I've heaed to blow the hair dryer into your ear to help with pain. I wnder if the warm smoke and warm air have a connection?
I've heaed to blow the hair dryer into your ear to help with pain. I wnder if the warm smoke and warm air have a connection?
DD 9/10
DS 8/12
Warmth is definitely the key. Warm olive oil, smoke, hairdryer... all have the same soothing effect. When my kids get infection we put colloidal silver in their ear, take Advil and they lay on a hot water bottle.
Sure, that makes sense, because there are nicotine receptors in the middle ear, and the cigarette smoke can travel through the eardrum to get to them, and activated nicotine receptors cause numbness.
Or, you know, not.
Katie, Mom to two boys
Retraining my dopamine circuits thanks to David Kessler, MD.
Jonathan: Halloween 2004
Alex: A smidge past Groundhog Day 2007
I remember when I was in 4th grade I had an ear infection that hurt so bad. My mom is a smoker and she was told to blow smoke in there. I can tell you that didn't help one iota.
Or, you could just drink the gin.....
My homeopath told me to wrap a warmed sliced onion in cheesecloth and hold it over the affected ear for a while.
On a more conventional route, there are apparently some pain numbing drops you can get prescribed. I once asked my pedi about them but they said no they want to see kids to make sure the eardrum isnt ruptured.
dd1 10/05
dd2 11/09
and ... a mini poodle!
Never heard of smoke as a remedy. Keep in mind that if an ear infection is not clearing up with antibiotics, it may be fungal in nature (and the antibiotics will actually make it worse, because there is no good bacteria to keep the yeast in check). We recently had to take DD1 to an ENT who confirmed a fungal ear infection that cleared up quickly with an anti-fungal powder (of course the pediatrician rejected this possibility when I inquired). Garlic happens to be a natural antibiotic and anti-fungal (there are also pill forms). For swimmers ear (that are more often than not fungal), we have have grapefruit seed extract works well (this is another natural antibiotic/antifungal agent).
I have not heard of the cigarette smoke method. However, I successfully used the heated onion trick on ds2 last month when he woke up crying in pain about his ear. It took about 10 min to work, but he said he could hear popping noises and them the pain started to disappear. He went back to bed and fell asleep right away, which was a good sign. I was glad it worked, since there isn't much you can do at 2am at night, and we always have onions available, lol.
Mom to 3 LEGO Maniacs