You should never stick a Q-tip in your ear.

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Lots of people use cotton swabs to clean their ears but they shouldn't. It is dangerous for your ears.

How is that so?

It's okay to use one to clean the outer portion of your ear, but don't stick it in your ear canal. Too easy to accidentally stick it too far and cause damage to your eardrum or something. At least, that's the impression I've been under.

You can also shove the wax in further, rather than cleaning it out.

Also, don't use cue tips/cotton buds made of plastic. Buy biodegradable ones. I don't buy them anymore.

You can clean the inside of your ears with warm water i.e. lie down in the bath or run them unde the shower. And clean the outer war with a wash cloth or cotton wool.

Ears, like most other bodily orafaces, are self cleaning. Just the outer part needs a clean.

Well, how else are we supposed to clean our ears, then? (Besides those liquid drops to clean your ears, that is.)

Then what are Q-tips for?

The ear canal is an auto-cleaning system. The wax is a product of it doing its job. Hitting your ear drum with a Q-tip is bad, but most people don't think about the bacteria you spread into your ear with it. The cotton collects a lot of germs, which you put into your sensitive and porous ear canal. Think about it: most people store their Q-tips in the bathroom where moisture builds up and the cotton absorbs and forms bacteria.

It's honestly very gross and freaks me out, but I absolutely can't stand the feeling of having wet ears, so I still use Q-tips every day...

A couple years ago I had the fuzz of a qTip get stuck in my ear. I had to go to the health center & get my ear flushed out cuz it was too far in to be pulled out. My ear was ringing for about a month after.

The idea of a Q-tip for ear cleaning, is to very gently and slowly rotate it in half way and then back out.

Some people get way too aggressive and ram them in too far and move them around like stick shift.

If the ear only gets swabbed occasionally, a q-tip will just end up packing the ear wax that's built up over a long period of time.

When I was fifteen years old, I was trying to scratch ear with qtip and cotton fell off and stuck in ear

No symptoms , and 36 years old

No hearing loss

Every day between 15 and 36 , scratched ear with bobby pin for a couple of minutes

Feels good in a unique way


Yes I know it is bad but addicted

I know the risks, but I still do it otherwise, to scratch an itch. Sometimes wax makes my ears itch, and because of sensory issues I cannot ignore an itch, it drives me mad. So I grab a cotton swab and give my inner ear a gentle scratch. The cotton swab comes out covered in wax, and I feel a relief. The itch generally doesn't return.

I use earplugs a lot anyway, so I think using earplugs has widened the ear canal and is probably more risky to my eardrum than cotton swabs. And I hate noise-cancelling headphones, they're too....autistic.