outer ear infection

For years I've struggled with this. 

Most recently, I went through 18 months of it and not getting rid of it.  At times, i could tell how bad it was because the wind would hit just right and I could smell it.

About eight years ago I beat it by:  forcing myself to not touch it.  This is rather maddening and since I was doing a lot of it subconsciously (including in my sleep) I rigged up all sorts of contraptions to keep myself from being able to touch my head. 

The bizarre thing about it is that you want to scratch it.  Scratching is the natural way we have to deal with all sorts of stuff.  Only in this case it makes things much worse. 

This time (about two weeks ago) I beat it in a much more normal way.  And it was far easier.

First I'm gonna tell you what worked this time and what didn't work.

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What worked for me for getting rid of my outer ear infection:

I did this treatment three times a day for the first three days, then twice a day for three days and then once a day for three days.

Mix distilled water with epsom salt, and use an ear bulb thingy to thoroughly rinse out my ear.  Drain ear.  Then put in about three drops of hydrogen peroxide - and leave that in for about a minute.  It should fizz slightly.  Drain ear.  Put about three drops of ear drops in. 

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The salted water would get about 96% of the yuck out.  The hydrogen peroxide would get another 3% out and the drops would take care of what was left and be preventative until the next treatment.

Things I had tried before: 

Using hydrogen peroxide - sometimes mixed with iodine.  It would fizz so much a foam pillar would rise from my ear.  I think there was just too much ick.  And using it too much would end up hurting my ear - sometimes causing other problems.  But this helped far more than anything else - up to the real solution detailed above.

The ear drops alone:  that seemed to do nothing.

Scratching:  felt so very good and right but always made it way worse and way itchier.

manual cleaning:  would sometimes help a little, but usually made it itchier. 

For the last two weeks my ear has been great.  My ear has not itched and I have not smelled anything yucky.  I wanted to write this down before I forgot.  Both, in case I need it in the future and in case it might be of help to somebody else.

humm my dog is prone to outer ear infections I'll try this route on him if he starts to show one again this winter.

on a related note peroxide in the ears also helps fight viral infections as the eardrum is one of the entry points/hideouts that tiny lil virus's can get into you soft tissues through, but the excess oxygen that a daily dose of peroxide adds destroys the little things. at least thats the theory it seems to work and I can't imagine it doing any harm used against minor flue/cold sysmptoms that I'd never go to the hospital for anyway.

So for the better part of a year I have had zero outer ear infection.  Life is awesome.

A little started about a week ago while I was traveling.  I did some of the epsom salt followed by hydrogen peroxide stuff yesterday and should do some more today.

The important thing is that after struggling with it all day long, every day for years, it has been a huge relief to have a solution.  It took a recurrence to remind me of what I used to go through.  But this time I feel like I have the tools to mend it quickly.

Life is good.

Anytime I get a slight ear infection, I dip a q-tip in a little bit of tea tree oil and it is done, usually after one application.  Be careful, too much and it will burn. 

I have been facing the problem of ear infection when I was 10 years I have tried lot of thing by putting medicine, oil and even I tried to clean my ears everyday but still there is dryness in my ear. Doctor told that this is an allergy symptoms of cold and cough that's why your ear is block. Anybody facing such kind of problem?

Be aware that it is possible to have a bacterial and fungal infection in your ear simultaneously and require different treatments.

Bulb ear syringes used incorrectly can break the eardrum rather easily and then the infection can move into the middle ear.

Some ear specialists use sophisticated video tweezers to clean out ear wax and do not recommend bulb syringes.

If you can't get hydrogen peroxide, use lemon juice, diluted in warm water, at least half and half. I used it on my infant daughter some 35 years ago and it worked immediately. The only time she was ever sick was an infection in her ears after flying in a plane. (probably due to the toxic chemicals they use to disinfect them).

You may be able to assist your body in fighting the infection but...

You have immunity and/or circulation issues if it doesn't go away. We like to think of of "issues" as treatable with "things" but treating the entire body is a true answer.

Paul are you blood type A? (guessing is not easy, so no surprise if you are not)

Children of smokers often get more chronic ear infections (at least as children) if there mother was type A blood, even though they may not be.

