Kiss of Deaf: Can kissing lead to hearing loss?

They say love will keep us alive. And isn’t kissing the good part? It’s harmless, we believe. But turns out a liplock can be fatal. Here’s proof.

A man in China ruptured an eardrum after he passionately kissed his girlfriend for 10 minutes. He suffered loss of hearing, according to a report by South China Moring Post (SCMP).

How did the man lose his hearing?

On 22 August, Chinese Valentine’s Day, the man and his partner went on a date to the picturesque West Lake in the country’s eastern Zhejiang province. They were having a moment of passion. While kissing, he heard a bubbling sound followed by pain in his left ear. Soon after, he could not hear properly.

The man was rushed to a hospital, where doctors told him that his eardrum was perforated. It will take him two months to recover.

If you think, this is an isolated freak incident, you are mistaken. A similar incident was reported last month when a couple were kissing at their house in the Guangdong province, southern China, SCMP reports.

In 2008, a young woman in her 20s from the same province partially lost her hearing after her boyfriend ruptured her eardrum during an excessively passionate kiss, according to a Reuters article. She went to a hospital completely deaf in her left ear.

Can kissing make you go deaf?

Intense kissing can lead to a rapid change in air pressure inside the ear, say doctors. This along with the heavy breathing of the partner in the throes of passion can lead to an imbalance leading to a puncture in the ear, the SCMP report says.

When a partner reduces the pressure in the mouth by sucking, the pressure in the middle of the ear is lowered via the Eustachian tube. This would mean that the normal atmospheric pressure on the outside of the eardrum would no longer be matched by equal pressure on the other side, the BBC reports.

A healthy eardrum would not be impacted because of the change in pressure. However, someone with ear problems might face the risk of perforation.

Some people suffer from a rare condition called patulous Eustachian tube, a disorder of the passage that opens to equalise the pressure between the inside of the ear and the outside world.

Also read: Kiss and Tell: Did lip-locking begin in 2500 BC?

The BBC report from 2008 on the woman from China who lost her hearing quotes Dr Rudrapathy Palaniappan, an audiological physician, as saying, “The Eustachian tube doesn’t open and close as it normally does. Instead, it’s open most of the time… If you apply negative pressure to its extreme like aggressive kissing then it’s possible that the ear drum can be sucked inwards.”

According to Andrew McCombe, an ENT surgeon from the UK, if you have a previous perforation of your eardrum, if you have a scar, that would burst more easily.

But it’s not just liplocks that are harmful. Doctors have warned against kissing on the ear.

Also read: Creepy or Not? What is China’s ‘remote-kissing’ device for long-distance lovers?

Why kissing on the ear is dangerous?

The ear is the one place you should not plant a kiss. It might seem harmless but can create strong suction that tugs on the eardrum, resulting in a condition called “cochlear ear-kiss injury”. Such a kiss can lead to permanent hearing loss and other symptoms like ringing, sensitivity to sound, distortion and aural fullness, according to a report by NBC.

Dr Levi Reiter, a professor of audiology, studied his phenomenon after a woman came to him about going deaf in one ear when her five-year-old kissed her there. The child’s kiss created considerable suction which applied negative pressure to the eardrum. The mother suffered total hearing loss, a very intense, screeching tinnitus, along with facial tics and pain. While her hearing returned, she was left with a permanent hearing loss in lower frequencies.

Reiter who started researching the subject found a case of ear-kiss injury reported in the 1950s in the United States. He said that ear-kiss patients exhibit a characteristic pattern of hearing loss, with hearing most diminished in the frequency range of unvoiced consonants, such as “ch” and “sh”.

Doctors have cautioned time and again to go easy on the ears of your loved ones. Most recently, in 2019, a young woman from Hunan in China burst her boyfriend’s eardrum by kissing him too hard on the ear.

Babies and children are the most vulnerable to hearing damage because of a kiss because of their smaller ear canals.

So yes, kissing can be dangerous. Steer clear of the ears. And of course, rein in the passion.

With inputs from agencies