Should I use garlic infused oil to prevent an ear infection?
September 10, 2013 12:41 PM Subscribe
I have a huge, life-determining standardized test tomorrow. A bit of ear plug got stuck inside my ear this morning when half of it ripped out as I tried to remove my earplug. Now, my ear has started hurting a little, and I'm terrified! I'm highly prone to ear infections, and am fearful of waking up with one tomorrow. It would be a huge distraction during this 3 hour test that has required months of preparation!
Backstory: I ended up having to use a tweezers to extract the little nub of earplug that was lodged deeply inside my ear canal. While I was cajoling out that last bit of earplug, I probably pushed it in even farther, possibly introducing bacteria into my ear. Or maybe, just irritating the skin.
Would it be advisable to put in some homemade garlic infused oil to stop an infection from developing? Does an infection have a chance of developing overnight, or not? Why might it be hurting now? I left a message with my Doc, but I wanted info on any experiences you have had with home remedies for ear infections.
Backstory: I ended up having to use a tweezers to extract the little nub of earplug that was lodged deeply inside my ear canal. While I was cajoling out that last bit of earplug, I probably pushed it in even farther, possibly introducing bacteria into my ear. Or maybe, just irritating the skin.
Would it be advisable to put in some homemade garlic infused oil to stop an infection from developing? Does an infection have a chance of developing overnight, or not? Why might it be hurting now? I left a message with my Doc, but I wanted info on any experiences you have had with home remedies for ear infections.
IANAD but go to a walk in clinic or something similar and have the nurse/doctor extract it. Something like this can damage your hearing.
posted by thermonuclear.jive.turkey at 12:48 PM on September 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
posted by thermonuclear.jive.turkey at 12:48 PM on September 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
Pouring oil in your ear sounds like a bad idea. Sticking tweezers in your own ear is dangerous, and was also a bad idea. I suggest you stop messing with your ears and have a doctor remove the remaining bits of earplug.
posted by ryanrs at 12:48 PM on September 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by ryanrs at 12:48 PM on September 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
My experience is that I have fastidiously avoided "home remedies" for ear infections (or intrusions). That experience has worked well for me, and I recommend it heartily.
posted by cribcage at 12:51 PM on September 10, 2013 [15 favorites]
posted by cribcage at 12:51 PM on September 10, 2013 [15 favorites]
IANAD, but you seem in a state of high anxiety. I don't want to say you might be imagining it, but it's unlikely an infection could already have developed and that the pain you are feeling is the result of said infection. You might have nicked your ear with the tweezers. As others have said, if you're really worried about it, have it looked at. Don't try folk remedies for conditions you may not have, and don't mess with your ear anymore. DO try to calm down and relax before the test tomorrow. You've spent a lot of time prepping for it, you'll probably do well, ear infection or not.
posted by ubiquity at 12:51 PM on September 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by ubiquity at 12:51 PM on September 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
You might be thinking "but I don't want to spend money on a doctor to have it removed!" But, even if you SOMEHOW managed to treat it with kitchen supplies, you will eventually need to have it removed, and it might get substantially worse by then. Lodged in farther, covered in ear goo, irritating your ear-membranes... you cannot fix this yourself.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:51 PM on September 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:51 PM on September 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
Never, never, never, ever stick anything pointy into your ear again. Nothing wider than your elbow. Got it?
I am not qualified to tell you whether you should use ear drops to try to get it out. They might just wash it up against the eardrum.
I don't see a way around this other than going to a walk-in clinic or urgent care, sorry. I agree that you shouldn't just leave it there, especially if you're prone to ear infections, so just bite the bullet and go to a walk-in clinic or to urgent care.
Unless you have a medical advice line where you are, like we have a nonemergency line and we also have NHS Direct. That's the kind of service that would be able to tell you whether drops would work.
But you have an exam in the morning, you don't have time to fanny around calling advice lines, so just go right to urgent care and be done with it, because that's what I would do.
posted by tel3path at 12:53 PM on September 10, 2013 [8 favorites]
I am not qualified to tell you whether you should use ear drops to try to get it out. They might just wash it up against the eardrum.
