Ear, Nose And Throat
How do you get rid of ear wax?
There is a mechanism in the ears to expel ear wax, and that's why sometimes people see small amounts of ear wax appearing just outside their ear canals and that's OK. However, sometimes the ear wax dries up and attaches itself to the little hairs in the ear canal. The simple measure to deal with this is to soften the ear wax. That can be done either with commercial ear wax softening drops used on a regular basis, or maybe something as simple as olive oil.
Can cleaning your ear with a cotton bud be dangerous?
Cotton buds can penetrate far too deep into the ear canal and they can easily cause a perforation or more severe damage to the ear drum. Furthermore, if you try hooking out a significant amount of ear wax with a cotton bud, it's absolutely impossible. All you're doing is pushing the ear wax further in. The only thing that's coming out on the cotton bud is just a little bit of wax from the side of the ear canal, but not the real significant amount of wax that could be blocking your ear canal.
How do you treat bad breath?
The treatment of bad breath has to be classified into the treatment of its causes. Bad breath can be caused by tooth problems such as tooth infection, and gum problems such as a gum infection - for example, thrush in the mouth, which is a yeast infection. Really it's a matter for patients. First, extreme oral hygienic measures. The teeth need to be brushed regularly, the teeth need to be cleaned in between the teeth and the tongue needs to be brushed clean. If the patient cannot identify any of these as possible causes to their bad breath, maybe they ought to speak to their doctor, who might wish to either do some investigations, or possibly treat them with anti-fungal or anti-bacterial products to try to treat the underlying cause of the bad breath.
My sense of smell has gone. Is it serious?
The most common cause of a loss of sense of smell is sinusitis or another type of sinus problem. I think lack of smell ought to be checked by the doctor to make certain that there are no other serious underlying disorders. If so, it can be treated as a more minor condition such as a sinus problem.
What causes double chin and is there a treatment?
Double chin is usually caused by a laxity of a very thin muscle that we have in the neck, and therefore that part of the neck can drop or droop. In some cases, you can also get an excessive amount of fatty deposition in that area, in particular with people who are overweight. It's not a medical condition that would worry me, and therefore its treatment is purely aesthetic. That means plastic surgery or aesthetic treatment in the form of liposuction or skin retraction procedures, therefore just making it look aesthetically closer to what the patient would like to look like.
I've got mumps. Will it lead to infertility?
Infertility is one of the complications of mumps. However, it is one of the rarer complications of mumps. Mumps is a viral infection that affects certain types of glands. The most common glands that mumps affects are the salivary glands. In particular, two salivary glands that are present on either side of people's mandibles at the angle of the jaw. If the viral infection affects the testes, the testes will become swollen and painful. That is very severe: there is potentially the possibility of infertility as a result. Luckily, this complication is not common, and moreover, nowadays the mumps vaccine is incorporated into the routine vaccination protocol of most countries, and hence the incidence of mumps has reduced significantly. We rarely see infertility as a result of mumps.
