Ear Hygiene and Bass Perception

ive contemplated for a while trying those ear candles that everyone in my town seems crazy about. Ive watched it done, and even folks that q-tip their ears everyday like myself still had an incredible amount of gunk come out. for some reason though, I am still quite nervous about putting a burning cone in my ear that creates suction and pulls anything and everything out... wierd

u could also just buy the ear cleaning stuff from the store and skip the whole fire thing that has caused many to go deaf.

Definitely do not do any ear candling!

http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4679845_ear-candle-clean-ear.html

haha, quite true to you both, and is why I havent done it. The two folks I have witnessed doing it though speak very highly of the results, and I have seen myself the nasties that come out.

buy one of these kits for your ears.
They are like $2. You put the drops in. let them sit for a few minutes and fill the blue bulb with water and squeeze the crap out of it in your ear. It's perfectly safe and you can't do any damage to your ear using it. I do mine once a month or more if needed. I'm always in dust and crap at work, so they end up getting lots of crap in there.

I get a decent amount of wax in my ears and every 6 months or so make an appointment with an Otolaryngologist. She either uses small suction instruments to suck out the wax or she goes digging! Long story short my hearing is vastly improved and the pressurization sensitivity goes away for a few months. BTW Q-tips are horrible for the ears, if you have a lot of wax it can cause a wax plug over time. Use the drops that N8DOGG suggested, they work very well.

ear candle grossness is all just the wax from the candle itself:

http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/candling.html

I have horrible ears for many reasons but the medical drops work wonders. My ears are too bad to use the bulb so I go have my wife's nurse use the water gun to really put pressure in there. My wife is a family doctor and had me try the drops when we first met. I kept getting junk out of my ears for days at a time before she talked me into having her nurse give it a try. Using the bulb should work for most people but the pressure that ear gun generates is awesome. It feels kinda weird but man does it make your ears feel clean a couple hours later.

ha, I tried that a few years ago, curious and all that jazz.

They say 'don't use more than once a month' (whatever, can't remember now). Anyways, for sure the first time you use it and have a look it seems to have pulled out a lot of junk, woohoo!

BUT, I do it a few days later and wouldn't you know, AGAIN it seems lot's of stuff has come out!

Alright, experiment time...I light one and just balance it upright on the bench and let it go.

Guess what I found the result was.... yep. Exactly the same as the other times.

I concluded that what you see (and assign to the removal of ear wax/junk) is simply the natural result of the candle burning anyway. Nothing to do with your ears.

Kinda relaxing tho as long as no-one can see you looking like an idiot with the burning candle in your ear haha. Gentle white noise in your ear.

lol, I've had the gun also. O man it feels good when it done!

Wait that bulb shoots the water into your ear? Then where does it go?comes right back out? I will have to look into this.

Yes. You fill up the bulb with warm water, having a temperature as close as you can get to body temperature. Too warm and you can experience dizziness and/or nausea. Too cold can be quite uncomfortable too. Do not insert the nozzle straight in! The "straight in" motion of the water could damage your eardrum. Instead, insert it into the ear at an angle approaching 90 degrees "off-axis". At the same time, pull down on your earlobe so there's a gap between your ear opening and the bulb nozzle. Do not allow the opening to be sealed off. This can happen if you push it in too far. When you squirt the water in there, because of the "off-axis" direction, the water will travel tangentially along the inside of the ear, and on the way out, it will pick up any wax and other gunk and pop them out. It's best to try light pressure first, then increase pressure gradually. It may be necessary to refill the bulb a few times as you get the feel for it. It can take a surprising amount of pressure to get a large wax plug out. You'll need to sit on the edge of a bathtub or in a shower, because water goes all over the place.

I wouldn't recommend doing this unless you are experiencing an actual problem though. It seems that I get an occasional ear infection with associated severe wax buildup that literally plugs up my ear, sealing it entirely. This is quite panic-inducing because of the internal pressure. The first time it happened, a doctor used this technique (with "the gun") and it worked great. It happened to me another time, on a weekend, and I could not get in to see a doctor until the following week. So I bought a bulb and tried it. It took me a few tries to get the hang of it, but I had good success. I wouldn't have had the nerve to do it had I not experienced a doctor doing it previously and known what it was like.

I advise extreme caution.
Edited by rock_bottom - 6/18/12 at 2:42pm