When it comes to the health of your ears, there are few things you can do at home by yourself. It’s not like your oral health, where you can brush your teeth, swirl mouthwash, and floss regularly. Here, the main thing most people do is clean their ears.
But, do you even need to do this? Should you bother cleaning your ears, or should you wait for advice from an audiologist before doing anything? All the answers to your most pressing questions will be answered in the info below:
Why Clean Your Ears?
What’s the main point of ear cleaning? Is it simply used to make your ears look nicer, or are you actually doing it for a reason? Well, the reason is earwax. Earwax is produced by the body and it can sometimes cause problems in your ears.
The keyword there is ‘sometimes.’ Sometimes, we produce too much earwax, and our ears need to be cleaned because we notice certain issues. If you’re having problems with your hearing, then an audiologist is likely to check your ears for earwax right away. Often, it congregates in your ear canals, leading to a partial hearing loss. Furthermore, if you feel like your ears are blocked up, or have a constant ringing sound, then earwax could be at the source of both issues.
However, there are many examples of people who produce earwax naturally but don’t see any of these symptoms. They don’t produce enough earwax for it to accumulate heavily and need to be cleaned away. In which case, cleaning your ears isn’t necessary.
How Do You Clean Your Ears?
If you were asked to clean your ears right now, what would you do? The majority of you would reach for a cotton swab and stick it inside your ear. You move it around a bit and keep using the tip until it comes out with no more wax present.
Unfortunately, if you do this, then you’re going to fall into the bad books of any audiologist out there. This is the biggest mistake you can make as it actually just pushed wax deeper into your ears. So, you’re creating a bigger problem rather than solving one.
Instead, you need to work on softening the wax, so it unblocks naturally. The easiest way to do this is by getting some olive oil eardrops. You can pick them up at any pharmacy, or see an audiologist and ask them to prescribe you some. The idea with these drops is that the olive oil reacts with the wax, softening it down and unblocking your ears. Now, you have clean ears that aren’t clogged up by hard earwax.
So; do you need to clean your ears? Well, it depends on how bad your wax situation is. If you feel like you have trouble hearing, or there’s something else wrong with your ears, then give them a clean. If not, then they’re fine just left alone until the earwax accumulates.