IS IT TRUE THAT WEARING HEADPHONES INCREASES EAR BACTERIA?

Your ears are already dark, moist and full of oils and dead skin - an all-you-can-eat buffet for many bacteria. Sealing off the entrance with headphones or earphones seems like it could only make that environment more inviting to these microbes.

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Indeed, a 2008 study at Manipal University in India found that frequent use of earbuds did increase the population of bacteria in the ear - mostly various strains of staphylococcus, a common skin bacterium. And in 1992, a study at the Navy Medical Research Institute in Bethseda, Maryland in the US, found that the kind of over-the-ear headphones used by airlines had 11 times more bacteria after having been worn for just one hour.