears with q-tips every single day for almost 30 years and haven't had a single issue. In fact, every visit to the doctor I get a comment about how clean they are followed by a word of caution. Maybe letting it build up then trying to use a q-tip causes impaction?
- skulk 6y ago> Maybe letting it build up then trying to use a q-tip causes impaction? I did this a while ago and it absolutely made the problem 100x worse, had to get it vacuumed out at the ENT. The earwax had apparently gotten stuck to my eardrum. Consistent q-tip use (like brushing teeth) seems fine, but I'll NEVER again attempt to clear out any kind of blockage with them.
- ZainRiz 6y agoExactly this. I used to use qtips regularly, then stopped using it for a couple weeks. The next time I tried using one suddenly couldn't hear in one year. Two days of using ear wax drops later, a giant ear wax plug slid out of my ear canal.
- jusssi 6y agoYup. I occasionally get earwax impactions from wax build up, then try to use a q-tip for a quick remedy. 75% of time I manage to make things worse.
- chaoticmass 6y agoI use them after every shower, so basically every day. In my experience, there's never enough build up for there to be anything to push in and get impacted.
- smileysteve 6y agowell, yeah, there's never enough buildup because you're cleaning it every day, what about the anti bacterial and foreign object protection you're giving up for no good reason.
- bigbubba 6y agoI've been using q-tips every day for as long as I can remember, and have never had any wax buildup (according to my doctors, who look in my ears) and I've never had an ear infection either. This is despite spending 12 years as a competitive swimmer (ear infections are common for swimmers, probably because they let gross public pool water fester in there instead of using a qtip!) Datapoint of one... but why should I change what I'm doing if it's working? Some times I've gone on trips without qtips and the resulting sensation after a few days is distractingly unpleasant. (Incidentally a little rolled up toilet paper works alright in a pinch.)
- smileysteve 6y ago> but why should I change what I'm doing if it's working? Examples: 1.Teddy Roosevelt used Cigars to help his asthma, as a child, at a doctor's recommendation. (Examples exist for many drugs gone awry) 2. Alcohol based mouthwash was working at killing bad breath (temporarily), but leading to worse breath and more gingivitis in the long run. 3. Enemas and Douching. Directly: You experience discomfort immediately upon stopping cleaning (likely much like immediately after shaving), your time, your resources, waste. Anecdotal. I don't use qtips, have never had a doctor say I have any bad ear wax buildup. I do have occasional outer ear infections.
- bigbubba 6y ago
- jakear 6y agoHas the author considered asking people instead of speculating and blindly discrediting studies? As with others in this thread, I have had earwax compaction issues from attempting to use q tips to clean. Don’t do it, use the squirt bottles. They’re great and like $20 for infinite uses.
- latchkey 6y agoSoon after I moved to Vietnam, I discovered "ray tai" through a friend there. Nearly every barbershop has this service. I nicked named it the 'eargasm'. It is one of those things foreigners can't understand, but once you try it... omg... so good. You sit in a chair or lay down on a table (my preference) and someone who does this all day long, puts a bright light near your ear and uses a razor to cut off the hair on the outsides of your ears (if you have any) and then uses a bunch of different tools [0] to extract out all the ear wax and anything else in there. I always come out feeling like my hearing is more 'clear'. They literally touch your eardrum and the feeling is somewhere on the edge of uncomfortable, but oh so good at the same time. At the end, they use a very fuzzy q-tip and it makes this wonderful noise and feeling. Of course, I've heard horror stories about this not going well. Punctured eardrums, infections, etc... but the fact is that literally millions of people every day get this service in Vietnam. You see people all over getting it in shops. You also learn quickly that if you don't like something, move your head away and they stop immediately. If you get this often enough, you should purchase your own set of 'tools' (about $4-6) that you carry with you and have them sanitize them each time before use. I went to a whole bunch of different people and eventually found a few places that I liked a lot. For the most part the service is the same all over, but everyone has their own unique different technique too. [0] https://chamsoccothe.com/uploads/images/san-pham/lay-ray-tai-12-mon-nan-mun-01-copy.jpg https://chamsoccothe.com/uploads/images/san-pham/lay-ray-tai...
