According to Dr. Soumya, repeated rubbing with cotton buds strips away protective oils and creates tiny injuries in the inner ...

Health experts frequently warn that inserting Q-tips or cotton swabs into your ear canal can push wax deeper, cause injury, and interfere with your ear’s natural self-cleaning process. Even ...

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. The doctors’ advice hasn’t changed much, but ...

Q. I’ve heard Q-tips are bad for my ears, what about foam earplugs? A. Many people reach for cotton swabs to get wax out of their ears, but doctors recommend avoiding that temptation. For one, wax isn ...

It turns out, you shouldn’t use a cotton swab to clean out your ears. Your ears are self-cleaning machines, with very little maintenance required. One of its best defenses? Earwax. People are putting ...

This is Explainer, a column that answers questions we all have (or should have). As someone who regularly “cleans” my ear canals with cotton swabs, a question hangs over me basically every day: How ...

Sure, yes, I knew that the ear is an erogenous zone. But never did I expect that a quick, news-you-can-use post about the dangers of sticking Q-tips into that zone would draw an outpouring of "Noooooo ...