Contents:
- Medical Video: Treating and Preventing Swimmers Ear
- Overview of swimmer ear infections
- How to avoid ear infections if you swim frequently
- 1. Keep your ears clean and dry
- 2. Maintain inner ear cleanliness
- 3. Using earplugs (ear plug) when swimming
- 4. Treat ear skin well
- 5. Using ear drops
Medical Video: Treating and Preventing Swimmers Ear
If you swim often, maybe the ear that has water in it has become commonplace. However, this condition can worsen and eventually potentially cause swimmer ear infections (swimmer's ear) However, you can still prevent it from getting worse. Actually, what is a swimmer's ear infection? How to prevent this disease?
Overview of swimmer ear infections
Swimmer's ear (swimmer's ear) is one type of otitis externa, which is an outer ear infection that occurs because there is water trapped inside the ear canal.
This trapped water then creates a humid environment, which facilitates the growth of bacteria and fungi in your ear hole, reported by Web MD
Most of these conditions are caused by the presence of Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. This condition generally occurs in people who often swim, which is why this ear infection is called a swimmer's ear.
How to avoid ear infections if you swim frequently
1. Keep your ears clean and dry
Try to always keep your ears clean and dry, especially after swimming and bathing. It's easy, you can tilt your head to get water out, do this until the water feels lost from both ears.
Using a few drops of alcohol on the ear can also speed up dry ears, especially if you have problems with swimmer's ears. But what you should remember, don't do this too often. Because, the skin in the ear canal will crack, which then causes you to get an infection.
In addition, you can also use a hair dryer (hair dryer) with the lowest speed. Give a distance of about 30 centimeters while shaking your ear lobe. The hot air released by the hair dryer will help the water evaporate faster.
2. Maintain inner ear cleanliness
One way to prevent swimmer ears from arising is by maintaining ear hygiene. The reason, water that settles in the ear accompanied by clumps of cerumen or commonly called earwax, can mix and cause infection.
Earwax plays an important role in preventing ear infections. Too much or too little dirt that settles in the ear, can cause problems.
However, you should not originate in cleaning your ears. Instead of being free of dirt, it is possible that dirt can be pushed deeper into the ear and make the ear vulnerable to infection.
That is why, you are encouraged to choose the right way to clean your ears. For example by giving ear drops, mineral oil, or salt solutions to your ears.
3. Using earplugs (ear plug) when swimming
When swimming, it does not rule out the possibility that the ears will concede a lot of water. Well, one way that can be used to prevent it is to use ear plugs.
Maybe at the beginning of the use it will feel a little uncomfortable, but now there are many flexible ear plugs that are suitable for you to use if you want to avoid the entry of water into the ear when swimming.
4. Treat ear skin well
Not only does the skin in the area of the body look that you must guard, but in areas that rarely look like in the ear you should not forget it too.
Because the condition of the ear skin has an important task to prevent the swimmer's ears from appearing. Dry and cracked ears, make it easier for the ears to get various infections.
Especially if the dry skin condition in the ear is accompanied by itching and allergies, then it is likely to get worse if you are attacked by swimmer's ears. You can treat the condition of the dry ear skin so as not to get worse by:
- Try not to scratch your ears too hard.
- Never insert any object into the ear, this can damage the skin of your ear.
- For the time being, avoid using hairspray or other chemicals that can irritate the ear skin. Do this until the ear skin has completely recovered.
- Regular use of 1 to 2 drops of olive oil into the ear can help lubricate the ear canal and treat dry ear skin.
5. Using ear drops
You can use ear drops to prevent earwax from mixing with water in the ear, so that water and dirt will not nest in your ears. The use of these drops is more advisable to give with the help of others, so you can simply lie on your side with your ear facing up.
Then pull the ear slightly to make room for the channel to speed up the entry of the ear drops, and continue to lie down for a few minutes to make sure the ear drops are absorbed properly. Recommendations for ear drops that you can use are drops of alcohol, white vinegar, olive oil, and hydrogen peroxide.