- eps 6y agoThere's also something called "eyelid shaving", courtesy of China. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1215255/rare-practice-eye-shaving-still-part-daily-life-chengdu https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1215255/rare-practic...
- smackay 6y agoTake a walk along the beach. A small proportion by volume but a large proportion by number, of the pieces of plastic you will find, will be the stems of Q-tips. If you're going to use them, get the paper kind and leave the ones with plastic on the shelf.
- notJim 6y agoThose flosser things are among the worst offenders these days. When I go camping, I always see them littered around campsites.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoThe paper ones are too soft though, you can't put enough pressure to scrape the side of the ear canal. Also, I use them for other things too such as cleaning electronics with alcohol where more pressure is often needed. What is more important is to dispose of them correctly so that they don't end up on the beach in the first place.
- garblegarble 6y agoI've switched to bamboo qtips for electronics, they can take a good amount of force (although not as much as plastic ones)
- heavyset_go 6y agoThere are wood Q-tips if firmness is important to you. They're also generally cheaper.
- bigbubba 6y agoQ-Tip brand q-tips are made of paper. As far as I'm concerned, they're the superior product all around, all the alternatives I've seen have inferior fluffiness. I'm not usually one for brand loyalty, but in this instance I haven't been able to find any generic version that's satisfactory.
- gowld 6y agoWhere? I've never seen Q-tips on the beach
- npinsker 6y agoFor what it's worth: I have an incredible ENT with 40 years of experience, and she's consistently recommended Q-tips for her patients and held that the AAO is overcautious here (though it's certainly possible to cause impaction by, e.g., using a dry Q-tip in a dry ear canal).
- yboris 6y agoWhat is "ENT" what is "AAO" ?
- loeg 6y agoENT = Ear, Nose, Throat. It's a medical specialization / subfield.
- jakebasile 6y agoENT is Ear Nose and Throat, a medical specialization. Not sure about the other.
- codpiece 6y agoENT = Ears Nose Throat doctor AAO = American Academy of Otolaryngology
- __float 6y ago"ear, nose and throat" -- common name to refer to otorhinolaryngology. "American Academy of Otolaryngology"
- zeku 6y agoENT = Ear, nose, & throat specialist -- I think. AAO is presumably a governing medical body
- codpiece 6y agoDang, we're all fast
- throwawaysea 6y agoENT = Ear Nose Throat doctor AAO = (I am guessing) American Association of Otolaryngology (head and neck surgery, which includes the ear - basically ENT surgery)
- koreanguy 6y agotry Wooden Coffee Stirrers, the have the perfect shape, to remove the wax, been using it for years. make sure you brush the Wooden Coffee Stirrers against something like your jeans or shirt, to unsharpen the edges.
- robotresearcher 6y agoWhy stop there? Screwdriver removes crusty eye goo. Tablesaw trims fingernails in an instant.
- phren0logy 6y agoI'm a doctor, but I'm not here to take sides on the Q-tip issue. I'm here to clarify how many (but not all) of us use medical research: the "pyramid of evidence." The idea is that I rely upon the best available evidence, which (roughly in order) is: meta-analysis, randomized controlled trials and other prospective data, retrospective analyses, expert consensus, and (finally) clinical experience. This is rough because there are good critiques of meta-analyses as a tool, the available data may be a bad fit for that patient, research biases, etc. A big one is that many questions don't have a big commercial upside, so nobody will ever fund a good prospective blinded trial. Which takes us to the last point: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Just because all the of the studies about Q-Tips are low quality doesn't mean a better study would find something different. We don't know the answer to that, and that would be a big assumption to make. So, sometimes the best available evidence is not statistically ironclad. It falls on us to use a reasonable approach about how hard a line to take. Some do a better job than others. That was long and rambling, but hopefully it helps to clarify some misconceptions. As an applied science, we have to go with the data we've got, which is almost always not an ideal fit for the patient in front of us.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y agoRegarding the commercial upside: Wouldn't q-tip manufactures have an incentive to prove using q-tips is, in some way, beneficial? In the case there is no benefit, but it's unclear if they are harmful, for what purpose do they serve? At least with respect to human anatomy. Q-tips have other applications, like cleaning electronics, but I am considering those uses not germane here.
