Right from the childhood I have suffered from ear infections during winter. Had my tonsils removed long ago. Yet, I had to suffer through every winter at least once, sometimes more than once when the temperature remains below comfortable level. I have knocked the doors of many a specialists, internal medicine, ENT, family practice, etc. Once an ENT specialist wanted to eliminate the possibility of a tumor growth inside nostrils and subjected me to a thin tube insertion with camera and light on one end to look inside. Nothing came up out of norm. One treatment option went like this. We should put a hole in the ear drum and fix a pipe to drain the fluid that builds up around your sinus during cold temperature. This tube will be a permanent artificial fixture inside the head and prevent ear infections! Well, I wasn't sure I wanted to go for that. An internal medicine doc prescribed a nasal spray that you point in an oblique angle inside the nose and spray twice a day. A side effect of that was that it makes you addictive to using it for ever. Other than that I didn't see it work at all. And the worst of all, every time I suffered from the ear infection, I had to be on one full dose of Antibiotics that ran for 30 days a course. That means, for more than half of winter every year I was on antibiotics! The antibiotic is not a preventive medicine; it did not reduce the pain, it just helped prevent further infection, I guess. So, this gave me one more reason to hate winters!
Early this winter, I was at a local Target (a supermarket chain) and spotted a ear muffler. It looks something like the figure shown.
Every time I went out, I wore the muff. It worked like magic! Apparently, my body is sensitive to cold air getting inside the ear canal and reacts by pushing the ear drum from inside. The pressure develops into prolonged pain, redness in the inner ear and thus infection. As soon as the ear muff blocked cold air from getting inside the ear canal, it relieved me of my long lasting problem! What a simple world, that we complicate by over thinking. For the first time in many winters, I am free of ear infections this year and it happened just by pure luck! I am so thankful I found this little contraption that has improved my quality of life tremendously.
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