I don't see a way around this other than going to a walk-in clinic or urgent care, sorry. I agree that you shouldn't just leave it there, especially if you're prone to ear infections, so just bite the bullet and go to a walk-in clinic or to urgent care.
Unless you have a medical advice line where you are, like we have a nonemergency line and we also have NHS Direct. That's the kind of service that would be able to tell you whether drops would work.
But you have an exam in the morning, you don't have time to fanny around calling advice lines, so just go right to urgent care and be done with it, because that's what I would do.
posted by tel3path at 12:53 PM on September 10, 2013 [8 favorites]
An urgent care can fix this for you and assuage your anxiety in less than an hour. If you're in the US, even those drugstore walk-in clinics can handle this. The answer is not to stew over it and pour things in your ear and ask questions on the internet. Even if you do pour garlic oil in your ear, you're still going to worry about it. Go to the doctor already.
posted by something something at 1:01 PM on September 10, 2013 [5 favorites]
posted by something something at 1:01 PM on September 10, 2013 [5 favorites]
Don't start performing home remedies for something you're not even sure you have -- especially remedies which sound much more likely to exacerbate the problem than to help fix it. I think it's a lot more likely that your ear hurts because you've been poking at it with tweezers, and because you're worried about it.
While I was cajoling out that last bit of earplug, I probably pushed it in even farther
It's not clear to me from this description: did you get the bit of earplug out or not? If you got it out, stop fussing with your ear, it'll be fine. If you didn't, go to urgent care and let them fix it properly.
(For future reference, earplugs shouldn't be ripping in half when you try to pull them out. If that's happening you're either pushing them in way too deep or you're reusing them way too much... either way, bad idea. This may well be why you're "highly prone to ear infections" in the first place.)
posted by ook at 1:03 PM on September 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
While I was cajoling out that last bit of earplug, I probably pushed it in even farther
It's not clear to me from this description: did you get the bit of earplug out or not? If you got it out, stop fussing with your ear, it'll be fine. If you didn't, go to urgent care and let them fix it properly.
(For future reference, earplugs shouldn't be ripping in half when you try to pull them out. If that's happening you're either pushing them in way too deep or you're reusing them way too much... either way, bad idea. This may well be why you're "highly prone to ear infections" in the first place.)
posted by ook at 1:03 PM on September 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
If you still think there might be some earplug still in there, I'd go to urgent care to get it out - no going in there yourself! But for the most part I think the worry about pushing bacteria in or whatever is just your anxiety.
But yeah careful with earplugs and never stick anything pointy in your ear. I'm not a doctor but my mother is one, and did extract a half ear plug thing from my ear after yelling at me to be careful with those things and never stick anything pointy in my ear myself. This was just a few years ago, in adult life, so hey mistakes happen.
Good luck on the test!
posted by sweetkid at 1:06 PM on September 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
But yeah careful with earplugs and never stick anything pointy in your ear. I'm not a doctor but my mother is one, and did extract a half ear plug thing from my ear after yelling at me to be careful with those things and never stick anything pointy in my ear myself. This was just a few years ago, in adult life, so hey mistakes happen.
Good luck on the test!
posted by sweetkid at 1:06 PM on September 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: I was able to extract the bit of remaining earplug, so nothing is in my ear right now. Sorry for being unclear about that.
posted by sunnychef88 at 1:07 PM on September 10, 2013
posted by sunnychef88 at 1:07 PM on September 10, 2013
Response by poster: I did use the same pair a few days in a row. Learned my lesson not to reuse ear plugs!
posted by sunnychef88 at 1:10 PM on September 10, 2013
posted by sunnychef88 at 1:10 PM on September 10, 2013
If you start feeling pain, go to urgent care and have them check for infection. If you feel fine now, leave it all alone.
The visit to urgent care will be about $35 and anti-biotics are so cheap they'll pay you to take them away.
Don't put oil in your ear.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 1:14 PM on September 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
The visit to urgent care will be about $35 and anti-biotics are so cheap they'll pay you to take them away.
