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Earaches can be quite painful, making it almost impossible to focus on anything else you want to or should be doing. The pain may be dull or sharp, or you might even experience a burning sensation. In children, the discomfort can be quite severe, translating into lots of doctors appointments and emergency room visits at odd hours.

Although most people associate earaches with some sort of infection, there are actually many causes. These include buildup of earwax, foreign objects in the ear, water trapped in the ear or cotton swabs stuck in the ear.

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Other causes are not so common, so they are often overlooked for treatment. Here at Fort Collins Headache Center, we specialize in treating chronic earaches caused by temporomandibular joint (TMJ) dysfunction. Many healthcare practitioners are unaware of this link so they only treat the symptoms and not the underlying problem. Other earache triggers include allergies, as discussed in the following post:

Is Your Earache Due To A Food Allergy?

I grew up with a dairy allergy, which meant fielding endless questions from friends and teachers about what that meant. I would have to explain that allergies can cause lots of different types of reactions, and that my allergy meant that eating ice cream would give me ear infections.

Ear Infections Due To Food Allergies

The reactions I got when I explained my allergy were always in the realm of surprise, because at that time most people had never heard of dairy allergies or of ear infections being a result of a food allergy. But in the time that’s passed since I was young, ear infections have actually been shown to be a very common allergic reaction to dairy, especially among children. Read full post at CureJoy…

It’s very important to get checked if you are experiencing pain in your ears. While most of the common causes are easy to deal with, the problem may be more severe than you think. Some of the less common causes of earaches are good enough reason to call your doctor whenever you experience pain. Here’s one of them:

The Horrifying Reason For One Woman’s Earache

Even if eight-legged crawling things don’t creep you out, this story will make you want to stock up on earplugs.

Victoria Price regularly enjoys swimming in the sea off the south coast of Wales. One evening, after returning home from a swim, she noticed something strange.

“I got out of the shower and the pain in my ear was just incredible. I was like Irish dancing around the bathroom. I didn’t know what to do with myself,” Victoria said in a statement. Read full post at IFL Science…

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The ear may seem like a tiny organ, but as the above post reveals, it can be quite accommodating. The following post is even more disturbing, but true:

Man with earache goes to hospital and discovers 26 cockroaches living in his ear

When doctors examined a man complaining of earache in the city of Dongguan, in the southern Chinese region of Guangdong Province, the discovered that the source of his agony was a cockroach. Worse still, the insect had given birth to 25 babies inside his ear.

According to The People’s Daily Online and TVS, 19-year-old Mr Li had woken up in the night complaining of a painful and itchy right ear.

When Yang Jing, a doctor at Chang’an Xiaobian Hospital, peered inside, he said he “saw an insect-shaped object blocking his ear canal completely.” Dr Yang, talking to TVS, said he extracted the female roach from the ear, with the insect measuring 0.3 inches long. Read full post at Independent.ie…

If you’re experiencing chronic earaches that don’t respond to antibiotic treatment (and you feel pretty confident that you don’t have a creepy-crawly living in your ear) you may be experiencing a symptom of TMJ dysfunction. Book a consultation exam with Dr. Jared Ward at Fort Collins Headache Center today to see if you are a candidate for our cutting-edge TruDenta therapy. If you are, we will create a treatment plan that will have you symptom free in no time. Call us at 970-672-8517 or use the contact form on this page. We look forward to hearing from you.