I recommend getting a culture done of the puss and see what organisms are actually in it. From there your choice of treatments is much clearer. Are you dealing is an MRSA? Who knows? Get tested. Whatever one may think about western treatments, few can deny the utility and accuracy of their tests. When we start by knowing what we're up against the way forward becomes less cluttered. An infection that's recurring over such a long period of time is an immediate danger, and needs professional attention. This is from an herbalist who's suffered recurring MRSA's.

Not touching is indeed the hardest part. One practitioner recommended wearing gloves at night to prevent unconscious scratching. I thought that was rather ingenious.

Actually treating someone for their genetics, with a tinge of the type of problem they have, works better than just "targeting" a "problem".

For example you can't fix blood sugar problems that stem from an over toxified liver, by solely managing carbohydrate intake.

He has an immunity problem, not a infection problem. Yes you can treat the infection but it is like taking a pain killer for a broken bone that needs a splint. You can go this way, maybe not have one for awhile, but you won't be "fixing" the problem really.

So I had a recurrence. And once again I would only do something when it would get really bad. And once again it stuck with me for over a year until i buckled down and really dealt with it several times a day even after it seemed to go away.

I think that's the hardest step for me: it seems to have gone away, but I need to keep treating it.

This time, I used the bulb thing to irrigate my ear repeatedly, until I saw this picture of one of the bulb things:


(source)

And I stopped doing that.

(I just now went downstairs and cut open my bulb thing - flawlessly clean on the inside)

So, the thing that worked at the end:

1) when I would shower (every morning) I would let the water into my ear and really rinse things out. I felt that this was far superior to anything I was doing with the bulb.

2) After the shower I would put a few drops of hydrogen peroxide in my ear and then lie down until the fizzing was pretty much done. Usually five to ten minutes.

3) Add a few drops of the ear drops.

4) repeats steps 2 and 3 once or twice more through the day.

5) DO NOT SCRATCH EVEN THOUGH THE TEMPTATION IS HUGE! And do not use a finger or tissue or anything to clean the ear.

I think I stuck to this strictly for about five days and that beat it.

It has now been well over a month.

Also? This protocol is pretty awesome! Even cures deafness sometimes! http://www.herballegacy.com/Earaches.html

My right ear became so angry a few days ago that the side of my head swole up and the ear closed.  I felt pretty sick for a day.  

We had some mullein blossom and garlic oil.   I treated with that several times and this morning my ear opened up again.  A woman was here last night and said she was plagued with "swimmers ear" which is the same thing.   She said she would put alcohol in her ears and it would clear it up every time.  

So this morning, jocelyn treated my bad ear with some water and rubbing alcohol and then we finished up with a few drops of the mullein blossom oil.  We'll see how it goes.

I really like the garlic mullein oil for ears.  Oil is an excellent thing to put in an unhappy ear because it works in harmony with our ears' natural cleaning system.

The ears produce cerumen (ear wax) deep inside, near the eardrum.  This wax coats the inside of the ear and waterproofs it.  The movement of the jaw, with chewing and talking, will help the ear wax move along the ear canal out to the pinnae (the outer ear) where you can get it with your finger.  This is the design.  I don't recommend q-tips, or at least if you must make sure you are very careful because it's easy to shove cerumen deeper into the ear canal and make things worse.

Oil will help soften the cerumen so it can do its job, and resume moving towards the exit.  Sometimes a person has a major ball of wax in their ear, and then irrigation with warm water will often get it to come out.  I won't do irrigation on someone with a particularly painful ear, because duh, it hurts and also they might maybe have a ruptured ear drum and you don't want to squirt water at that.  If you put oil in your ear I recommend warming it up.  Putting the little bottle in a bowl of hot water works, carrying it in your front pocket also works, albeit more slowly.  

Some people, especially those of Asian descent, don't have sticky cerumen, they have dry flaky cerumen.  Oil is helpful for this sort of cerumen as well.

Rubbing alcohol is useful for drying out the ear - it displaces water and it dries easily.  Acid is helpful for preventing infections in the ear.  If a person is prone to swimmer's ear, they can instill drops made with half vinegar and half rubbing alcohol after getting the ears full of water (swimming, etc).  You do NOT want to use these drops to treat an ongoing otitis externa (infection in the ear canal) because it will HURT.  They are good for prevention.