Don't put oil in your ear.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 1:14 PM on September 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
By the way, there's no reason to reuse foam earplugs. Don't buy the hugely overpriced earplugs at the drug store. Instead buy them in large quantities online. They cost something like 10-20c per pair.
posted by ryanrs at 1:18 PM on September 10, 2013 [6 favorites]
posted by ryanrs at 1:18 PM on September 10, 2013 [6 favorites]
Best answer: FWIW, when I was a kid my father, a doctor, would sometimes clean out our ears (after taking a look inside with an otoscope and concluding that there was something causing irritation) by dripping a bit (just a few drops, really) of rubbing alcohol in there and making us lie on our side for a minute or so. Then he'd just have us tip it out onto a cotton ball. He's also told me that this is something I can do myself (now that I'm a grown-up) without putting myself at risk. I would definitely try that before the oil thing.
Probably though what you are dealing with is just some irritation from the foreign object that was lodged in your ear, possibly exacerbated by your digging around in there. Ear infections as you are probably thinking of them (the kind that you might get antibiotics for from a doctor) tend go on in the middle ear, behind the eardrum -- not in the ear canal on the outside, though of course you can get an infection there too. It will probably go away on its own, though if I were you (and I'm not giving medical advice, just saying what I would personally do in your shoes) I would try the alcohol thing anyway. If you scratched yourself with the tweezers or something then it'll probably help the healing.
I would seriously not worry about it though. You are not going to wake up tomorrow with a raging ear infection just because you lost a bit of foam rubber in your ear. It may feel a bit irritated for a few days if you managed to scratch yourself, but that's probably it. The best thing you can do is just relax. Plenty of time to get it taken care of later if it does develop into something unpleasant, but even if you do get some kind of infection it's not going to happen overnight.
This is not to say that going to a doctor today would be a bad idea, but if it's inconvenient then I think you could feel comfortable putting it off until there was something more obviously wrong than there is now.
posted by Scientist at 1:26 PM on September 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
Probably though what you are dealing with is just some irritation from the foreign object that was lodged in your ear, possibly exacerbated by your digging around in there. Ear infections as you are probably thinking of them (the kind that you might get antibiotics for from a doctor) tend go on in the middle ear, behind the eardrum -- not in the ear canal on the outside, though of course you can get an infection there too. It will probably go away on its own, though if I were you (and I'm not giving medical advice, just saying what I would personally do in your shoes) I would try the alcohol thing anyway. If you scratched yourself with the tweezers or something then it'll probably help the healing.
I would seriously not worry about it though. You are not going to wake up tomorrow with a raging ear infection just because you lost a bit of foam rubber in your ear. It may feel a bit irritated for a few days if you managed to scratch yourself, but that's probably it. The best thing you can do is just relax. Plenty of time to get it taken care of later if it does develop into something unpleasant, but even if you do get some kind of infection it's not going to happen overnight.
This is not to say that going to a doctor today would be a bad idea, but if it's inconvenient then I think you could feel comfortable putting it off until there was something more obviously wrong than there is now.
posted by Scientist at 1:26 PM on September 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
Look up garlic and botulism and definitely do not put galic oil in your ear.
posted by srboisvert at 2:07 PM on September 10, 2013 [10 favorites]
posted by srboisvert at 2:07 PM on September 10, 2013 [10 favorites]
I always thought that oil was to soften ear wax. My dad (a GP) and my own family doctor both recommended this and I've never had problems, plus googling brings up reputable sources. I'm highly skeptical on the garlic front though. In any case, I don't think oil is used to fight infections.
posted by carolr at 2:23 PM on September 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by carolr at 2:23 PM on September 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
A friend of mine just told me a story where he put some hot-sauce-derived concoction in his ear as a swimmer's ear remedy. It culminated in him going to the doctor anyway, but in a hell of a lot more pain than previously. He got antibiotic drops that cleared it up in a hot minute.
The moral of this story is, don't put random shit in your ear, especially not something food-based.
