Head Shaking to Free Water can Cause Brain Damage

Acceleration of head shaking to get rid of water in the ears was found to cause brain damage, said Cornell University and Virginia Tech researchers. Anuj Baskota, Seungho Kim, Hosung Kang, and Sunghwan Jung will present their findings at the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics 72nd Annual Meeting on Nov. 23 at 4:15 p.m. The conference takes place at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle on Nov. 23-26, 2019.

"Our research mainly focuses on the acceleration required to get the water out of the ear canal," said Baskota. "The critical acceleration that we obtained experimentally on glass tubes and 3D printed ear canals was around the range of 10 times the force of gravity for infant ear sizes, which could cause damage to the brain."

For adults, the acceleration was lower due to the larger diameter of the ear canals. They said the overall volume and position of the water in the canal changes the acceleration needed to remove it.

"From our experiments and theoretical model, we figured out that surface tension of the fluid is one of the crucial factors promoting the water to get stuck in ear canals," said Baskota.

Luckily, the researchers said there is a solution that does not involve any head shaking. "Presumably, putting a few drops of a liquid with lower surface tension than water, like alcohol or vinegar, in the ear would reduce the surface tension force allowing the water to flow out," Baskota said.

Source-Eurekalert