I started off with olive oil for 7 days then went to urea peroxide (similar to Debrox I think) for a further 3 days, thinking it might break up the wax better. What’s more, it’s miscible with water so might come out more easily if I’d managed to get them syringed.
Here’s advice from the Mayo Clinic. Earwax blockage - Diagnosis and treatment - Mayo Clinic Sounds like they can scoop it out with a curette or suction.
Every time I go for a mapping, my Aud checks my ears for was. If needed she uses a curette to gently remove any wax from my canal.
My L ear was blocked last week, because of Covid I couldn’t get into the clinic as it’s closed. I used waxsol drops for 5 days then I gently syringed it in the shower. I used a normal syringe, it’s not recommended I know but when needs be I do what I have to to hear again. This removed the bit of wax that I had in my ear.
I second the peroxide recommendation as long as it doesn’t cause you discomfort. Oil will soften wax, but won’t really move it. Peroxide will break it down, although slowly. You can try to gently syringe it out yourself with luke-warm water after a week or so of treatment with whatever.
The DIY risk is that water will get trapped in the ear because of the wax build-up and increase probability of infection. If you feel like you’re having trouble with that, 50:50 white vinegar and rubbing alcohol with re-acidify the ear canal and dry it out, reducing infection risk. This is a pretty traditional treatment for swimmer’s ear that most people tolerate, although if used extensively it can by drying. If there’s a perforation in the eardrum it will hurt like hell.
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Audiologist Cliff Olson makes a compelling argument for EarWax MD and flushing with something more than a bulb syringe.
Interesting what he says about bicarbonate - I hadn’t heard elsewhere about it breaking down fatty molecules. But I couldn’t catch what the ingredent was at 2:24 - bicolic acid?
BUT - perhaps I’m just being cynical, but I can’t help wondering how much he’s being paid to promote this wonder solution. And it doesn’t seem to be available on this side of the pond.
Ingredients
Water, Glycerin, Sodium Bicarbonate, Glycolic Acid, Potassium Bicarbonate, Benzyl Alcohol, Benzalkonium Chloride
The captions caught it correctly as glycolic acid. I’m not sure if his videos use auto captions or actual captions; I haven’t watched enough of his stuff. Personally I think your cynicism is misplaced though.
Yeah, he gets paid to promote these days. I don’t begrudge the guy supporting himself and his family, but I liked his earlier videos better.
EarWax MD works well. But yes, $$. Baby Colace actually works quite well, too, though it’s an off-brand use.
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Baby Colace? So stool softener (basically liquid soap I think) in drop form? Perhaps Dawn Diswashing soap would work too? :>)
Not to my knowledge. Is docusate sodium a type of soap?
But yes, stool softener. Baby so that you can get it in liquid form with the little dropper.
That was my basic memory from many years ago in nursing school. Looking it up, it does decrease surface tension as does soap. We used castille soap in enemas to accomplish something similar. In one reference it was called a detergent. I did see something suggesting using Dawn or other dishwashing soap mixed with water to clean out dog’s ears. I suspect it would work in humans if it’s not too irritating.
And to add. I think if somebody has managed to really occlude the ear with old, dry wax that all the softening agents in the world may not help. If the ear is really blocked, fluid may not be able to get to all the wax behind the occlusion. It’s worth a try, but I wouldn’t do this approach indefinitely. It may need some help.
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Here in quebec canada nurses are allowed and do ear cleaning. No vertigo, no pain, no liquid coming out of ears is essential for us nurses to do this autonomously. Also we use syringes with water. It can be tap water. Needs to be warm or warm hot as tolerated by patient. Not more then 10 min per ear as it can be irritating to ear canal. If discomfort happens i stop. Most cases i see
with this problem is when they come to my office for sore throat. I otoscope their ears and realize they have impacted ear wax. I usually try to remove using a 30 ml syringe with water and either a small tube from a blood collector needle ( i cut off the needle) or a special ear rinse syringe tip. I try this for 10 min. Usually after 3 min its out. Some rare cases i have seen i needed to ask them to go home and place oil in ear before bed time for 7 nights to soften it up and come back and see me. No problems with oil use but the purpose of oil is to soften it to be able to remove it. Its usally very easy to remove with syringe after. Other then senior citizens, i have not seen that many ppl come back probably because i Usually find out what the cause of the impaction was. Usually they have been cleaning ears with qtips. Once they stop this ear wax impaction stops. I do have my regular customer sometimes but its usually elderly people. Hair cells are slower and ear wax is dryer so its harder to come to surface of ear canal.
As a nurse i am not allowed to curate ears. And i cant use peroxyde. Although at a dr appointment, my dr trying to see my daughter’s ear drums attempted to remove ear wax. It was solid. She proceeded to insert peroxyde filling ear canal to brim and we waited 10 min per ear in a laying down position. It came out right away with syringe after.
Normal care regimen i tell my patients to do is to let water from shower go in ear at lowest sprinkle pressure. I tell them to take a wash cloth with finger and remove ear wax as far as finger with washcloth would go. No soap in eat canal as removing too much eat wax contributes to more ear wax being secreted. I also say not to use qtip. Qtips irritates ear canal causing more ear wax to form and it pushes it in. More and more pushed in ear wax creates glob of ear wax impossible for hair cells to bring to surface. And it traps more ear wax… And then its just a matter of time before ear wax is building and its covering ear drum.
