Prevention Is the Key
Now that you understand what causes ear infections, you naturally want to know how to prevent them. As stated previously, hand washing is one of the best ways to prevent ear infections because it reduces your child's chance of getting a cold in the first place. Controlling nasal allergy with medication and other avoidance measures is another way to thwart the onset of ear infections. However, there are additional factors that can be managed to further reduce the risk of getting an ear infection.
Day Care
Simply being in a day-care setting increases the likelihood that your child will have frequent bouts of viral illnesses. Children do not tend to have the best hygiene practices. When they play together, they share the same toys and frequently touch each other. Furthermore, a child's immune system is more immature than that of an adult because the child has not been exposed to as many infections over the years as the adult. All these factors contribute to the perfect setting for the transmission of germs.
As you have learned, nasal congestion is almost a prerequisite for the development of an ear infection. If children catch more colds in the day-care environment, they are also a lot more likely to have frequent ear infections. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to simply take your children out of day care. It is possible, however, to ensure that your child's day-care facility has good standards of hygiene and that it makes it a practice to have as few children as possible in the same area. Beyond these considerations, the situation is usually out of your control.
Bottle to the Bed
As children grow up, it is often difficult for them to give up the last bottle of the day, one that they might be accustomed to taking to bed. An older child might be able to make it through the entire day without needing a bottle, but at the end of the day, she feels comforted by the nighttime bottle. It's part of her bedtime routine.
In addition to the increased risk of developing cavities, letting a child have a bedtime bottle has another negative side effect. It increases the chance of developing ear infections. It is believed that the milk consumed while the child is lying on his back could backflow from his throat via the Eustachian tube into the middle ear cavity. This style of feeding could fill the middle ear with a small amount of residual milk, thereby encouraging bacteria overgrowth inside the ear.
Essential
It may be extremely difficult to cajole your child into quitting his nighttime bottle cold turkey. Instead, you can give him water to drink or have him drink his bottle sitting up instead of lying down. Make sure that he cleans his teeth after the bottle is finished and before he goes to sleep. This will help prevent cavities.
Secondhand Smoke
Secondhand smoke kills. It is a medical fact that has been proven beyond any doubt over the past years. Nevertheless, it is still a fact of life in many households. Not only can it cause cancers of the throat and lungs in the long run, it can also exacerbate asthma and worsen allergy symptoms. It has been clearly shown that microscopic smoke particles impair clearing of secretions in the throat because the toxins in these particles paralyze the mucus-clearing mechanism of the throat and the lungs. Once this mechanism is botched, secretion in the throat increases, and the excessive mucus blocks the Eustachian tube and causes ear infections.
