Sports audiology: Ear hygiene practices of gym users who wear earphones.
Aimee Flowers, Dhanashree Pillay
PMID 34342486WHAT IT FOUND
Gym users who wore earphones reported varied hygiene: 47 cleaned their ears, 29 used earbuds, and 32 cleaned earphones.
Exams found 11 ears fully blocked by wax and 2 ears with bony growths.
Key findings
01Forty-seven participants reported cleaning their ears, 29 used earbuds, and 32 reported cleaning their earphones.
02Eleven participants had tinnitus, 8 had dizziness after exercise, and 13 had a hearing change after strenuous training with loud music via earphones.
03Otoscopy found 11 ears fully occluded with wax, 5 ears partially occluded with wax, and 2 ears with visible exostoses.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The study included only 54 participants, recruited through people known to the researcher and a social media advert, so it may not represent all gym users. Ear cleaning habits, earphone cleaning, volume, and symptoms were self-reported, except for the ear examinations. There was no comparison group of gym users who did not wear earphones or of non-gym users, so the study cannot show that earphones caused wax occlusion, tinnitus, dizziness, or hearing changes. The paper does not report how many participants were excluded, lost, or analysed differently from those recruited. The study describes practices and ear findings from one data collection; it did not test an education programme or hygiene intervention.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these ear findings as proof that earphones caused them. The study described 54 gym users without a comparison group, so it cannot separate earphone use from other gym exposures such as loud music, swimming, or cold air.