- handol 6y ago> for what purpose do they serve? It feels good to scoop the goop out of your ears after a hot shower.
- dcolkitt 6y agoI'm someone who naturally produces a lot of ear wax. I don't think people really appreciate just how unpleasant it is. After it builds up past a certain point, sounds become distorted and it's hard to decode individual words. It can often be extremely itching and irritating.
- notJim 6y agoI used to use Q-tips all the time because my ears were always itchy from the earwax (ew, sorry.) My doctor told me the q-tips were irritating the inside of my ear, and that's why they were itchy. I stopped using Q-tips, and after a few months the itching went away. shrug ymmv.
- windock 6y agoMy experience too. Q-tips solve the problem they created themselves.
- tluyben2 6y agoI never had any use for them; is that buildup something that is different per individual or? I would not really want to poke my ear if not absolutely necessary.
- jw887c 6y agoOh definitely. I have TONS of buildup after a few days. There is a (anecdotally) significant difference in hearing ability post cleaning via q-tip. If I don't use the q-tip, Airpods get very gross within a few days.
- roywiggins 6y agoSome people just produce loads of earwax, different people have different types, etc. For instance: https://www.23andme.com/topics/traits/earwax-type/ https://www.23andme.com/topics/traits/earwax-type/
- modeless 6y agoDon't mess around with Q-tips blind. Get one of these and you can see while you clean your ear: https://www.japantrendshop.com/coden-ear-scope-13000-standard-p-2756.html https://www.japantrendshop.com/coden-ear-scope-13000-standar... I got one after I had to have a doctor unblock my ear. I use it once a month or so and haven't had any problems since.
- tartoran 6y agoThis looks very interesting but does one really need one in most cases? I've stopped using Q-tips when I found about Bamboo Oriculi which I could get in any Chinatown (now they're everwhere, just found them on etsy). They're reusable and a lot less problematic than Q-tips. Q-tips sometimes push the wax in rather than take it out.
- modeless 6y agoWhen you stick things in your ear the risk of puncturing your own eardrum is real. It's a lot better when you can see what you're doing. And you can verify that you got everything.
- snarfy 6y agoI had a classmate in grade school that was deaf in one ear. He said he was cleaning his ear with a q-tip when his sister walked up behind him with a paper bag and popped it as a joke.
- smileysteve 6y agoRelated: The strange life of Q-tips, the most bizarre thing people buy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10942752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10942752 (2015)
- brandonmenc 6y agoAnecdotal: I use Q-tips every day and on my most recent trip to the audiologist they told me I had absolutely no wax buildup impaction. But when I see people use them in both ears simultaneously, I cringe. Better hope you don't have a seizure or sneeze while doing that.
- daneel_w 6y agoHas anyone ever heard of anyone, in their childhood or adult life, who suffered problems from using cotton swabs to clean their ears? Punctured eardrum out of clumsiness is not a qualifying case. This warning always struck me as exaggerated caution, like telling kids to never ever touch a pair of scissors, just to avoid the possible risk of them running with scissors, which has a possible risk of them tripping onto scissors.
