re earwax in fauk m d kq amdahl uts amdahl com dated apr gmt lmtra uts amdahl com leon traister writes stephen mont cs missouri edu stephen montgomery smith writes 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 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 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 rubber 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 alcohol 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
