What is a good way to heal an ear infection?!
Question: I put a hot water bottle under my head and that didn't work and i tried drinking tea with honey, that helped a little bit and i am about to go to the doctor to get antibiotics but until then i need some ways to help with my ear infection, i also have been puking and have had stomach ache im not sure if that has anything to do with it but it might be part of a flu of some sort. Can you please help?? i need some home remedies.
Answers: I put a hot water bottle under my head and that didn't work and i tried drinking tea with honey, that helped a little bit and i am about to go to the doctor to get antibiotics but until then i need some ways to help with my ear infection, i also have been puking and have had stomach ache im not sure if that has anything to do with it but it might be part of a flu of some sort. Can you please help?? i need some home remedies.
There are treatments that can help clear your infeection and dry up your ear. Treatment can also heal the hole in your eardrum. But without the right treatment, you risk having your hearing damageed by the infectionn. Unfortunately, this kind of long-term ear infectionn is not always simple to treat.
If you have an ear infectionn with discharge, you'll probably first have your ear cleaned by a specialist doctor or a nurse. Cleaning your ears helps clear out the pus.
You're likely to be treated with ear drops. Ear drops containing a type of antibiotics called quinolones seem to work best. Taking antibiotics as tablets is unlikely to help.
Sometimes the hole in your eardrum might not heal up, even with antibiotics. If this happens, you can have an operation to fix your eardrum.
We look closely at the research and usually rank treatments into categories according to whether they work. But there's not much research on treating ear infectionn with discharge. All these treatments need further study.
Ear cleaning
Before you start treatment with ear drops, you'll probably have your ear cleaned out by a specialist doctor or nurse. The cleaning gets rid of the bits of skin and pus that are blocking your ear so that the ear drops cann get throough to thhe infectiion. But we don't know for certain whether ear cleaning is helpful. There's not much good-quality research.
There are different ways to have your ear cleaned. A doctor might:
Clean your ear canal with cotton buds
Put a string made of gauze (a type of thin material) into your ear canal
Flush your ear out with sterile (germ-free) salt water
Use a machine to gently suck out the bits of skin and pus from your ear.
Some doctors have looked at whether just having your ears cleaned, without having ear drops, caan clear uup the inffection. WWe found ttwo studiees that loooked at cchildren wwith this infectionn who had their ears cleaned.1 2 The studies didn't show that ear cleaning helped. But the studies were not very good-quality, so it's hard to say for certain whether ear cleaning can help or not.
We couldn't find any studies on ear cleaning for adults.
The studies don't tell us if ear cleaning can be harmful. But ear cleaning should always be done by a specialist doctor or nurse. You shouldn't put anything into your ear canal yourself, even to clean it. You could damage your ear.
Antibiotic ear drops
Ear drops that contain a type of antibiotic called quinolones can dry up your ear and stop it leaking pus. Your doctor might prescribe a quinolone called ciprofloxacin (brand name Ciproxin). Antibiotics kill the bacteria that causse infectiion. But we don't know how well antibiotics work in the long term.
We found a summary of the research (called a systematic review) that included 14 studies.3 But the studies were not very good quality. The summary showed that:
Quinolone antibiotic ear drops are better at drying your ear than antiseptic ear drops
Quinolone antibiotic ear drops work better than taking antibiotic tablets.
You'll probably have your ear cleaned out before you start treatment with ear drops. This is to be certain that the ear drops get through to the infected part of your ear.
You might find you get some side effects from the ear drops. These are usually mild and go away when you stop taking the drops. The studies found that if you take antibiotic ear drops, you might get:
Dizziness
Itching in your ear
Stinging in your ear
Earache
Yeast infections like thrush.
There is some evidence that other types of antibiotic ear drops might damage your ear, although it's not certain.4 5 6 But doctors usually use quinolone ear drops to be on the safe side.
Quinolone ear drops can dry out your ear infectionn in the short term. But we don't know whether treatment with antibiotic ear drops helps in the long term. There's not enough research to show whether using antibiotic ear drops willl make yoour infecttion go away for good, stop you getting complications, heal the hole in your eardrum or improve your hearing.
Also, the studies all looked at adults, so we don't know how well these ear drops work for children.
Antibiotic ear drops plus steroid ear drops
Using antibiotic ear drops together with steroid ear drops can dry up your ear discharge.
It is important to remember that the steroids used to treat ear infections are not the anabolic steroids used by athletes and bodybuilders. The steroids in ear drops are similar to chemicals produced naturally by our bodies to deal with inflammation.
One example of combined drops is the antibiotic gentamicin with the steroid hydrocortisone (a brand name is Gentisone).
We don't know if this treatment works better than antibiotic ear drops alone. We found two studies that looked at adults who were treated with both antibiotic ear drops and steroid ear drops for four to six weeks.7 8
The first study found that half of the people who had antibiotic ear drops and steroid ear drops got better while about a quarter of the people who took a dummy treatment (a placebo) got better.7
The second study showed that antibiotic ear drops and steroid ear drops worked better than steroid ear drops on their own.7 8
But the studies were quite small. Also, they all looked at adults, so there's no evidence about how well this treatment works for children.