I think that if you do use a syringe and water finally gets behind the ear wax buildup but you stop, you may trap water causing external ear infection. I use an otoscope to see what is going on. If i see its starting to move i know its just a matter of 2 -3 syringes and its out. So maybe getting a friend to try to look in ears or getting a cheap set of otoscope on amazon.
Good luck
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Fine if he wants to do that, but in my book he ought at least to be open about it. With so many videos going round peddling unproven, false and even dangerous pseudo-scientific claims (particularly of late about covid-19) a healthy dose of scepticism is in order.
Microsuction is massively effective. No action ‘causes’ more wax to be produced, people either accumulate it or they don’t. The people who suffer most are those with Keratosis Obturans - skin shedding, when the wax binds ‘onion layers’ of skin together.
We see half a dozen people a day in clinic for microsuction and they all benefit from it - we offer a free follow-up check with video-otoscopy so people can monitor their own accumulation.
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The use of Irrigation has been contra-indicated in the UK for a few years due to bacterial risk, physical trauma/scarring to the tymp/middle ear and now as a Covid-19 Aerosol Generating Procedure. I imagine you should be getting some advice from your professional body/insurers on this pretty soon.
Unfenestrated micro-suction has been identified as a potential AGP issue too; if the tymp is compromised then the EAM effectively becomes part of the upper respiratory tract. So we’re phone triaging ahead of appointments and letting people with TM/middle ear issues seek the advice of an ENT in the first instance.
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Oy. Indeed. There are a bunch of irrigation systems that don’t have enough pressure to do any damage. The main thing I wish were discouraged here (covid aside) is PCPs with the big silver syringe.
I am finding this very interesting. I have not read anything my professional order has written about ear irrigation being a potential transmitter of covid… I think i will email them.
I have worn hearing aids since 2016 and have taken a different approach than what I’ve read here. I’m fastidious about cleaning my ears in the shower every day. I use one of those bulb syringes to irrigate my ears, about 4-5 irrigation’s in each ear. I then use soap and lather up the parts of my ear that I can reach with my finger, to include behind the ear where the unit rests. Then I rinse that soap off (and out for any down my ear canal). The soap seems to further remove much of the oily stuff that drains out.
Doing this routine, I have had zero issues with wax. And I feel a little bad about saying this (like I’m neglecting something), but I’ve only changed those wax traps on two occasions since 2016 (only as a preventative maintenance measure albeit at a neglectful frequency), and have changed the rubber things 2-3 times since 2016. Every time a doctor looks in my ear, he/she comments on how clear/clean it is - no wax at all.
When I irrigate my ears In the shower each day, the fist 2 times, what drains out feels oily. The 4th or 5th irrigation feels less oily.
When I am drying myself, I’ll then use toilet paper to dry my ears, to the extent they can absorb water down my canal. I’m not stuffing the toilet paper down my ear canal, like with a ramrod, just however far my index finger can get it to absorb with the toilet paper just flat against it. I’ll do that 2-3 times in each ear until it no longer shows that it’s wet (using different places of the sheet doubled over until it is dry each time.
My ears are tremendous wax producers. Before hearing aids, every 1-2 years, I used to need intervention to remove wax build up. I would wake up and feel like I had one of those foam ear plugs in my ear. I’d go to the corpsman and they would do what they could to mine the wax out, to include irrigating it. After much effort, clumps of ear wax would drop into the pan. The chunks were so big, I could actually hear them drop, and the miners were amazed.
For “sanitation” peace of mind, I’ve found a translucent bulb syringe that will come apart so I can clean and inspect it. I worried about what may grow inside those things. Again, the bulb syringe is what I use to irrigate my ears.
Recommendation: To irrigate your ears, don’t just grab the bulb syringe used to clear mucous from your child or grandchild‘s nose. Get a new one!
It was my audiologist at Balboa in San Diego that recommended the bulb syringe. I don’t squirt it hard, just enough to send it down the ear canal and it trickles out on its own. It doesn’t hurt at all but I wouldn’t call it soothing or comfy. Obviously, I’m used to the feeling by now. I find that just holding my ear up to the shower just doesn’t get much water moving in then out of the canal.
Kevin
I’ve been looking at bulb syringes on Amazon and eBay but haven’t seen one that comes apart. Can you point me to one as an example? Unless you can clean the inside and effectively dry it as well then all sorts of things might be growing inside it by the time you come to use it again.
Yesterday evening I decided I’d had enough. I’d been putting drops in on and off for 3½ weeks and nothing ever came out. I have a bunch of small plastic pipettes. The stem has graduations up to 1ml and the bulb can’t have a capacity of more than 2ml so from what other people have said round here it seemed almost impossible that I could do any damage. I squirted tepid tap water into each ear and after half a dozen squirts a mass of wax came out of each - the difference in my hearing is incredible! For safety, after giving boh ears plenty of time to drain I put some urea peroxide (carbamide) drops in for its disinfectant properties. This morning the improvement is maintained, and in fact when I put my hearing aids in I had to turn them down several notches as everything was so LOUD!
The only problem I now have is that I’ll no longer be able to ignore the cat when he sits on the spare bed behind my chair in the study and loudly demands his tea an hour or more before time!
And the other problem is how I break it to my audiologist that I’ve flouted her advice not to try and irigate my ears myself.
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