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Piercing ear cartilage
Name: Mark Reynolds
Status: N/A
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A
Question:
My name is Mark Reynolds. I have heard that there is a nerve in the cartilage
area of the ear. My question is as follows:
If you pierce your ear(s) and do hit the nerve, could permanent
paralysis or brain damage occur?
Thank you.
Replies:
No. Basically nerves serve two purposes: gathering information from the
senses (sensory nerves) and controlling muscles (motor nerves). If you
damage a sensory nerve, then that nerve can't send messages to the brain,
but this will not damage the brain. If you damage a motor nerve then the
brain can't send messages to a muscle and indeed paralysis occurs. But
nerves are laid out sensibly, that is, nerves do not go from your brain
through your earlobe and then on to your leg or arm. Damaging a motor
nerve in your ear won't affect anything other than your ear muscles, if
there are any. Paralysis is usually temporary if motor nerve damage occurs
outside of the spinal cord, since the main body of the motor nerve cells
are in the spinal cord and the "axons" connecting them to the muscles can
regrow (about a millimeter a day). If nerve cell bodies themselves are
damaged by injury to the spinal cord they may recover and paralysis go
away. This may also happen even if nerve cells are killed, as long as not
too many are, and other cells can take over. But if too many are killed
paralysis is permanent, since nerve cells never reproduce.
Christopher Grayce
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Update: June 2012
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