- ardy42 6y ago> Has anyone ever heard of anyone, in their childhood or adult life, who suffered problems from using cotton swabs to clean their ears? Punctured eardrum out of clumsiness is not a qualifying case. > This warning always struck me as exaggerated caution, like telling kids to never ever touch a pair of scissors, just to avoid the possible risk of them running with scissors, which has a possible risk of them tripping onto scissors. That's definitely a qualifying case. It's quite valid to want to avoid rare but extreme outcomes. For instance: maybe most kids can run with scissors with only minor issues, but then there's that one kids who gives themselves a horrible injury one day in kindergarten that's traumatic to everyone (e.g. ends up stabbing themselves in the eye, possibly resulting in blindness or even brain damage).
- daneel_w 6y agoAnd your approach is to teach children to fear scissors instead of teaching them to use scissors carefully; to teach people that cotton swabs are "dangerous" and must never be used. This mindset is problematic and does not help one bit.
- ardy42 6y ago> And your approach is to teach children to fear scissors instead of teaching them to use scissors carefully; to teach people that cotton swabs are "dangerous" and must never be used. No, that's not my approach. Literally no one but you is saying that "cotton swabs are 'dangerous' and must never be used." What people are saying is to not jab them in your ear canal (e.g. avoid using them in risky ways akin to running with scissors). > This mindset is problematic and does not help one bit. The mindset of exaggerating everyone else's position into a straw man of hyperbole is problematic and does not help one bit.
- kylehotchkiss 6y agoFor anybody who actually deals with earwax buildup issues, the Debrox ear drops they sell at Target/Walgreens/CVS along with the irrigation bulb/warm water will resolve the issue in about 10 minutes. Keep your head tilted and enjoy the strange bubbly sound. Make sure you make the water lukewarm, closer to skin temperature before you spray it in your ear (if it's too cold, you'll be dizzy for 10 minutes). I've had temporary hearing loss resolved with this before.
- LTL_FTC 6y agoYeah, warm water for sure. Had this done at an urgent care once. The nurse used cold tap water and I’m pretty sure I drove home drunk afterwards.
- function_seven 6y agoI do this every few months. It’s an odd combination of horrifying and satisfying to see what comes out. But it’s just pure satisfaction to hear the Pop Rocks crackling in my ear (“that means it’s working!”), and the clarity of my hearing afterward.
- ksaj 6y agoWhen I was a kid, I used to get chronic ear infections. At some point, they did some testing that involved forcefully streaming cold water into my ear. As you stated, it made my head spin something serious. As an adult I got a cholesteatoma in that same ear, which is probably directly related to the issue that caused so many infections in my younger days. I had surgery to remove it, and now I have to visit the surgeon once a year for ear cleaning because that ear doesn't self-clean so efficiently anymore. I have to use oil drops the night before so it isn't painful. I really dislike getting it done, but it sure feels better afterward. I've tried those effervescing concoctions, and I'm not convinced they actually do very much at all. It does sound really cool though.
- karaterobot 6y agoAgreed, that process works wonders. Incidentally, Debrox is carbamide peroxide, which is basically equivalent to hydrogen peroxide. Debrox is $11/oz on Amazon, while hydrogen peroxide is around $.50/oz.
- chairmanwow1 6y agoWhy don't people just use something like Debrox? Q-tips seem dangerous enough that it would be better to just not take the risk to go deaf.
- gowld 6y agoDebrox is much more complicated to use than swabs.
- fragsworth 6y agoI just want to take issue with the first thing said in the post: > Disclaimer: I am not a doctor; even if I’m 100% right in my argument and you are 100% convinced by it, you shouldn’t listen to me over actual doctors; it’s a bad habit that might actually kill you. At least in the U.S., with for-profit medicine, you cannot and should not trust doctors. There is a financial motivation that is misaligned with trying to help you; they (and their employers) have very twisted incentives to try to get you to do procedures that are at best unnecessary and expensive, but at worst potentially damaging to your health. I've seen and dealt with it enough times in my life, and came to the frustrating conclusion that you really just have to look out for yourself. Don't rely on doctors unless you know them personally. Not that it's super related to this Q-Tip thing. I just had to take issue with this, because I hear it so often, and it is really just a lazy cover-your-ass line.
