1. YOUR EARS CLEAN THEMSELVES PRETTY WELL, ACTUALLY
Cerumen (the scientific word for ear wax) is your ears’ own cleaning solvent. It traps dirt and dust entering the ear canal, preventing it from slipping deeper down where it could get impacted and block your ear drum and dull your hearing. The ordinary daily mechanics of yawning, chewing and talking moves the dirty ear wax out of the ear canal so you don’t have to do anything except take a regular shower. Using a swab, fork, chopstick, finger, key, paintbrush or any other foreign object for ear wax removal will negate your ears’ self-cleaning efforts, pushing dirty old ear wax deeper into the canal where it can get impacted and cause hearing loss.
2. EAR WAX WAS DESIGNED TO HELP
Sure, cerumen may look worse than liver and onions, but your ceruminous and sebaceous glands make this special recipe for the health of your ears. Besides shoving dirt, dust and crud out of your ears, ear wax protects your ears against bacteria, fungal infections and viruses. Amazingly, it even repels insects! It also protects and lubricates the inside of the ear canal to keep it healthy.
3. HEARING LOSS FROM EAR CLEANING IS A REAL THING
If you, like millions of other people, have a long-established ear cleaning habit with swabs, you may have jammed a bunch of old ear wax down into your ear canal, impacting it down there. This means you might have sustained some hearing loss. Schedule an appointment with your hearing care professional for a hearing checkup to determine whether or not you have impacted ear wax that might be causing some amount of hearing loss.
4. EAR CLEANING INJURIES HURT
Dear parents: ear cleaning and teeth brushing are not the same! Teeth don’t clean themselves, but ears really do!
Needless to say, thousands of people end up in the doctor’s office with ear candling injuries every year.
5. SO STOP CLEANING YOUR EARS TODAY!
All you really need to do is take your daily shower, wash your hair and then dab those lovely ears out with a towel. This is the safe, effective ear wax removal technique your grandmother and your hearing care professional can agree on. It gently removes just the excess ear wax that has already deposited dirt outside of your ear canal.