E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
Courtesy of Barney Fields
Joe Fields, an 82-year-old jazz producer from Long Island, suffered some hearing damage after his adult granddaughter kissed him on the ear a few years ago.
Where's the one place you should never kiss a baby -- or anyone else? The ear, according to a professor of audiology at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.
An innocent kiss right on the ear opening creates strong suction that tugs on the delicate eardrum, resulting in a recently recognized condition known as "cochlear ear-kiss injury." Such a kiss can lead not only to permanent hearing loss, but a host of other troubling ear symptoms including ringing, sensitivity to sound, distortion and aural fullness.
Hofstra University's Dr. Levi Reiter has been studying the phenomenon ever since a woman came to him five years ago with a strange story about going deaf in one ear immediately after her five-year-old kissed her there.
"I thought this lady was a unique case," says Reiter. After a bit of research, though, he discovered another case of ear-kiss injury reported in the 1950s.
Once the so-called "kiss of deaf" was written up in Newsday, however, Reiter started hearing from people worldwide. He has now identified more than 30 ear-kiss victims (and hopes to hear from more), and is preparing to submit his most recent findings to the International Journal of Audiology and the International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology.
Ear-kiss patients exhibit a characteristic pattern of hearing loss, Reiter said, with hearing most diminished in the frequency range of unvoiced consonants, such as "ch" and "sh."
"There are a lot of cases of unknown unilateral hearing loss in kids, and I am sure that a good portion are from a peck on the ear," he says.
Babies and small children are particularly vulnerable to hearing damage via kiss, simply because their ear canals are smaller. A baby will cry after such a painful kiss, he says, but "kids cry for a lot of reasons." Unfortunately, hearing loss usually isn't identified until years later, during a school screening.
Unilateral hearing loss can be acquired from a blow to the ear, impulse noise (like an exploding firecracker) on one side of the head, or a Q-tip pushed too far.
An ear-kiss is another cause, formerly undiscovered, said Paul Farrell, associate director for audiology practices at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. "It is a fascinating phenomenon," he said. "I would consider it an emerging topic in the field."
Reiter believes that the intense suction on the eardrum pulls the chain of three tiny bones in the ear. The third bone, the stirrup-shaped stapes, then tugs on the stapedial annular ligament, causing turbulence in the fluid of the cochlea, or inner ear.
Reiter is full of horror stories of ear-kiss injuries resulting from normal everyday activities: a hairdresser sending a client off with a nice hairdo and a smack on the ear; a relative's air-kiss going astray after a quick turn of the head; a mother seeing her little girl off to school with a loving smooch.
Still, the prevalence of the injury is unknown.
"People are going to doctors who are pooh-poohing this," says Reiter. "One reason these people wrote to me in the first place was that they were getting nowhere. The doctors were making fun of them. They felt humiliated."
Joe Fields, an 82-year-old jazz producer from Long Island, received a kiss on the ear from his adult granddaughter a few years ago that left him with a host of hearing problems.
"It felt like if you got hit by a ball on the ear," he says. "It's like hearing through a screen of some sort. In the kissy ear, speech is totally muffled."
Fields, a patient of Reiter's, now wears hearing aids, but still experiences intermittent sensations of aural fullness as well as a "deep-seated itch."
"At times, it feels terrible," he says.
Reiter speculates that an injection of steroids through the eardrum, which is used in cases of sudden idiopathic deafness, could help if administered within days of an ear kiss.
But there is currently no treatment and symptoms don't tend to resolve. As a result, Reiter -- and patients like Joe Fields -- preach prevention.
"My granddaughter is a kindergarten teacher and I tell her never kiss any of your little tykes on the ear," he says.
Read the latest from Vitals:
Leave a Comment:
How about air pull when one is cleaning the ear with a pinkie? Is it harmful?
no, the mouth, and it's muscles are capable of generating much more air pressure than a finger in the ear
Ok, Whatever you do, don't move. Moving will cause you to hurt yourself. And don't eat, you never know what bad stuff is in food. Don't breath because of allergens, pollutants and dangerous chemicals and bacteria in the air. But especially, don't drink water. Water is the perfect vehicle for terrorist attack AND the governments put poison in it like ammonia and fluoride. You should probably not talk either, you could offend someone and give them justification to kill you or at the least, imprison you. DO NOT go to the hospital if you get sick because that is THE place where most people catch the WORST of super bugs and more young people die from automobile accidents than any other cause of death so you'd probably die en-route anyway. It has been proven that listening to certain types of music excite different areas of the brain and are responsible for things like elevated blood pressure leading to stroke, so just sit quietly. Chances are you have some form of cancer growing inside you at this very moment so you might want to call someone and have them bring you some holistic medicines because actual medicines kill you faster than the illness your being treated for. Unfortunately, Holistic medicines are not regulated by any government agency and can be VERY dangerous so take them at your own risk, and hope they don't make it in some factory that produces other products because of cross-contamination. Melons and spinach are almost always infected with salmonella for some reason and ALL cold medicine and baby wipes have been recalled because of bacterial growth in one of the ingredients that is making people sick and babies have died. Sitting for too long though will give you blood clots in your legs that will move to your lungs and kill you so you should SLOWLY stand up occasionally but be careful because the change in blood pressure could make you lose consciousness and you could fall and hit your head causing injury or death.
any doctor anywhere will tell you to never stick anything smaller than your elbow in your ear. no, that is not a joke.
Wow, AlienMartian - you must be a ball to hang out with at parties! You may think it's funny what you wrote, but after the 8th sentence, it's just scary!
Its a scary world...
I am telling you - when you leave the hospital you should get an instruction manual!
