Earwax has an important job – mess with it at your peril.
Earwax does an important job inside our ears – mess with it at your peril.
Like most ear specialists, Auckland audiologist Alice Smith is astonished by what people stick into their ears in an attempt to clear wax out of them. “Oh my gosh – people use knitting needles, safety pins, pencils, arts-andcrafts tools. It’s amazing what people think they can put in their ears.” And although cotton buds may look as if they’re perfectly designed for cleaning inside your ears, they’re not. As Smith says, whether you use a cotton bud, a knitting needle or some other thin, pointy object, you risk damaging your ear canal. During her training, she encountered a case in which a woman who had been using a pencil to clean her ear answered the phone with the pencil still in there and accidentally pushed it into her eardrum.
More to the point, sticking something into your ear will do exactly the opposite of what you’re hoping. “People think they’re getting wax out, but they’re actually pushing it back in again.” In fact, for most people, ears are self-cleaning.
Earwax, or cerumen, may seem slightly unpleasant, but it serves an important purpose: “It protects the eardrum by making sure no foreign bodies get into the ear. It also helps stop the ear from drying out, and it has some antifungal and antibiotic properties as well.”
Earwax forms close to the eardrum and starts working its way out as we chew, move our jaws and grow new skin inside our ear canals. It’s a short journey – about 2.5cm – but it’s a slow one; earwax moves through the ear canal at about the same rate as our fingernails grow.
Usually the migration process occurs with no problems. But some people produce more earwax than normal, which can cause it to build up and start to get impacted.
Others have problems with their self-cleaning mechanism. This is more common in older people, who have softer cartilage and whose bodies often produce less moisture. “Older people also tend to have more hair in their ears, which can make it
harder for the wax to get out.”
Occasionally, people have problems with excess earwax when they first get hearing aids. “They may produce more earwax in the first weeks or months after getting hearing aids, because their body thinks they’re something it has to get rid of.”
Impacted earwax can cause a range of symptoms, including a sensation of fullness in the ears, itchiness, pain, tinnitus and hearing loss. It may also cause what Smith describes as a “gloopy” sound in the ear as the wax moves around. “If the wax is quite soft, the sound quality can be a bit like being under water.”
If you’re bothered by earwax, the best thing to do is to let nature take its course and wait for the wax to make its way out by itself – possibly with a little help from an over-the-counter wax-softening product or by using a few drops of olive oil for several days.
If this doesn’t work, make an appointment with an ear nurse, who will use a special machine to gently suck excess wax out of your ears.
“You don’t need a doctor’s referral to see an ear nurse, and there are plenty of them around New Zealand,” says Smith, who works at the University of Auckland’s ear clinic.
“An ear nurse can also tell whether your wax is healthy, or if it has increased because something is not quite right in your ear.”
Whatever you do, don’t try to clean your ears yourself. As the American Academy of Otolaryngology noted in its updated guidelines on ear health earlier this year, you should avoid putting anything smaller than your elbow into your ear. That includes so-called ear candles, which allegedly create a vacuum to suck out earwax.
“Ear candles are potentially dangerous and they’re not going to do anything, either,” says Smith.
Some people worry that wearing earplugs may cause problems, but Smith says that is only likely if they already produce a lot of wax. “In that case, the earplugs can stop the wax from pushing out. But if you wear earplugs because you work in a loud environment, it’s more important to protect your hearing than stop wax from building up.”
As the American Academy of Otolaryngology notes, you should avoid putting anything smaller than your elbow into your ear.