Cauliflower ear was apparently too bland.
After catching a cold from her 19-year-old son, Bravo personality Brandi Glanville decided to try a TikTok-approved congestion-clearing method recommended by her other son, 22.
And the move is drumming up questions.
On a recent episode of the “Brandi Glanville Unfiltered” podcast, the 53-year-old shared that she had shoved a garlic clove so far into her ear that she needed an urgent care doctor to fish it out. On Easter, she said, she “didn’t do anything because of my garlic in my ear.”
Her older son allegedly said he’d had decongestion success placing garlic cloves in his nostrils, which Glanville said she tried first. She decided to move them to her ear after her nostrils — recently lasered — started burning.
But the allium in her ear wouldn’t come out when she went digging for it.
“Every time I tried to get it out, it really went down further, and I had to go to urgent care the next day and get it out,” she said on the podcast.
Ear, nose and throat specialists don’t like what they’re hearing.
When asked if a clove to the ear is a legitimate, safe way to treat congestion, Dr. Madeleine Herman, physician president at the Sinus Center & ENT Specialists of Houston, said “no, absolutely not.”
“Foreign bodies in the ear canal can cause infections or worse,” she tells The Post. They could lead to ear drum perforations or even damage to the bones that allow you to hear.
“There’s a reason ENT’s tell you not to put anything in the ear canal, including Q-tips.”
Garlic, she said, is also made up of active compounds that could cause chemical burns when applied to the delicate skin that lines the ear canal.
The original garlic “hack” involves placing garlic cloves in the nose. Several now viral TikTok videos show in gruesome detail a torrent of snot gushing from the nostrils when the cloves are removed. (Watch at your own peril.)
This volcanic effect is likely the result of one of two realities, Herman explained to The Post back in December: Either “mucus has been collecting behind the obstruction and simply comes out all at once” or the garlic has so irritated the nasal lining that it “triggers increased mucus production as the nose attempts to ‘flush out’ the irritant.”
But there’s no evidence to suggest that this method can actually treat sinus congestion.
That’s not to say garlic can’t be medicinal when used correctly, however.
Dr. Ryan Salvador, an ENT Surgeon at Sinus & Snoring Specialists, acknowledges that the use of garlic in traditional medicine dates back millennia — to ancient Egyptian, Greek, Chinese, Indian and Jewish cultures — and continues today.
“Recent studies have indeed shown that several compounds in garlic (allicin, S-alkyl cysteine) have significant antimicrobial effects, especially when delivered topically,” he tells The Post. “As such, garlic can be used effectively for mild external ear infections and has shown as much efficacy as over-the-counter drops for ear infections for that purpose.”
But shoving a clove in your ear to soothe congestion is a fool’s errand.
“The principle is that the antibiotic and anti-inflammatory compounds in garlic, when placed in the ear or nose, can be used to relieve sinus pressure,” Salvador says. But “there is little evidence to show that such a treatment would be effective.”
Because of the structure of the ears and sinuses, there’s nothing you can put in your ears to treat congestion, which “is caused by swelling of the Eustachian tube, which empties into the back of the nose,” Herman says.
“It is separated from your ear canal by the ear drum, so a garlic clove in the ear canal wouldn’t affect the middle ear or the Eustachian tube,” she adds.
Dr. Andrew Spector, an otolaryngologist with the Dartmouth Hitchcock Clinics in Manchester, NH, calls it the “right church, wrong pew” phenomenon.
“It absolutely makes zero sense that putting something in your ear would help sinus or nasal congestion, let alone ear congestion,” he said.
“Even if somebody had an opening in their eardrum (which they should not naturally), garlic would not get from the ear canal through the Eustachian tube into the back of the nose and up to the sinuses. In other words, it literally cannot reach the nose or sinuses.”
The important thing to do to treat ear congestion is to decrease the swelling of the Eustachian tube. Nasal steroids like Flonase or Nasacort and short-term use of decongestants like Afrin or Sudafed can help.
If all else fails, it’s advisable to book an appointment with an ENT who can prescribe other medical therapies or, in more severe cases, ear tubes.
Gentle massage on the outer ear and ear canals can also “promote opening of the Eustachian tube and relieve ear pressure,” Salvador explains.
Ultimately, there are several proven methods to relieve ear congestion, and garlic to the brain isn’t one of them.
But for now, at least for scores of TikTok creators, it seems the doctors’ advice has fallen on deaf ears.