We've been making these things for how long and we still don't have a manual?
Things will be fine someday when we ban all human contact, and start living like they did in the movie Demolition Man with Stalone and Sandra. Anybody up for going to Taco Bell? Not like there will be any other place to go in the future. My only worry is learning how to use the 3 seashells.
I too have spent an inordinate amount of time pondering how the "3 seashells" should be properly used...
Water, air, powder. It's nothing more than an advanced bidet.
anyone with any sense knows you should not kiss anyone's ear, especially an infant.
No kidding. Ear suction is very uncomfortable! Obviously a kiss would be too.
What about all those tight fitting, noise cancelling earbuds? My husband purchased a pair of Beats earbuds for me that just hurt like h*ll to take off while using the correct sized earbud cover. I could feel the suction. They sounded great, but I gave those up after a couple of uses. Wouldn't that just be great, take care to listen at a responsible level but go deaf taking them off!
...are there any problems with kissing someone's ass.....???
I wear them every single day.
I was born legally deaf, but I can hear due to surgery while I was little. Because I was born deaf, I do get my hearing tested often, and they've never told me it has decreased due to earplugs or any thing else.
The suction when you take them out is actually indicating that you are removing them improperly. Squish them to allow some air at the side, and you should have no problems removing them. I hope that helps.
That's What's Up - go ahead and kiss someone's ass, but instead of worrying about suction, you must be careful not to BLOW into anyone's ass.
If rigid ear buds (like those for an iPod) create suction when you remove them, they are too tight. If you are refering to those foam ear plugs, then phalaeo is right. Everything in the ear is VERY sensitive to pressure change, increased or decreased (it is, after all, designed to sense changes in air pressure). A light, well placed slap over the ear can cause severe, permenant hearing loss. And it is true that you should never insert anything into the ear canal.
If nothing else... it is just nasty.......
Yeah, it is. I assume most of it results unintentionally when a person abruptly turns their head.
I wear ear plugs at work and I know from experience if you remove both ear plugs at the same time quickly it creates a suction in your inner ear and doesn't feel good at all. That's just my two cents of advice.
Removing both ear plugs "at the same time quickly" would not have any more effect on an individual ear than would removing plugs at different times. There is not a direct connection between the ears through the head. ;-)
My ex-husband used to do that to me ALL the time! I would get so angry because my ear would really hurt after, and I'd tell him all the time to stop doing that. I have not had any hearing tests, but I'm pretty sure I have hearing loss as I have a difficult time hearing certain tones and sounds. Basically, if I'm not looking at your mouth, I probably won't understand what is being said to me. I should email this to him. ggggrrrr
This happens when someone french kisses your ear. It sucks!
Don"t kiss little kids on the forehead either. The suction from the kiss pulls on the frontal lobe and makes them stupid. :)
I slipped on ice during the President's Day blizzard (2003), my head did not even hit the ground, landed on my hip. It was actually the sudden fall, for which I was not prepared for, diagnosed as "sudden drop in intracranial pressure" - "perilymph fistula", boom... it tore my cochlear nerve. One hundred per cent deaf. The theory was, internal ear collapsed, ripped the cochlear nerve, opened up one of the round/oval windows, leaked the endolymph. Many ways one can have hearing loss!!
Oh man agni, thats horrible. Its scary to think of something like that happening.
Ummm no, kiis of deaf is soooooooooooooooooooo stupid, the man was old, his muscle in the ear arent strong enough he cannot blame his grandmother for that.
what he going to do sue her?? give me a break!
might as well not get a cold of your going to blame the kiss for hearing lost, GIVE ME a BREAK!!!
he isn't mad at her 'what is he going to sue her?" just because it happened at the exact moment she kissed him...he knows it's from that. Of course he, being a musician in need of good hearing, needed more answers.
what does this have to do with 'muscles near the ear". If the elderly were even mosre suseptable to such damage, it's even more important to not kiss them there!
did you even read the article?
h
First, it was his grandDAUGHTER. Second, has nothing to do with ear muscles. Stupid much? The MOUTH muscles are what they are referring to, being strong enough to suck air out of the ear and distort the eardrum somehow. Third, the article did not even mention any feelings of resentment whatsoever, they are just informing us how it happened. Why would he be upset? It was an innocent mistake. Lastly, the old man is NOT the only one this happened to, as the article states. There were young victims as well. Read the article thoroughly before making such an ignorant comment. By the way, anyone who gives a kiss on an ear wax-producing mechanism is just plain gross.
SloppyJoes - did you get kissed on your forehead a lot when you were little?
Super good to know. I have a 1 year old and will remember this.
How does a kiss have suction? Are people kissing people directly on the ear opening? This just makes no sense to me.
Yes, people are kissing directly on the ear opening.
30 cases out of how many billion ppl??? Do I really need to worry about this? Sheesh!
I agree, and there is no mention of the loud music and sound effects that we are subjected to daily. Theme parks, concerts, movie theatres all provide sound levels that damage hearing over time. OSHA would require hearing protection with these sound levels if they were in a work place. Head phones, ear buds, car and home sounds systems are many times set to damaging sound levels. Let's ignore all of this and talk about a few ear kisses.
No loss! I don't like kissing ears.
Woooowwww...it's always something isn't it??? Who need war, famine poverty, violence and disease to kill us....just kiss someone
I'm sorry but I have never kissed anyone on the ear or had mine kissed. I don't know of anyone who does that. Why would someone do that? Of all the places to kiss......
the best place to kiss someone is the mouth or neck... that's where I think it feels good and it's no where near the ear. =)
The above article was sponsered by the ' Laugh-in' show. Their motto was "blow in my ear and I will follow you anywhere".