What is the healthiest way to deal with earwax?  Should one just leave
it in your ear and not mess with it, or should you clean it out
every so often?  Can cleaning it out damage your eardrums?
Are there any tubes in your ear that might get blocked?

Stephen

Assuming that the wax is causing hearing loss, congestion or popping
in the ears, you can try some cautious tepid water irrigation with a
bulb syringe, but it is awkward to do for oneself and may not work or
may even make things worse.  (My wife would disagree, she does it
successfully every six months or so.)  In any case DO NOT ATTEMPT
ANYTHING WITH Q-TIPS!!!

My experience has been that this is initially best handled by a
Ear/Nose/Throat person.  I say initially, because an ENT can evaluate
whether or not you might have success on your own with a little
instruction.

I am not a physician (obviously, because I eschew the term
otolaryngologist); this posting is based only on personal experience.

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        dated 29 Apr 93 15:43:10 GMT,

I'll agree with your wife.  While I was a student, I had doctors remove
rather surprising amounts of wax from my ears by flushing them out a couple
times, usually because they were examining my ears for some other reason, and
said something like "Gee, you've got a lot of wax in there".  In my case,
removal of these large wax buildups did noticeably improve my hearing, and
I've since gotten in the same habit as your wife of flushing them out with
warm water from a little {*filter*} bulb every few months.  You can buy little
bulbs together with ear drops for this express purpose from the drug store -
I don't notice that the drops accomplish much of anything.

One question I do have - a doctor who flushed out my ears once also advocated
a drop of rubbing {*filter*} in them afterwards to flush out any remaining
trapped water - said he told swimmers to do this after swimming, too.  It
works, but it stings like the devil, so I've always been content to let any
water in my ears from swimming or flushing them out figure out how to get
out by itself if shaking my head a few times won't do the trick.  Any
comments?

The best thing to do is leave it, it will work its own way out to the surface.
Anything you stick up there to try and clean it is just going to push the wax
up against your eardrum and pack it on there solid, thus impairing your
hearing .

Sean

|One question I do have - a doctor who flushed out my ears once also advocated
|a drop of rubbing {*filter*} in them afterwards to flush out any remaining
|trapped water - said he told swimmers to do this after swimming, too.  It
|works, but it stings like the devil, so I've always been content to let any
|water in my ears from swimming or flushing them out figure out how to get
|out by itself if shaking my head a few times won't do the trick.  Any
|comments?

When I have trouble it's usually because of water trapped by some
remaining wax.  I don't see why you can't just let it evaporate; it
should do this eventually.

        /J
=

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Perhaps diluting the rubbing {*filter*} in some water, until you
feels comfortable will do the trick ?

Lie on your side with the waterlogged ear facing down--the water will
drain out after a couple of minutes.

"Red meat isn't bad for you--fuzzy blue-green meat is bad for you."

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