Stick with me for a minute: I promise there’s some juicy skepticism here. It’ll come right after this graphic personal part. (Full disclosure: I am not a medical doctor, so you shouldn’t treat any information in this article as medical advice.)
I have a pretty nasty ear infection, and that’s saying something because I’m pretty desensitized to them after getting them constantly as a kid. I have such a bad outer ear infection (otitis externa, or swimmer's ear) that my doctor couldn’t visually confirm whether or not I also have a middle ear infection (otitis media, or just ‘ear infection’). Something about inflammation and white pus covering various things … it’s a mess in there.
The discomfort finally got to me on a Sunday night, so I headed to Walgreens to look for something to tide me over until going to the clinic Monday morning. I wasn’t hoping for much, since I figured you’d need a prescription for anything with steroids or painkillers or antibiotics. But, I thought I might find some kind of drops to maybe soothe a little pain here or there.
When, what to my skeptical eyes should appear, but miniature bottles and eight tiny bulbs. I’m unfortunately familiar with the blue bulbs, since I have vivid childhood memories of leaning over the sink while my mom used one to squirt water into my ears to wash crud out of there. The thought of that sounded horrible even in my good ear, much less my throbbing one, so I left that section alone for now.
Turning to the bottles, there arose such a clatter. From me, that is. Homeopathy! We had Similasan’s Earache Relief, which not only soothes the pain but also stimulates the body to naturally heal ear infections. We had Hyland’s Earache Drops, which relieves pain and congestion without the sting of alcohol-containing products. And, we had a Walgreens knockoff, which we should to “Compare to Similasan!!!” Actually, you might as well compare it to tap water. The highest concentration of any ingredient in these remedies is chamomile at 10X; that’s one part in ten billion. (For comparison, capsaicin, the compound that makes chili peppers hot, is supposedly detectable by taste at one part in a mere fifteen million; see Entry 14 for the watery details on homeopathy.)
To add insult to injury, none of these products contained what PalMD of the White Coat Underground cleverly calls the Quack Miranda Warning. I’m sure you’ve seen these, since they’re all over supplement bottles and even some foods packages. The product will make a claim, asterisk it, and note that “These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, or prevent any disease.”
Well, then. I guess it makes sense that these products don’t have the Quack Miranda Warning. A product calling itself earache relief surely must actually treat a disease. Otherwise, the product would be an outright lie, wouldn’t it?‡ Wow, disclaimers like that let me say whatever the heck I want. This is fun!‡‡
‡That statement has not been evaluated by my nonexistent legal counsel. This blog is not intended to libel, slander, or insult any alternative medicine practitioner, manufacturer, or provider.
‡‡No, it is not.
I left Walgreens empty-handed and annoyed. My only options for over-the-counter treatment were bottles filled with water and lies. Pretty crappy, right? Well, it gets worse.
Wet Behind (And In) the Ears
Talking to my doctor the next morning, I asked about how I could prevent ear infections. What did she think about using the blue bulbs? Should I try rinsing out my ears regularly, or at least when I feel an infection coming on? Are there science-based OTC products out there that I’m just not finding?
Her response floored me. The only thing worse for your ears than using the blue bulbs is using the non-prescription drops. Allow me to rephrase that: the worst possible thing you can do to your ears is to use the earache treatment products found at your local pharmacy.
You don’t want any excess moisture in your ear canal. Too much moisture in your ears is the most common cause of outer ear infections (hence the name swimmers ear), and extra moisture in there during an infection will only exacerbate the problem. The only exception is liquid that’s loaded with antibiotics and steroids, as is the case with prescription ear drops.
Amazing. The worst possible things you can do to your ears are the only “treatments” available over-the-counter in the pharmacy. I know I’ve said that three times now, but I find it incredible. Alternative medicine, indeed.
What should you do to prevent ear infections, then? The goal is to remove moisture, but you don’t want to use a q-tip. That’s one of those rare pieces of folk knowledge that happens to be correct. You might damage your eardrum or irritate your skin, and moreover you’re just not going to manage to get all the liquid out of there. Don’t stick crap in your ears!
What you ought to do is make up a mixture of white vinegar and isopropyl alcohol (1:2 ratio) and use a dropper to fill your ear canal with it. Let that sit for a few seconds, and then drain it into a cotton ball or tissue. The alcohol makes this mixture volatile, so that your ear canal dries out much better than when straight water is in there. The acetic acid in the vinegar keeps the pH in your ear low, which helps prevent infections (earwax is naturally slightly acidic for this reason).
My doctor says that she does this almost daily. She has a long history of ear infections (her ears sounded (heh) worse than mine), so she does this any time moisture might enter her ears: swimming, exercising, using headphones, showering, etc. That seems a bit excessive to me, but I’m definitely going to start doing it regularly once my actual infection is gone.
Homeopathy: Surprisingly, the Worst Thing You Could Do to Yourself
Homeopathy is an interesting CAM modality. On the one hand, you cannot downplay its breathtaking inanity. But, you also have to admit that it’s tough to directly hurt yourself with it. Though someone could indirectly hurt themselves with homeopathy (in that they might be passing up real treatments), odds are the water or sugar pill isn’t going to cause any harm. At gunpoint, I’d rather have folks taking a truly homeopathic remedy than going through something invasive or violent like acupuncture or chiropractic.
Except, of course, in this instance. It’s all fun and games until you make your ear infection worse. We can’t pin the blue bulbs on the homeopaths, but of course those aren’t quite as bad as the water drops. (You might successfully remove some infected wax, and you don’t let the water sit in there as you do with the drops.) No exaggeration: using homeopathic earache remedies is the worst possible thing to do to treat an ear infection.
It’s one thing when a CAM modality is nothing but an overblown, expensive placebo. It’s quite another when the “treatment” actively makes a medical condition worse. The makers of these products ought to be ashamed of themselves, and Walgreens ought to be ashamed for selling literally harmful products marketed as medicinal treatments.