Stop shaking your head to get the water out of your ears - you could suffer brain damage.

A joint investigation by Cornell University and Virginia Tech warns of this practice.

The way we try to remove trapped water from the ears can cause brain problems in young children. Beating the head to try to remove the fluid confined in the ear canal is dangerous, due to the magnitude of the variation in velocity in a short time.

This was determined by a study conducted by Anuj Baskota, Seungho Kim and Sunghwan Jung, from Cornell University and Virginia Tech.

"Our research is mainly focused on the acceleration required to get the water out of the ear," Baskota told the American Physical Society.

3D ears
To do this, they tested various sizes of 3D-printed glass tubes and ear canals and applied different accelerations.

They wanted to determine the ideal combination to remove water from a space with characteristics similar to the ear.

Baskota revealed that "the critical acceleration obtained was around the range of 10 times the force of gravity for infant ear sizes, which could cause brain damage."

In the case of adults, the variation in speed was less because their ears are larger in diameter.

What to do
"From our experiments and theoretical modeling, we discovered that fluid surface tension is one of the crucial factors that promote water getting stuck in the ear canals," Baskota said.

Based on this important finding, the researchers recommended replacing accelerated head movement with another method that is more effective and does not put health at risk.

Putting a few drops of a liquid with a lower surface tension than water, such as alcohol or vinegar, would reduce the strength of the surface tension allowing the water to flow, ”said Anuj Baskota.

Publication Date: 2019-12-01

Source: Fayerwayer:CELALBA YAMARTE