That's the exact opposite of what you should do.

It's okay to use Q tips to clean your ears.

Oh boy.

Oh boy.

Taping your mouth shut will stop your story.

This another one I'm ripping up.

Never tape your mouth shut.

So I'm doctor eric void.

I'm an otolaryngologist, head, neck surgeon.

I'm an associate professor of otolaryngology at N.

Y.

U.

Langone Health.

I've been in practice for over 20 years and I am dr Jackie jones.

I'm an associate professor of otolaryngology while Cornell medicine and I've been in practice for almost 31 years now.

We're specialists and ear, nose and throat.

So our field actually the real title is Oto rhino laron, golly gee photos, rhinos, nose larynx, isla Realogy.

So we sort of think of it as one continuous passage from your nose down into your lungs.

So everything is interconnected and today we will be debunking myths of your nose and throat.

It's okay to hold in your sneeze.

Not a good idea.

I think a small sneeze can be held in.

But if you're generating one of those big snow, you don't want to hold it in, all of that pressure is going to back up into your ears, into your throat, into your lungs.

Our noses, the filter of everything.

We're breathing in so you're breathing in pollen.

You're breathing in germs, you're breathing in particles and dust that builds up in our mucus.

And then a sneeze is the reflex to get that material out.

But sneezing is overall a good thing because you're clearing out your nose.

But again, cover up cover up, it's okay to use Q tips to clean your ears.

Oh boy, Oh boy.

So this is a box of cotton tip applicators and there is a warning on here.

But whoa eric!

I don't think I can see this, Jackie, I brought a magnifying glass just to demonstrate.

There is a warning label on there and it says, and I quote, do not insert swab into ear canal but see how small that is.

It really should be in big bold letters here, but we're telling, you don't do it.

So this is a plastic model of an ear, this is called the pinna and this is the outer ear and you can use a cotton tip applicator to clean the outside the little grooves.

You can see some people do have as their waxes coming out, they can clean that outer portion, that's okay.

But you do not want to go putting this in here like this because you're gonna push your wax in, you're gonna braid the surfaces and you're gonna cause damn some of the things that I recommend on cleaning the ear is drop some alcohol in the air and again, as long as you don't have any ear problems or hole in your ear, you can use hydrogen peroxide that tends to bubble a bit but can be used.

And a warm wet washcloth that you wring out well and used to clean the outside of your ear.

We really don't want you to over clean your ear.

But bugs can't get inside your ears.

Oh gross.

Get those mattresses off the floor.

Because no matter how clean you are, those bugs could climb into your bed first of all.

Bugs don't want to be in your ear there.

They are actually afraid of us.

Their private so cockroaches, spiders they don't want but every once in a while they'll meander in.

And the ear is a blind pouch.

I've seen actually a spider who's made a web inside of someone's ear canal.

And the thing about the cockroaches they go in but they can't turn around once they're in there there's not enough space for them to turn around and get out.

So what they do is they keep clawing forward against the eardrum and I don't know if you've ever seen cockroaches legs under a microscope, but it's like hairs and their hooks.

And so then they're scratching the eardrum and as they're scratching the ear drum, the sound that's generated is horrendous and the pain that's generated is horrendous.

So the person starts scratching at their ear and their ears start bleeding.

I've seen people come into that e.

R.

Ripping their ear off and so I immediately know from across the room cockroach in the ear.

So what we do is we try to calm the person down.

And then you can put rubbing alcohol in the ear or mineral oil in the ear or some liquid that will actually kill the bug and then you can suction it out cockroaches about the grossest thing that we see.

But you can get flying insects in the same sort of thing.

We want to drown them out.

But you know you don't have to be phobic, it's pretty gross but we don't see it that frequently.

But if it happens to you at home, try not to panic and just put rubbing alcohol or mineral oil in your ear and then go to the doctor, stop a nosebleed, pinch the bridge of your nose and tilt your head back.

I'm so glad he did this.

And this is not an offense to the school nurse.

They're classically told pinch up here and hold your head back and that's the exact opposite of what you should do.

First off the nose has a tremendous blood supply, the blood supply to the nose has five arteries that meet up here in the front.

It's called kissel box plexus and Kissel box plexus have arteries and veins that meet together.

So if you pinch the front of your nose The sidewall against the Septum and hold it for five minutes and you stay upright and lean forward a little bit so that you can, if some of the blood is going down the back, you can spit it out.

But if you pinch your nose for five minutes you will stop 90% of nosebleeds.

Absolutely think of it as if you had a cut on your skin, you see the blood, what do you do?

You put pressure on pressure stops bleeding because it allows the flow to stop and then your own clotting mechanism to kick in, taping your mouth shut will stop your story.

Okay, this another one I'm ripping up, never tape your mouth shut.

I don't know how that's out there because when you're asleep you need to breathe and let's just say your nose gets blocked and congested and you've got your mouth taped shut, how are you breathing?

So never snoring comes from many different places, not just snoring from your mouth.

Snoring comes from the turbulent flow of air through the respiratory system.

And that turbulent flow can come from your nose, it can come from your mouth, you can come from lower down in your throat.

So just taping your mouth closed is not going to fix that problem for a lot of people.

It's very dangerous and not recommended, only loud music causes hearing loss.

Okay, only loud music.

How about anything loud can cause hearing loss.

There's different ways you can get damaged.

One is a sudden loud noise blast.

So let's say a firearm or a firework near the ear.

Then there's a cumulative effect where you might have noise that say 90 decibels or 100 decibel over time, that also will start harming those cells.

So I'm speaking about 35 to 40 decibels right now.

So 80 to 90 decibels is pretty loud.

