I kind of feel it’s my responsibility to include a comment like this for casual readers.
The NHS suggests olive oil (or expensive olive oil that you buy from your pharmacist with HOOH mixed in) http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Earwax/Pages/Introduction.aspx. Personal experience showed this worked quite well. If you regularly have these problems you might like a longer term regimine (say applying olive oil once or twice a week).
If you search on the internet there are rare horror stories about synrining (vertigo lasting for a while afterwards, tinnitus), so there are good reasons to try to avoid syringing.
ENT people sell a story about fingernails both removing some wax and pushing some wax further down the ear canal causing problems. I don’t know how try this is… people who feel the need to remove ear wax are also more likely to remove it, and medicine isn’t really good at assessing long term risk factors.
Pharmacies sell a plastic, earwax removal tool called the Ototek Loop. It’s made for adult use only (that is, it’s designed in such a way that the tool’s hilt prevents the loop end from contacting the eardrum of an adult.) It’s worked fine for me. I always use it with ear wax removal fluid before flights; the reason is obvious.
Ear candling was banned in Canada after a dollop of hot wax landed on someone’s eardrum. I was kind of hoping it had died out everywhere else, so this thread is making me nervous. I tried it once and found it useless, but thankfully not injurious.
I get itchy ear canals a lot, as opposed to just blocked ones (although that too). A 1:1 mix of vinegar and rubbing alcohol applied with an eyedropper helps kill the germs causing the itch, as well as drying out the muck the body makes in response to them. And then there’s always the olive or mineral oil.
If you’ve got the type of earwax the benign neglect approach works for, which I do and many people do, yes.
If you don’t, and you’ve got small ear canals, then it is possible to end up with completely clogged ear canals. (There are 2 different types of earwax, genetically, but also there’s a huge variation from one person to the next in how much they produce.) Several times we’ve realized our son was losing his hearing because his ears were so clogged, and gotten huge clumps of earwax out when we flushed them.
On a related note (in the sense of being related to the ENT system) my Japanese wife had this lovely device sent over to us for suctioning snot out of our then toddler. It cleaned her out all right but also gave her a wicked nosebleed. When it hadn’t stopped bleeding after 10 minutes, I had visions of explaining what I had done to an emergency room doctor. (Note, she’s now 14 with no sinus issues so I can laugh about it.)
What is wrong with submerging one ear at a time in a salty bath with an electric current flowing that turns the water brown as it dissolves the toxins from your ear?
A savage, unnecessary procedure that is a perfect example of how people’s uncritical acceptance of mainstream medicine causes good parents to harm their own children.
Three drops of common vinegar in each ear any time your child’s been bathed or otherwise exposed to water, at least until they are teenagers. You don’t need to cut open their heads to drive the ear demons out.
