Most of People should know that smoking has numerous side effects, both for the smoker and non-smoker who is able to inhale second-degree smoke. More familiar are heart failure and lung cancer. But, most people ignore that smoking also have side effects on your ears, and might give ear infection named Otitis Media.

This infection is actually quite familiar to children. When a kid has a cold or a virus, there is a thickening of the mucus on the nose that becomes home to bacteria. The bacteria may go to the ear canal through the Eustachian tube in the nose. This bacteria might then very well become an infection which symptoms are fluid on the ear,fever and earache after a few days. On the average, children go through this process 3 times before they turn six. Nevertheless, if the kid is exposed to smoke, from parents smoking for example, the average process happens eight times.

Now, how does smoking cause the said infection?

As we know, smoke is an irritant to our nasal channel. Since our body is loaded with defence mechanisms, our nasal passage will thicken with mucus irritants are present. As said earlier, aumented mucus grows into a favorable home to bacteria that can travel and affect our ears. Hence the Otitis Media is produced by the protective action of our body against smoke.

Aside from increasing our mucus, cigarette smoke also reduces our immune system. Numerous studies have etablished that being exposed to smoke makes the body weaker to diseases. Also affirmed is that this is true not only for actual smokers, but for second-degree smokers. Thus, even if children, or and even adults, do not smoke but are exposed to second-hand smoke, their immune system are still lesseneddiminished, making it tougher to fight infections.

Now, it is not just the pain and discomfort that this infection leads to that we must be careful of. Repeated Otitis Media could in fact lead to a gradual loss of hearing for the child. Though this is rare, this is not something that one should risk.

So, for all smokers out there, it is important that if you cannot stop smoking (actually, you can), please try to avoid smoking around children. Ear infections may be less-not as bad than lung cancer, heart failure or emphysema, but since it is children that we are dealing with, even a little infection should be given much seriousness.