I would just take an Advil or two and go to sleep. The Advil will calm down any inflammation your rooting around might have caused, and will also dull any distracting pain. If it still hurts in the morning (or if you get other symptoms of an infection), then definitely call doc/UC. Or you could just go now, that seems like a fine idea to me as well.
posted by en forme de poire at 3:42 PM on September 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
The moral of this story is, don't put random shit in your ear, especially not something food-based.
I would just take an Advil or two and go to sleep. The Advil will calm down any inflammation your rooting around might have caused, and will also dull any distracting pain. If it still hurts in the morning (or if you get other symptoms of an infection), then definitely call doc/UC. Or you could just go now, that seems like a fine idea to me as well.
posted by en forme de poire at 3:42 PM on September 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
my doctor told me to put hydrogen peroxide in my ears (with the same laying on the side thing that Scientist describes) to deal with irritation/excessive wax caused by allergies. i totally agree to keep things like oil and hot sauce out of your ear!
posted by nadawi at 3:55 PM on September 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by nadawi at 3:55 PM on September 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
When my son had a lot of ear infections, doctors recommended hydrogen peroxide in the ear. It can help. You can also take a hot bath to try to pre-emptively kill any developing infection. It is less risky than sticking stuff in your ears when you do not know what you are doing.
I have done a lot of home remedies, including for ear infection specifically. I have never put any kind of oil in my ears. I think it is unlikely I ever will. That sounds problematic to me. I don't recommend it.
posted by Michele in California at 4:02 PM on September 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
I have done a lot of home remedies, including for ear infection specifically. I have never put any kind of oil in my ears. I think it is unlikely I ever will. That sounds problematic to me. I don't recommend it.
posted by Michele in California at 4:02 PM on September 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
Best answer: We've done the garlic olive oil treatment for impending ear infections and it seemed to help, with both my daughter and my wife. (Re botulism, we don't let it sit around, we prep it and use it.)
Unless you have prior experience that getting foreign objects stuck in your ear leads to infections (I hope not!) I wouldn't assume one is on the way.
posted by mattu at 4:59 PM on September 10, 2013
Unless you have prior experience that getting foreign objects stuck in your ear leads to infections (I hope not!) I wouldn't assume one is on the way.
posted by mattu at 4:59 PM on September 10, 2013
I would not do that. Mineral oil, maybe. But vegetable oils dry out and go rancid. I wouldn't want that in my ears.
I have used hydrogen peroxide to give the ears a good cleaning, and swimmers' ear remedies are usually just isopropyl alcohol.
I suppose folk remedies can work, but I try to stick to things that are sold in drugstores. If the folk remedies really worked, someone would be selling them. Is my opinion.
posted by gjc at 5:19 PM on September 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
I have used hydrogen peroxide to give the ears a good cleaning, and swimmers' ear remedies are usually just isopropyl alcohol.
I suppose folk remedies can work, but I try to stick to things that are sold in drugstores. If the folk remedies really worked, someone would be selling them. Is my opinion.
posted by gjc at 5:19 PM on September 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
isopropyl alcohol (at the regular drugstore concentration) is safe, but if you scratched the inside of your ear, putting rubbing alcohol on that inflamed tissue may hurt like hell and possibly inflame it more. Take some advil and leave it alone.
posted by fingersandtoes at 5:23 PM on September 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by fingersandtoes at 5:23 PM on September 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
Best answer: What you have is pre-exam anxiety. There's bacteria in your ear all the time. Stop by the doc in a box if you think it will calm you. However, my guess is you'll stop worrying about the ear and start obsessing about that dry spot on your foot or that new freckle. That's how anxiety works. Anxiety is a lying little shit.
If you've got the ear plug out, then all is good. Get to bed early. And knock that test out of the park tomorrow. You got this!
posted by 26.2 at 6:04 PM on September 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
If you've got the ear plug out, then all is good. Get to bed early. And knock that test out of the park tomorrow. You got this!
posted by 26.2 at 6:04 PM on September 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Meg_Murry at 12:48 PM on September 10, 2013 [25 favorites]