How NOT to Clean Your Ears | Earth Science

For most of us, our first port of call for cleaning our ears is one of these. Do either of you use these? Yes. And what do you use them for? Cleaning my ears. My ears, and make-up, but mostly my ears. So if I were to tell you that using these is actually not helping you, would that change what you do? It is a no. There's something irresistible about it. There is. It's a guilty pleasure. These are the devil's work. Now you might think that putting one of these in your ears is going to clean the wax out of them. But what it actually does is pushes the wax right in against the drum. And I'm pretty sure that more than 50% of the hardest cases I've treated of wax have been because of these. But something that fires me up even more is poking one of these in your ears. This is an ear candle. What you're meant to do with this is put it in the ear, and apparently that sucks the earwax into the candle itself. It's a wild claim. Though you can see a waxy deposit here, the candle hasn't been near an ear. The wax has come from within the candle itself. It's a complete sham. Far from trying to remove it, we should leave our wax where it is. Wax is actually really important. It's produced in this outer portion of the ear canal, and it protects the ear and stops things getting in there that shouldn't. And if you leave your wax, it will naturally come out of the ear hole all by itself. So for the majority of us, wax isn't a problem. But sometimes it can build up, causing discomfort or loss of hearing. If that happens, there's quite an array of products you can buy to unclog your ears. These work by soaking into earwax and softening it. Although simple almond oil and olive oil are just as effective. Warm the oil up to no more than body temperature. Fill your ear and leave for five to ten minutes until the wax softens and falls out. If there's a real problem, your GP might recommend ear irrigation, also known as syringing. This involves pushing some water into the ear canal to dislodge the wax there. Now in my opinion, it's often painful, it can be useless, and most importantly, it can damage the eardrum. So what can you do about an excess of wax? Well, one option is what I'm doing here, sucking wax out through a tube using a tiny vacuum cleaner. Oh yes, you've got loads of wax on this side. In my experience, this is the only way to deal with persistent blockages. There's a nice big bit coming out now, which I'll just try and let the camera see before it disappears. It looks lovely. Most of us have got a completely normal amount of wax in our ears. So my advice is, unless you've got a real problem, leave your ears well alone. And I beg you, whatever you do, don't use these.