Can I Put Peroxide in My Ear?

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name's Kayti Brosnan. I'm a registered nurse here in Austin, Texas, and today, the question is: Can I put peroxide in my ears? Well, the answer is yes and no. Yes, you can put peroxide in your ears, but I would say no, don't put peroxide in your ears if you are suspected to have any sort of a tear in the eardrum or a hole in the eardrum or you have a mega infection going on. That's something that you want to consult with a doctor before putting anything in your ear. But the other side of it is yes, you can put peroxide in your ear and, in the 1920s, a doctor did a little bit of research, maybe a lot of bit of research and hypothesized that flu and colds tend to come through the ear and not the mouth, the nose, or the eyes, like is often spoken about. And so he started putting peroxide in the ears and four out of five times, this was preventing the cold or the flu symptoms from actually fully progressing. So a lot of people nowadays use that. And what you can do is just take a dropper and make sure you're using three percent peroxide, and drop it into the ear and kind of do this. Let it sit in there, bubble up, and when it stops bubbling, you can release it. And then do it on the other ear. People also use it for wax. Wax builds up, it gets really hard, and there...they believe it's a safe treatment of using oil. You can use olive oil to first soften up the wax, and then use the peroxide. And what the peroxide is doing at that point is bubbling, and it's helping move the wax away from the ear wall. And then helping that to come out a little bit easier instead of shoving, you know, a Q-tip in there and packing it in more. This is a little bit more effective. So the answer is yes, you can put peroxide in your ear."