If I have a patient who has trouble with their ear more than once, I recommend instilling sweet oil or garlic mullein oil into each ear canal weekly.  Let it really soak in, so you can only do one side at a time.

Years ago I suffered from swimmers ear and general ear discomfort related to my asthma and my then doc said just put a few drops of mineral oil in the ear each day. Never had any problems since with my ears.

Maybe a doctor?  Warm honey mixed with turmeric works for me.

I've always heard it is bad to put any water in the ear when you have an ear infection, that it increases the moist environment that yeast and bacteria love. So instead of flushing with water to warmup coconut oil or use olive oil to flush the ear and then wipe out as much as you can. After letting the oil drain thoroughly to flush with rubbing alcohol to dry up and disinfect.

I found this video very helpful...  Long but shows the results of the test and talks to you with pictures/words about how the ear works.

I'm glad that I stumbled on this thread. I woke up this morning to the smallest of aches in my ear and I was seeking some relief.

I have traditionally gone the hydrogen peroxide route but I do agree with the effectiveness of the salt water flush. I don't know exactly what the offending thing that was causing irritation in my ear but it took care of it!

Melba Corbett wrote:If you can't get hydrogen peroxide, use lemon juice, diluted in warm water, at least half and half.  I used it on my infant daughter some 35 years ago and it worked immediately.  The only time she was ever sick was an infection in her ears after flying in a plane.  (probably due to the toxic chemicals they use to disinfect them).  

Caveats and upfront statements:
My writing here does not constitute treatment advice for anybody. These are written personal experiences only. And basic anatomical facts that I’ve looked up on my own.

Yes 🙌
The reason lemon juice solution works, is the same reason a vinegar solution works:
It changes the pH of the ear canal back to normal.
The ear canal has an acidic pH ranging from 2.9-4.5. Average around 3.5.
That is VERY acidic.

Some facts:
•When an ear infection occurs in the external canal, the pH goes up, ie the pH goes alkaline, significantly.
•The normal bacterial and fungal flora of the ear canal growing in such an acidic pH, is VERY different from the bacteria and fungi that are responsible for an ear infection.
•And these abnormal flora can ONLY take hold and cause an infection when the environmental pH changes and becomes less hospitable to good bacteria (that colonize and protect the ear canal from invasion) and more hospitable to infection bacteria.
•Bacterial infections occur first, usually. Fungal infections set in after that. But not always.
•People vary genetically in their susceptibility to ear canal pH changes that last long enough to allow ear infections to occur. (This is true for vaginal infections too).
•Most ear infections, (and vaginal infections by same mechanisms) can be easily cured simply by changing the pH of the ear canal back to its normal pH.
•A really bad ear infection should probably be cultured at a doctor’s office just so one can know if it’s also fungal infection on top of bacterial infection, or if it is a serious bacterial infection that can cause further harm elsewhere should it enter the inner ear, nervous system, or GI system.
And a bad infection might need the help of conventional medicine just to get it out of one’s system.
If the ear drum is broken, you’ll definitely want to see a doctor.

How does the ear canal become more alkaline?
(I’ve learned both from experience and from textbooks) :
•Diet is a big one: sweets/sugars/white flours/ etc can significantly change pH and encourage the growth of infectious bacteria.
•Swimming is another - one is dousing the east with alkaline waters or water that has a preponderance of bacteria that can take hold when our pH isn’t quite right.
•Food or other allergies - whether slight or unknown, or more significant- can cause enough inflammation that the pH can turn alkaline slightly, and allow for a secondary infection to set in. And then they build on each other and further increase pH, and then one’s off to the races w a full blown ear infection.
•Itching one’s ears causes more inflammation, which in turn raises the pH again, which causes more infection, and so on…
•”Bummer genetics” that don’t allow for a stable acidic pH in one’s ear.


Treatment:
Acid solution.
“Right the Wrong, by Righting the pH”.  
But not too acid or too little acid. Both of those extremes will *discourage* the right flora to grow.
(I’ve found) it should be an acid solution of around pH 3-4, same as the ear canal, tested by either a test strip (simple but more crude) or a calibrated pH meter (most accurate).