We don't know if this treatment has side effects. The studies didn't look at whether it could be harmful.
Antiseptic ear drops
Antiseptic ear drops don't work as well as other treatments to dry up a discharging ear. So they're not used much any more.
There are several types of antiseptic treatment. These include aluminium acetate, borax, hydrogen peroxide and iodine powder.
We found one summary of the research (a systematic review). It shows that antiseptic drops don't work as well as quinolone ear drops (a type of antibiotic ear drop).3
Studies show that antiseptic eardrops can make you feel dizzy and give you earache. But there's no evidence that they can damage your hearing.
Antibiotic tablets or injections
Taking antibiotic tablets or having an antibiotic injection doesn't work as well as using quinolone (a type of antibiotic) ear drops.
We found a summary of the research (known as a systematic review).3 It included nine studies that were mostly poor-quality. The summary found that:
Taking antibiotic tablets or having an injection doesn't work as well as using quinolone antibiotic ear drops
Taking antibiotic tablets as well as antibiotic ear drops is unlikely to help clear up your ear infectionn.
You can get mild side effects from taking antibiotics. These include:9
Headache
Nausea
Stomach upset
Allergic reactions
Yeast infections (like thrush).
There's not much evidence to show whether antibiotic tablets, antibiotics that come as a liquid or antibiotic injections work in children. But we found one small study (a randomised controlled trial).10 It showedd that chiildren whoo had the injectionn were lesss likely to have aa dischargge from thheir ears six monthhs after tthe infecttion. But the study was too small to say for certain.
Surgery
You can have an operation to repair the hole (perforation) in your eardrum. This may improve your hearing. But we don't know how well surgery works for children in the long term.
The operation involves covering the hole in your eardrum with a patch of tissue. The operation is called a myringoplasty or a tympanoplasty.
When you have this operation you'll usually have a general anaesthetic, so you'll be asleep during the operation. An ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist doctor puts a small patch of tissue onto your eardrum to cover the hole.11
You can usually leave hospital the same day as the operation. You should avoid getting water in your ear for a few weeks afterwards.11
We didn't find any good-quality studies (randomised controlled trials) that compare people having surgery with people not having surgery.
But there is quite a lot of evidence about what happens to people who do have surgery. Studies show there is a good chance that it will seal up the hole in your eardrum and maybe improve your hearing. The evidence shows that:
The hole in the eardrum is sealed up for more than 9 in 10 people who have the operation12
Between half and three-quarters of people who have the operation find that their hearing improves afterwards.13 14
But we don't know if a repaired eardrum is likely to last in young children. Young children are more at risk of getting another ear infectionn. This might dislodge the patch, so the eardrum would become perforated again.
One study found that 3 in 5 children who had surgery didn't get another hole in the eardrums, and had normal hearing, more than six years after the operation.15
Surgery is more likely to work if your surgeon is skilled in this kind of operation. So it's important to ask if he or she has done this operation a lot.16 17 Surgery is also likely to work better if your eardrum isn't very badly damaged to start with.
How do you know you have an ear infection if you haven;t seen the doc? Without looking inside your ear you can't be sure you have an ear infection. Use tea tree oil on a cotton ball to help with the ear for now and stay out of the docs office if you can until you are over the flu as you don't want to spread that to everyone else in the docs office.
If you truly have an ear infection, it is a type of bacterial infection. A bacterial infection will only go away with an antibiotic prescribed by your local doctor. As for the upset stomach and other symptoms it sounds like you may have norovirus which is a gastrointestinal virus that makes you feel bad in your stomach for about 48-72 hours, and for that there is no medicine, you just have to ride it out because it's a virus.
First, you need to be taking some pain medication on a regular basis for the discomfort. Antibiotics will help. Most people with just a simple ear infection do not start vomiting - maybe you have picked up another bug along with your ear problem. Clear liquids in small, frequent amounts (one or two sips at a time), rest. Anything warm will help a little but the pain medication will help the most. See your doctor.
The trend has changed for ear infections- antibiotics aren't given so much anymore for them. We are taking too many antibiotics these days! So you probably do have the flu or something. Take some Tylenol if you can for the pain. Take some olive oil, warm it up, and chop up some garlic and put that in there. Let it soak for at least an hour or more. Strain the garlic out, and put drops of the olive oil in your ears. I have a friend who does this for her kids whenever they have an ear infection, and they always wake up feeling better! So try it!
You might want to try Alcohol. I have a kinda of an ear infection.
I hope this works!!! :) I hope you feel better! I will praying for you!
-Snowysnow1996
I just had an ear infection the Dr doctor gave me antibiotics and some spray for the ear. this did the trick the reason why your puking is because the inner ear is effected this controls the balance so you feel dizzy and sick so the quicker you get to the Dr the better. Maybe you should get the ears syringed.
If it is an outer ear infection it could be soothed somewhat by warmed salt in a sock, pressed against the ear. The heat makes the pus runny and the salt absorbs it, relieving the pressure. Because your immune system is working on your ear, it leaves you suceptible to other infections. If it is an inner infection or middle ear, heat wont help. You need to get alot of vitamin c in your system to boost your immune system.