Sometimes, the cotton tip of the swab can also come off in the ear, Schofield says. This can make hearing muffled. It can cause an infection, if the cotton has been in there long enough.

Many people use Q-Tips brand cotton swabs as tool to remove excess ear wax from inside the ear canal, but the Q-Tips box clearly says that the swabs should not be used for this purpose.

The cotton swabs that most of us use to clean wax out of our ears are a lot more harmful than helpful. When you put a Q-tip in your ear, it actually ends up pushing most of the wax deeper into the ...