- ardy42 6y ago> At least in the U.S., with for-profit medicine, you cannot and should not trust doctors. There is a financial motivation that is misaligned with trying to help you; they (and their employers) have very twisted incentives to try to get you to do procedures that are at best unnecessary and expensive, but at worst potentially damaging to your health. This is an insanely over-cynical take. While there definitely are doctors who run their practices like a crudely-capitalist business [1], that's not what typically gets people into medicine. You mainly just need to be engaged in your own care and seek second opinions for anything major or if you're having doubts. IMHO, it's more likely you'll have find yourself with an incompetent doctor than one who's trying to screw you. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/upshot/covid-testing-doctor-fees.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/upshot/covid-testing-doct...
- gumby 6y agoThese days the overwhelming majority of doctors work for managed care and are salaried. There are are some specialities that feature private practice (notably derms and plastic surgeons) but for ears, in particular, you’re seeing an internist or GP or ER doc who is in almost every case is purely salaried.
- war1025 6y agoI always clean my ears out with a bobby pin. Works much better than a qtip in my experience. Obviously make sure you are alone and in a place where you won't be startled or jostled or otherwise put yourself in a situation where you jam the bobby pin into your ear drum. The amount of junk that gets built up in your ears is pretty impressive.
- _greim_ 6y agoThis is one of those times where standard medical advice seems to be out of sync with common sense, like with masks. Maybe the advice is a white lie—e.g. to protect PPE supply in the case of masks—or maybe it has a certain delicious counter-intuitiveness that makes the speaker feel wise, which means it gets repeated more frequently over time, thus crowding out competing ideas. Or maybe it's an attitude on the part of doctors of "common people can't be trusted to do it correctly," so they default to the standard advice of "don't."
- Raphmedia 6y agoIt's not about mechanically causing build-up or impaction. It's about not disturbing the natural cerumen flow (epithelial migration). Cerumen will thinly coat the ear canal to protect it. When you mess with that flow, you create little build-ups, kind of like road traffic. This accumulates and create the equivalent of a traffic jam. This is also why Q-tips users swear by them: they are creating the issue that requires the Q-tips in the first place. Worth noting that not all humans have the same kind of cerumen. There is wet cerumen (dominant, 50%) and dry cerumen (20%). It depends on your genetic. If you are asian, chances are that your cerumen will be harder and require scooping out. Again, this is done with a little spoon by a third-party or by using one carefully (they also come with cameras and flashlights). You remove the build-up with accuracy, you don't just jam cotton in there and randomly scrape at your ear canal.
- satisfaction 6y agoDo the other 30% have no ear wax?
- Raphmedia 6y agoApologies, this was very poorly worded. I edited that post many times and those parenthesis lost their meanings. Wet cerumen is 50% lipid and dry cerumen is 20% lipid. If you want demographics, I've found online that: "dry earwax is very common (80-95 per cent) among East Asians, but is lower (30-50 per cent) in southern Asia, Pacific Islands, Central Asia and Asia Minor, and in Native North Americans and Inuit peoples of Asian ancestry. It's very uncommon among Europeans and Africans (0-3 per cent)". http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2015/04/14/4213402.htm http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2015/04/14/4213402.ht...
- rendall 6y ago> "Cerumen will thinly coat the ear canal to protect it. When you mess with that flow, you create little build-ups, kind of like road traffic." I think the issue is that there is little evidence for Q-tips causing problems. With sincere respect, to me, this sounds like a "just-so story", a plausible-sounding explanation without actual basis. > "Again, this is done with a little spoon by a third-party or by using one carefully (they also come with cameras and flashlights). You remove the build-up with accuracy, you don't just jam cotton in there and randomly scrape at your ear canal." It sounds like the issue is not "little spoon" versus "cotton swab" but "accuracy" versus "jamming". Anyone jamming anything in their ear is gonna have problems, whether or not it's a little spoon or a cotton swab. If you can acknowledge that people can carefully use a little spoon on their own just by care and feel, then logically you would have to acknowledge that some people, perhaps those with wet earwax, can do the same with cotton swabs.