Hydrogen peroxide is acidic so that’s why it works. But, it’s also a chemical….
I don’t know for a fact, but I suspect it could make it a bit more difficult for ANY bacteria to grow, as it kills most of them.
(That’s how chemical disinfectants work too: kill everything).
And I wonder if peroxide could also cause microscopic local skin cell or follicle changes? I don’t know this info for sure.

But to bring it back to permaculture principles, it’s like soil pH: change it and the right microbes grow. Kill everything w a chemical and yeah you’ll get some relief from some pests, and a period of no growth, but you’ll also get impairment in the ability of the soil to grow good organisms and insects and plants to absorb nutrients via those good organisms.

Anyway:
The nice thing about lemon or vinegar is that it doesn’t wipe out *everything* or cause undesirable changes in the local skin cells - as far as I can tell..
It probably does a number on alkaline-growing bacteria though! But it will nicely and pretty quickly encourage the right flora.

So:
•I Use a simple pH strip to check the pH of my solutions. (cheap books of them on Amazon for 4$)
I measure out plain white table/cooking vinegar or lemon juice, plus water to get an acidic solution of about pH 3-4 in a squirt bottle or just a dropper bottle..

I find this solution works out to be ~about~ 1/4 acid (*white table* vinegar concentration, NOT industrial concentrated vinegar!) to 3/4 water. That’s just a guide.
How much acid to add depends on the starting pH of your water of course, too, and what kind of vinegar (apple cider/rice/wine/acetic acid/etc) and which concentration is used. Apple cider vinegar is less acidic than white vinegar, for example.
*(There’s industrial highly concentrated vinegar too - I’d NEVER use that, it could burn out one’s skin and ears).*
Lemon juice is quite acidic - I believe estimates are around pH 2-3.

It’s VERY important to test the pH of one’s solution before use. It would not be good to cause harm by using a solution that is too acidic or too alkaline.  

Results:
Instant relief, if I do this often while I have the infection. Only one treatment needed if gotten early on.  The solution causes copious balls of crud (it’s often dried up at that point!) to come out on its own, via the tiny hair follicles in the ear canal that actively push this stuff out for us.

So in conclusion:
I’ve found continuous dropping of acid solution at 3-4 pH, into the ear, is a great treatment for infection. And periodic use is a great preventative for ear infections and inflammations I get.
*The minute I feel the slightest itch, I start applying the acid solution. I just keep a bottle of it going*.  
🙏

I'm voting for the mullein flower oil and garlic oil, they work wonders, especially the mullein flower oil.

It's easy to make: in the summer, collect mullein flowers in a small glass jar, filling about 1/3, pour some good quality oil on top (I use olive oil or jojoba oil) and let it sit for six weeks. Strain out the flowers and store the oil in a dark, cool place.

The procedure is approximately the same for garlic, but garlic is such strong, fiery stuff that you only need a little bit of garlic and, in ratio, some more oil and the seeping period is much quicker, 2-3 days. For thin skin I'd opt for the mullein flower oil, but if you don't have it at hand, go the garlic oil route.

My LGD (live stock guardian dog) gets itchy ears from ear wax and I clean his ears with mullein oil. He likes it so much he's wagging his tail and otherwise standing very, very still during the earcleaning session. Afterwards he jumps around with joy, big ,silly boy

I can relate; around the same era I was experiencing that syndrome, and I found that warm saline solution and a bulb syringe did the trick. Around the same time I managed to eliminate some psychological stresses, and I began to feel like I might live to 60: I'm 73 now.

