Everyone wants to have a pair of smart ears, but in reality, many people start to have ear diseases at the age of a few years or a dozen years old, and they can’t have “good ears” in their fifties, and they are “deaf and stupid” in their old age. To a certain extent, these situations arise because people do not know enough about the ear, or even misunderstand it. Here I will explain the common misconceptions about the ear: Misconception 1: The role of the ear is to hear sound. Wrong! There are many functions of the ear, but the two most important ones are hearing and balance, which means that the ear is not only used to hear sound, but also to manage the balance of our body. If you have ear problems, you may experience hearing loss, tinnitus, and possibly dizziness. And the two most common diseases that cause dizziness, otolithiasis and Ménière’s disease, are both diseases of the ear! Myth 2: Deafness and tinnitus must be a disease of the ear. Wrong! Sound travels to the ear through the outer ear canal to the eardrum, the auditory chain connected to the eardrum carries the sound to the inner ear, and the hearing cells in the inner ear carry the sound to the auditory nerve, which then travels from the auditory nerve to the brain. Any problem in this pathway can lead to deafness and tinnitus. Myth 3: Earwax is dirty and must be cleaned. Wrong! Earwax has a protective effect on the body, see my science article – should you pull out earwax or not. Myth #4: You must use cotton swabs to clean your ears if you have water in them. Wrong! It is very common to get water in your ear after washing your hair, bathing, or swimming, which can cause discomfort. To get the water out of your ear, you do not need to jump with your ear facing down on one foot, which can cause a fall. Do not take a cotton swab out either, as the pores of the skin of the ear canal open after water has entered the ear, and cotton swabs can easily damage the skin causing boils in the ear canal or otitis externa. To get the water clean, it’s as simple as turning your ear down and gently pulling on the earlobe. Myth #5: The health action of pressing on the ear is suitable for everyone. Wrong! Pressing your ear and then jerking your palm away will create a suction that sucks the eardrum outward, and many people practice this regularly as an ear care action. First of all, these maneuvers do not have a clear health effect on the ear. Secondly: if the patient has eustachian tube dysfunction or otitis media, this action can aggravate the negative pressure in the middle ear and aggravate the disease. Myth #6: If the eardrum is broken, the ear is completely deaf. Wrong! The tympanic membrane is only part of the hearing conduction pathway, and a perforated tympanic membrane will only cause partial hearing loss, not total deafness! Myth #7: As long as the eardrum is intact, you will not go deaf. Wrong! Problems with any part of the auditory conduction pathway – the outer ear, middle ear, inner ear, auditory nerve and brain – can lead to deafness. Problems with the outer and middle ears can cause conductive deafness, problems with the inner ear can cause sensorineural deafness, and problems with the auditory nerve can cause neurological deafness down the road. Therefore, even if the eardrum is intact, the patient may still experience deafness. Myth #8: Bugs that get into the ear will keep going into the brain and eat the brain. Wrong! There are several walls that worms have to cross to get into the brain. The first wall is the external ear canal, which is rich in nerve fiber distribution. Patients with worms entering the ear canal often experience ear itching, ear pain, and tinnitus, and will go to the hospital first. 98% of worms die gloriously at this level. The second wall – the tympanic membrane, the tympanic membrane is a dense neurovascular three-layer membrane structure, airtight, dripping, very sensitive to pain, only extremely strong fighting bugs and extremely insensitive to pain owners will let the bugs in this pass to win, the probability of 2%. The third wall – bones, worms through the eardrum will enter the middle ear, the middle ear and the brain are separated by a very thick bone plate, want to penetrate this layer of bone, I’m afraid to go through the beetle to come forward to do so, the probability of occurrence is 0. Myth 9: Ear water, pus must be otitis media. Wrong! Otitis externa, eczema of the external ear canal, fungal infection of the external ear canal, otitis media and cerebrospinal fluid ear leakage can all cause running water and pus from the ear. Myth 10: You must have pus in your ear to have otitis media. Wrong! The outer ear and middle ear are bounded by the eardrum. As long as there is inflammation in the middle ear on the deep side of the eardrum, it is otitis media. Only when otitis media is combined with perforation of the eardrum will pus flow out of the middle ear. Myth 11: Pus in the ear must be wiped clean with cotton swabs or toilet paper. Wrong! Pus in the ear can be sucked out with a suction device or cleaned with hydrogen peroxide at the hospital. Cotton swabs and toilet paper are extremely unhygienic and can bring outside bacteria into the middle ear causing mixed infections. Myth 12: Any anti-inflammatory drops can be put into the ear to treat otitis media. Wrong! Different medications have different uses. Some medications can be administered as ear drops, some require intramuscular injections, and some require intravenous drips. Remember, gentamicin is an ototoxic drug and cannot be dropped into the ear, it can lead to deafness and vertigo! Myth 13: Long-term mobile phone will hurt your hearing, and wearing headphones can avoid it. Wrong! The degree of damage to hearing from sound is mainly determined by the noise intensity and contact time, and has nothing to do with hands-free calling or headset calling. Generally speaking, the greater the sound intensity, the longer the contact time, the greater the damage to the ear. Myth 14: If you only feel tinnitus and do not feel deaf, you do not need to have a hearing check. Wrong! The hearing loss that our body can sensitively capture is between 500-2000Hz, while the low-frequency hearing loss below 500Hz and the high-frequency hearing loss above 2000Hz cannot be detected by us in time, what we can feel at these times is often only tinnitus, so it is crucial to have a hearing check at this time to help us identify the cause as early as possible, treat it as early as possible and recover as early as possible! Myth 15: Hearing aid is to amplify the sound, just buy one on the street. Wrong! The fitting of hearing aids is a very advanced study, more precise than the fitting of myopic glasses. The fitting of hearing aids needs to be combined with the patient’s hearing situation at each frequency, the shape of the ear canal, age and many other factors to improve hearing and shield the environment from noise, and even improve tinnitus. The hearing aids sold in the street stores are only sound amplifiers, which not only amplify the sound, but also the environmental noise, and the patients will feel very noisy but cannot hear the sound after wearing them. Myth 16: The more you wear a hearing aid, the more deaf you will become. Wrong! Properly fitted and qualified hearing aids will only improve the quality of life of the patient, while unqualified hearing aids will indeed harm the ears and make them more deaf the more they are worn. Myth #17: All ear-induced dizziness is Meniere’s disease. Wrong! There are many different diseases that cause dizziness in the ear, such as: Meniere’s disease, delayed membranous vagal effusion, otoliths, vestibular neuritis, labyrinthitis, ectolymphatic leak, superior hemimelia fracture, ototoxic drug-induced ototoxicity, enlarged vestibular aqueduct, Hunter syndrome, etc. Myth 18: If no one in the family has been deaf for several generations, the child will not get hereditary deafness. Wrong! Many families do not have deafness for several generations but their children develop hereditary deafness because both parents are carriers of the deafness gene, which does not cause the disease. When the parents have a child, both parents pass on the disease-causing gene that carries the deafness gene to the child, and the child develops the disease.