Frequent ear tapping is considered by many people to be a manifestation of personal hygiene. After taking a shower, you need to use a cotton swab to pick up your ears, or use your little thumb to pick up your ears if you have something to do with it... However, ear, nose, and throat doctors remind everyone that ear wax is not useless. Don't keep picking up your ears if you have nothing to do, it can also cause purulent meningitis. A report in the Australian magazine 'That's Life' shows that a woman who uses a cotton swab to pick her ears every night is more dangerous. But as time passed, she first had hearing problems, followed by an intracranial infection, and ultimately her life was threatened. The culprit behind this terrifying outcome turned out to be the cotton fibers in her ears. My friends around me are paying close attention to this issue and asking me, is it really that scary? It's really dangerous to often poke your ears out. Bacterial infection: Ear removal tools themselves may carry various bacteria. If the earwax is hard or abundant during ear removal, it is easy to scratch the skin. Bacteria can take the opportunity to enter and cause infection, leading to external ear canal infection, pus discharge, and earache. Especially those who collect ears in public places are prone to developing diseases such as fungal otitis externa. It is believed that many people have experienced eczema and damage to the skin of the external ear canal. Occasionally, blood may come out of the cotton swab when pulling out the ear. We usually don't care too much, thinking that we'll be fine in a few days. In fact, this long-term repeated stimulation of the skin of the external auditory canal can not only cause skin damage, inflammation, roughness, and thickening of the external auditory canal, but also increase ear wax secretion, and even cause diseases such as external auditory canal inflammation or eczema. Another unexpected thing about puncturing your eardrum is when you are enjoying the pleasure of pulling out your ear and suddenly someone touches you, which may cause your eardrum to be punctured directly, resulting in hearing loss and even otitis media. Small perforations are okay, most people can heal on their own. A large perforation requires surgery to repair the eardrum. Don't think I'm joking. We've really encountered some patients with traumatic perforation of the eardrum at the clinic, some of whom accidentally broke it themselves, and some of them were accidentally broken. The last and most crucial point that affects the brain is that due to the close proximity between the ears and brain tissue, inflammation can easily spread upwards in severe external ear infections and otitis media, leading to complications such as purulent meningitis and brain abscess. This is also the reason why we have seen reports that some people may have intracranial infections or even epilepsy caused by pulling out their ears. You may not know the four major functions of earwax. Earwax, also known as cerumen, is an oil secreted by the cerumen glands of the external auditory canal. Cerumen contains oil and has a protective effect on the skin of the external auditory canal. Its main components include oil, protein, and yellow pigment, as well as a small amount of water and elements such as potassium and sodium. When earwax was first introduced, it had a certain amount of oil and moisture, which moisturized the skin, maintained humidity, and had a weak antibacterial effect. Fresh cerumen stays in the ear canal for a long time, and after the water evaporates, most of it becomes dry flakes. Some are sticky yellow, and the latter is called "oily cerumen", which is normal. However, due to its special characteristics, it is not easy to expel it from the ear canal on its own. Cerumen has four main protective effects: antibacterial earwax is rich in fatty acids and can build an acidic layer on the surface of the ear canal skin