I have had much experience with ear infection /pain /itching.  About a decade ago I had extremely itchy and uncomfortable ears, painful to lay on...enough so that I created a small disc pillow about an inch high with center cut out so ear had less pressure when laying on side (my preferred sleeping position).  I was a pediatric ER nurse, so multiple docs had looked in my ears.  Conclusion the same, there was fluid but no infection.   Because of the fluid, the ears became itchy from pressure and i ended up with eczema externally.  After about 9 months of this,  I attended an herbal event, a 'Serpentine' class.  During this gathering we had tea and tincture of a single herb.  We tasted, smelled, and paid attention to what was going on in our mouth, body and psyche.  The facilitator wrote down everything we said, and afterwards read an herbal monograph on the plant.  It was like she was reading our words.  It was a pleasant day had with friends and red clover.  That night, however,  I felt like I had the flu, or was detoxing from narcotics,  or some other horrible thing (I had had a lot of red clover).  In the morning,  all of the fluid in my ear drained.   It came and went over a month,  I continued red clover,  and then it was fine.   The herbalist I was studying with suggested that perhaps there was a cyst in the eustatian tube and the red clover had softened and cleared it,  allowing fluid to pass.   Red clover is good for 'all things lumpy'.  From time to time I still get eczema in my ears/ itchy ears or the occasional pain.  I have found that a product called BigWave ear drops (acetic alcohol, oil, bioavailable turmeric) clears super quickly.

Asians use ear cleaners made from bamboo. My mother used them to clean my ears, and when I got older, I could do it myself by comparing the feel to when my mom did it.

I have read that Asians have dry ear wax, as opposed to wet, due to genetics.

I usually treat things like this with a dual approach: I treat the ear as most have described with the addition of a tiny bit of colloidal silver added to the final drops and help my body fight the invasion with nasturtium tincture sublingually, several times a day for a day or two. If the infection is particularly bad I’d add a little poke root tincture too but I recommend extreme caution with that one. Not only is it fiercely strong but some people react strongly to it.

Always test something new by starting with a drop on your inner wrist to see if that causes any issues before trying a diluted drop orally, just to be safe.

Julia Winter wrote:I really like the garlic mullein oil for ears.  Oil is an excellent thing to put in an unhappy ear because it works in harmony with our ears' natural cleaning system.

The ears produce cerumen (ear wax) deep inside, near the eardrum.  This wax coats the inside of the ear and waterproofs it.  The movement of the jaw, with chewing and talking, will help the ear wax move along the ear canal out to the pinnae (the outer ear) where you can get it with your finger.  This is the design.  I don't recommend q-tips, or at least if you must make sure you are very careful because it's easy to shove cerumen deeper into the ear canal and make things worse.

Oil will help soften the cerumen so it can do its job, and resume moving towards the exit.  Sometimes a person has a major ball of wax in their ear, and then irrigation with warm water will often get it to come out.  I won't do irrigation on someone with a particularly painful ear, because duh, it hurts and also they might maybe have a ruptured ear drum and you don't want to squirt water at that.  If you put oil in your ear I recommend warming it up.  Putting the little bottle in a bowl of hot water works, carrying it in your front pocket also works, albeit more slowly.  

Some people, especially those of Asian descent, don't have sticky cerumen, they have dry flaky cerumen.  Oil is helpful for this sort of cerumen as well.

Rubbing alcohol is useful for drying out the ear - it displaces water and it dries easily.  Acid is helpful for preventing infections in the ear.  If a person is prone to swimmer's ear, they can instill drops made with half vinegar and half rubbing alcohol after getting the ears full of water (swimming, etc).  You do NOT want to use these drops to treat an ongoing otitis externa (infection in the ear canal) because it will HURT.  They are good for prevention.

If I have a patient who has trouble with their ear more than once, I recommend instilling sweet oil or garlic mullein oil into each ear canal weekly.  Let it really soak in, so you can only do one side at a time.

My right ear is more sensitive than the left ear. As a child I once had a major ear infection and then the right ear drum was damaged. Many years later a doctor confirmed that there was still a cicatrice.
When it's cold and I ride my bicycle I have to take care that my ears don't get cold, especially that right ear. But sometimes I can not prevent the cold and then the ear starts hurting.
BTW there's not a problem with ear wax, it is only hurting inside.

My remedy is: take a little ball of raw sheeps wool (with lanolin still in it) and put that in the ear. If I can not get wool with lanolin in it I take some fluffy threads of wool yarn and put a drop of olive oil on it, to put that in my ear. I keep the wool ball in my ear for as long as I feel it is needed. If that's more than one day I renew it (fresh wool, fresh oil).