- seanwilson 6y agoAlong the same vein, I tried to find studies on what dry beans you can cook directly in a modern slow cooker to save effort and there's not a lot out of evidence to go on. All online articles on it uses similar quotes that trace back to a couple of old studies that aren't that comprehensive. The common parroted advice is not to use slow cookers for this because they don't get hot enough to destroy toxins in some bean varieties - this seems to be based on slow cookers not reaching above 80C though, when I'd say most slow cookers get much hotter than this.
- IshKebab 6y agoVery off-topic but: > cotton tipped swabs (that’s the generic term for Q-tip) Pretty sure it's actually "cotton buds". That's what they are called outside America.
- ardy42 6y ago> Pretty sure it's actually "cotton buds". That's what they are called outside America. The generic term is "cotton swab" in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_swab https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_swab However, I've literally never heard the term "cotton tipped swabs" used anywhere.
- rendall 6y agoToday I learned that we have a part of the ear called a meatus and I would like to unlearn this, please
- ksaj 6y agoYou have several meatus. You pee through one and have several inside your nose as well. There are actually 2 meatus per ear, which probably comes as a bit of a surprise.
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- hnracer 6y agoTLDR- There is a strong correlation between Q-tip use and wax plugs but it might be reverse causality and this possibility hasn't been studied. I wouldn't exactly call it "basically no evidence" as he says in the article, the correlation is very strong and the mechanism seems plausible.
- interestica 6y agoOne aspect that's often left out in conversations about earwax (cerumen) is that there are basically two very different types -- and they're determined by genes. > There are two distinct genetically determined types of earwax: the wet type, which is dominant, and the dry type, which is recessive. While East Asians, Southeast Asians and Native Americans are more likely to have the dry type of cerumen (gray and flaky), African and European people are more likely to have the wet type (honey-brown, dark orange to dark-brown and moist). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earwax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earwax So, the effectiveness of any tool is going to be wildly different for a 'wet' type vs a 'dry' type. And, the ability to be "impacted" will vary as well.
- SeanLuke 6y agoMy understanding [please correct me, I'm not a doctor] is that it's recently come to light that there is very, very little evidence, if any, that salt is bad for you (aside from people with certain heart conditions), yet the whole medical profession loudly proclaims that salt is in general bad for you. Regardless of whether future evidence may demonstrate that salt is bad for you, or that q-tips are bad for you, this sort of thing seems to be the medical field's version of the urban legend. Everybody believes X because they heard someone else -- maybe a professor at school -- stating it, but ultimately it has little scientific basis, and it takes years to root it out. I wonder how often this happens, and what can be done to counter it.
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- voxgen 6y agoActually, blood pressure is the determiner of whether high intake of salt is bad for you. High sodium intake is only associated with increased risk in people with high blood pressure. However, having too little sodium is associated with increased risk regardless of blood pressure. Source: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)30467-6/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
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- copperx 6y agoHigh salt intake is associated with stomach, esophageal, breast and other cancers, so it's not innocuous even if your blood pressure is fine.
- temp0826 6y agoMy number one fear is an earthquake happening while I’m q-tipping my ears
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- ncmncm 6y agoSimilarly (and obliquely referred to near the end): Dietary cholesterol is not bad for you. At all. Saturated fat is not bad for you. At all. Sugar is all kinds of bad. The more they look, the worse it gets. Particularly fructose and sucrose. (Glucose is fine.) Meat still causes heart trouble, but it's not the saturated fat at fault. After all these decades, we still don't know what is. Nobody was looking, because "sat fat!"