What is ear wax?
Ear wax is a substance naturally produced by the body to clean, protect, and lubricate the ears. Without earwax, the ears would be dry, itchy, and prone to infection.
People usually believe that they are preventing earwax from building up by cleaning out their ears with cotton swabs, paper clips, ear candles, and a number of unimaginable things that people put in their ears. This only creates more problems as the ear wax is pushed down and gets impacted further into the ear canal. Anything that is put into the ear could cause serious harm to the ear canal and ear drum.
Dirt, dust, and other small particles stick to the earwax which stops them from getting further into the ear. Ear wax gets removed from the ear when we are chewing, moving our jaw and growing skin in the ear canal helps to remove old ear wax from deep in the canal to the canal opening where it then flakes off or is washed off during bathing. This is a continual self cleaning process by which old wax is pushed out of the canal.
Sometimes this self cleaning process does not work well and leads to build up of ear wax and this blocks up the ear canal. Although ear wax is essential for ear health, impacted ear wax in the ears can cause symptoms such as ear pain, earing loss, tinnitus, itching, coughing, feeling of fullness in the ear, discharge from the ear, odour from the ear and blocked hearing aids.
Impacted ear wax can be removed by ear syringing or irrigation, and Microsuction. Ear syringing is not appropriate for perforated ear drums, recurrent ear infections and grommets. Home-use of oral jet irrigators is not effective and is not recommended as they can lead to damage in the ear. Microsuction is a quick, safe and a comfortable procedure for patients.
“Come see us at Golden Ears Audiology for Microsuction and let us take care of your ears. ”