Now I read here about garlic and mullein I will start making garlic oil (I think that's like calendula oil, but then with a clove of garlic instead of the flowers, isn't it?). And as soon as new mullein leaves are growing I will take some of those to make an infused oil of them too.

Thanks for the useful information.

Now in my 70's, I've dealt with ear issues since I was a kid.  I've had I don't know how many operations, and a whole lot of ear aches.

A few times, the affected ear took me to the deaf category, after the drum ruptured (I heard a literal explosion (okay, it was a pop) as the ear drum burst, which, interestingly, brought immediate relief).
Anything I did hear in that ear reminded me of my antique cylinder phonograph, with the megaphone removed. All words sounded tinny and far away.



All that aside, the years taught me the one, FIRST, guaranteed cure is, avoidance. Others mentioned this and that, but I know, first hand, the most important thing is, CAUTION, when you have a stuffy nose and blow it.  When you do, you push all that nasty stuff up that freeway from your nose to ear, and cause a 100 car pile up the DOT would be hard-pressed to handle.



Once, about 20 years back, I tried the advice of a friend. It was for treating swimmer's ear. I THINK it involved alcohol and vinegar.  One drop, and it felt like someone slapped me upside the head with a sledgehammer.  Put that one on my HELL NO list.


Interestingly, in years since, I've had good luck with drops that incorporated acetic acid (back to that vinegar thing).


One thing helped in many cases. It was just good old-fashioned sweet oil (olive oil). Go figure. "Experts" warn against it. Ramble it could hurt the hear and cause the small ear farm to grow.  All I know is, it, with some cotton, stopped the pain.  


On a couple occasions, a heating pad helped drainage when there was a lot of pressure.


Now, I am curious about DMSO. It has been used for a lot of cases of congestion and head infections. It can have iodine, a great antibacterial in its own right and,  added, or even zinc. When used with DMSO, which, by itself, renders tiny critters unable to reproduce, has a lot of potential.

_____________________________________
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7245270/

Kelly Craig wrote:

Now, I am curious about DMSO. It has been used for a lot of cases of congestion and head infections. It can have iodine, a great antibacterial in its own right and,  added, or even zinc. When used with DMSO, which, by itself, renders tiny critters unable to reproduce, has a lot of potential.

_____________________________________
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7245270/

Kelly, I would be cautious with using DMSO unless know for certain that there is no infection or yeast growing in the ear canal. Also be sure that there is no drum rupture. DMSO is a powerful solvent which means it carries with it whatever it's mixed together with deep into the tissues.  So, if there is any "impurity" it will carry and drive that deeper into the body.  The ear being inside the skull/close to the brain is not a place to mess with if you push any foreign organism deep inside. Anything that comes in contact with DMSO must be scrupulously clean, including the hands and skin when it is applied externally. I think it safer to work on balancing the normal pH of the ear canal as many others have discussed ways of doing this.  Also note that DMSO can give a sense of "heat" and that may cause severe discomfort (firery painful) to someone with ear canal abrasion or tissue disruption.  

A prominent ear-nose-and-throat specialist I consulted found infection in my inner ear which may have leaked through a eardrum perforation.  He strictly advised not to use any pharmacy preparation, instead a mixture of 1 part white vinegar and 4 parts gin or vodka or any other high alcohol content product. NOT to drink! but to insert 3 to 4 drops twice daily with a cotton wool plug to keep the mixture in. Further not to use any sort of earbud or other insertion as this cold cause exacerbation or damage to the sensitive parts of the ear.  Like some of the suggestions above, it worked extremely well.  With greetings from Johannesburg, South Africa.

In 2019, I had a series of boils in my ears and nose. At that time I was on a castor oil kick. So I put one to two drops of castor oil in my ear and nose with a dropper. The pain would go away and the boil didn’t grow and ripen (except for the first one). So I got 7 to 9 boils one after the other but with castor oil I hardly had any  pain and the boils were kind of nipped in the bud. So they didn’t grow to full size . Then on my daughter’s insistence and after the boils were gone, I went to an ent and got a stern lecture on castor oil being an irritant etc and to keep away from it.
However after a thorough exam, the ent did not prescribe  any medication or any advice. He told me my ears were fine and there was nothing to treat.