This Is The 1 Thing You Should Never, Ever Do When Cleaning Your Ears — "Horrible Things Happen"

The human ear is a magical organ that allows us to hear and helps keep our balance. It’s also the production site and happy home of ear wax — the orangey-brown, chunky, funky gunk that’s completely natural, but not exactly the most desirable gift our body gives us.

So what’s the best way to clean our ears? And is using a cotton swab (or Q-Tip, the name brand that has become synonymous with the soft, fuzzy little tool) really as problematic as we’ve been told?

That’s what we — Raj Punjabi and Noah Michelson, the co-hosts of HuffPost’s Am I Doing It Wrong? podcast — aimed to find out when we recently chatted with Dr. Craig Kasper, founder and managing director of New York Hearing Doctors, when he recently dropped by our studio to chat about the best ways to protect our hearing.

“Never use a Q-Tip,” Kasper told us. “If you look at the box of cotton swabs, there’s nothing in there that says it’s used for cleaning ears — it’s for cleaning electronics, taking makeup off, all that stuff.”

In fact, most boxes of the product explicitly state you should not put swabs in your ear, and that “entering the ear canal could cause injury.”

“If you take a look at the diameter of the cotton swab, it’s about the diameter of your ear canal,” Kasper, who has been an audiologist for over 25 years, noted. “And if you just stick that in your ear, all you’re doing is plunging the wax further down into the ear canal. You might get a little satisfaction out of [seeing] a little wax on the Q-Tip, but you’re not really getting anything out.”

And, not only could you be causing wax to become trapped in — instead of released from — your ear, it could also be dangerous.

“I’ve seen horrible things happen where people put Q-Tips in there, and then they start brushing their teeth,” Kasper said. “The Q-Tip is still sticking in their ear, and then [something happens and] the Q-Tip goes through the ear drum. So then you have what’s called a conductive hearing loss because you punctured the ear drum — and it’s painful too.”

Using a swab on the outside of the ear canal is safe, but there are better methods for cleaning inside the ear.

“The ear canal itself is just skin tissue and the wax is produced from what’s called sebaceous glands — they’re little glands in the ear canal,” Kasper explained. “The ear canal skin is kind of like a conveyor belt where, as it starts to die off, it migrates outward, taking along with it the wax as well. So if you just run water in your ear in the shower, it should flush that out.”

Michelson agreed. “I had a doctor who once said when you’re in the shower, and you’re using shampoo or whatever, just put a soapy finger in [your ear] and that should be fine,” he added.

However, some individuals produce a lot of ear wax or have “really hairy ear canals,” Kasper said, which means they may need a little more help to keep their ears clean.

“In those particular cases, don’t dig. Go to a professional, have them look in your ears,” he told us. “There are easy, simple ways to get it out that are safe. I would even say be careful with those over-the-counter ear washes and definitely don’t stick things like bobby pins or pen caps in your ear.”

A few drops of hydrogen peroxide or similar products are another good option to soften the wax so it can be flushed out.

“That’s totally fine ... but don’t do it too much, because the last thing you want to do is over clean your ear.”

For more from Dr. Craig Kasper, head here.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.