The more war some losses, that cumulative loss, because people don't even realize it's happening.

You know, you go on the subways, you walk around in the city can be really loud, construction sounds, factory noises, sirens, all of those things can cause hearing loss.

So, I think of loud noise as if you're looking up into the sun, you don't do it right.

It hurts.

Same thing, loud noise blasting in your ear.

It harms those little inner hair cells and causes permanent hearing walls.

And that's such a great point.

Once it's gone, it's gone, we cannot do really anything to get your hearing back once it's gone.

So, thinking about your hearing early on in life is an important factor.

Swimming causes ear infections.

All right, well, many people swim, it's a very common human activity.

Not everybody gets an ear infection, but there is an entity called swimmer's ear, swimmer's ear is when you get an overgrowth of either bacteria or fungus in the outside ear canal, one of the main culprits from swimmer's ear is over cleaning of your ear.

When you look at the ear canal, this is the outer ear, your canal is about an inch and a half long.

It's lined with wax glands, these glands produce saruman or wax that waterproof our ear, that's one of the jobs, that's why it's waxy.

So when people clean out their ear too much, they're taking all the wax away.

Now water's going in and when water is sitting on the skin in a dark cave, the skin, if you've ever had taken a long bath and your skin kind of changes a little bit or you have your foot and water for a long time, it changes it.

So that change occurs in the ear and all of a sudden this ear canal is gonna start collapsing and closing and closing, closing and the germs inside start multiplying and then you get swimmer's ear which is an outer ear infection.

These are some of the most painful infections that we've seen.

And what's another big culprit for swimmer's ear is these things that I absolutely love, but they're not great, especially in the summer.

I think we have to make a new name here buddy, you're putting this thing in your ear and what's the thing that it's doing in the summer?

It's making warm, dark environment even warmer.

So some things you can do to treat it at home or even preventative if you swim a lot, you can use rubbing alcohol, you just get an ear dropper and you can put three drops or so in your ear, Wiggle it around, let it drain out.

You can also use vinegar, cut it half with water, you can put that in your ear as well after swimming.

Or if you feel water stuck in your ear, you should always get rid of earwax, you should not get rid of your wax ear wax is protection to your ear.

Now there are circumstances where we as ear nose and throat doctors do take out the ear wax, but that's when there's too much of it.

So in a doctor's office you might use an ear cure as the doctor will go in and pull the wax out.

But this is done under a microscopic guidance and incredibly gently because if you go too far in, you're gonna burst the eardrum or you're gonna scratch the ear and it's going.

And one of the things that we use in the office to protect the outside ear canal is we use a speculum which we put it in the outside pushing the ear canal.

And then we work through this little speculum to sort of protect the ear canal.

So these are things you just can't do at home, Loss of smell is only temporary.

Well, that's a big one this year.

You know, as we've gone through covid, one of the big warning signs of covid 19 was loss of sense of smell and and taste associated with what happened is the virus goes into the nose and it hits those olfactory nerves, which is the nerves that supply the sense of smell to our brain and the olfactory nerves sits way back here in the back of the nose.

So it's a really interesting place.

you only really smell from this back of the nose, the sense of smell is probably the least appreciated of our census.

But when you lose it, it's devastating.

So some of those causes can be a head injury.

So our brain sits here.

This is the bottom of the skull and there are these little teeny tiny openings, teeny tiny openings where this hair cells of the olfactory nerve go through and enter into the nose.

So if you get a whiplash injury, your head goes like this.

Those little hair cells can get sheared and you can have a permanent loss of sense of smell simply from a whiplash injury or head injury.

Some of these are permanent, some are temporary.

So one of the things big things that we've been working on this year is a factory training for people who have lost their sense of smell from covid 19 where those nerves have been damaged.

What we do is we have you get different types of smells.

We use essential oils and lavender, eucalyptus, cinnamon, lemon or some of my favorites.

And then what you do is you use those every day and what it does, it helps to retrain your brain to recognize those smells.

Head phones are just as bad as earbuds for your hearing.

So there are in the ear earbuds.

I think we have an example to I brought mine when this goes in your ear.

For some people if they're the type of person that makes a lot of earwax, they might be shoving their wax in.

So if you pull your ear but out and you see a big glob of wax, you might have a big accumulation inside and that's why you're not hearing so well.

In addition, the earbuds sitting in there for long periods of time can start hurting your ear.

The ear is a dark, moist environment, you can start getting ear infections from them.

The pressure of the plastic could press on the TMJ or your jaw joint causing pain in your ear.

So those are some of the drawbacks, but they do provide a nice sound quality, but I try and limit myself to use them, maybe an hour to a day at the most when I'm commuting back and forth to work.

One of the things that as ears, nose and throat doctors that we like better is over the ear earphone.

So these have some real advantages.

They're much more comfortable, They dissipate the sound so it's not that concentrated sound down into your ear canal.

They're not going to push that wax down into your ears.

So a much better choices.

These over the ear earphones.

So these are the noise canceling ones.

What are your thoughts about this?

Yeah.

So noise canceling has a few advantages.

It can block out the outside noise.

So then you don't have to blast your music over the outside noise and we don't like any blasting of noise, whether it be over the ear or in the ear just don't do it.

It's just unhealthy for your ears.

If you have pain in your ear you have an ear infection as an ear nose and throat doctor, I probably see more non ear related ear pain or ear caused their pain than ear infection.

Ear pain and the reason for that is the ear has five nerves that innovated for sense and those nerves can give what's called referred pain from other sites.

Someone might come in and say they have an ear infection because they have ear pain but I'll examine them and their ears fine.