Kind of Gross, but Did You Know There Are Actually 2 Types of Earwax?
www.self.com
Wait until you hear this.

the type of earwax you have comes down in part to your skin type, Dr. Shapiro explains. People with oilier skin may have wet earwax, while those with drier skin tend to have dry earwax, she says.

People of East Asian descent are more likely to have dry earwax, while wet earwax seems to be more common with everyone else

  • @seathruEnglish
    33•6 months ago

    “The only safe way to clean wax from the ear canal at home is with earwax drops,” Dr. Tweel says. That means applying a few drops of something like baby oil, mineral oil, glycerin, or hydrogen peroxide in your ear canal and letting it sit for a day or two

    That’s one way to spend your weekend.

    • _NoName_English
      12•6 months ago

      I’ll continue to live dangerously via Q-tips. Been doing it since I was a child, and no doctor’s told me I’ve irreparably damaged my ears yet.

      • @xlash123@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3•6 months ago

        The trick with Q-tips is to not go far. I mainly use it to clean the initial part of my ear and only rubbing it in a circular manner to prevent cramming anything in there. If I find myself the need to go deeper, I will use eardrops.

    • @lone_faerie@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      4•6 months ago

      The best discovery in my life is something called the Elephant Ear. It’s a squirt bottle for getting water behind your earwax and pushing it out from the back

      • 0^2English
        6•6 months ago

        Hydrogen peroxide dissolves it, when the bubbling stops it’s done.

        • @Macropolis@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1•6 months ago

          I just recently discovered the use of peroxide in this way. It’s cheap and works better than anything else I’ve tried.

          • 0^2English
            1•6 months ago

            Yeah from what I was reading it’s used professionally in dr offices. IIRC they use like slightly more concentrated h2o2 (hydrogen peroxide) but I wouldn’t even if you could get your hands on stronger stuff as it could cause DMG and it’s mainly, again from my understanding, used to speed up the process so you aren’t sitting there for like 30 minutes or something. Again, probably wrong and may have forgotten this incorrectly. Consult a Dr not some rando online.

    • @Dasus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1•6 months ago

      That was done to me and it sounds worse than it is.

      For me it was using eardrops and then putting earplugs on and sleeping the night. The next day the school nurse (this was >20 years ago) flushed my ears. Felt orgasmic afterwards, could actually hear properly. After that I learned how to wash my own ears — inside and out.