While growing up, having particularly waxy ears, my mom always cleaned my ears out with hydrogen peroxide. She said the bubbles would bubble up the excess wax and she would get a good deal of wax out of my ears with q-tips and kleenexes. She also said it would kill bacteria in my ears.
My hearing has always been slightly sub-par my whole life, by the way. Not significantly deaf, but I can tell.
Does this sound bad to the medical people on this board? Could this, in theory, cause damage of some sort? Have you ever heard of anyone else doing this? (i haven’t)
There are some other solutions you can buy over the counter specifically made for ear wax removal but I don’t think dilute perixide will be harmful unless you use it too often.
Softening the wax is just the first step, you have to wash it out too. A quick jet of water in the ear canal will wash out the crud. I have never had good luck with those rubber bulbs so I use a Monoject 412 irrigation syringe. You can buy them in hobby shops as glue guns. I actually use them for other purposes so I get them in bulk from a dental supply place. You can use a water pik too and I’ve had a nurse suggest this but be careful as I’m sure high pressure could possibly damage your eardrum.
Well, I’m not sure this will be all that helpful, but I used to clean alot of ears when I worked in a general practice doctor’s office. We used one part hydrogen peroxide and one part water and squirted the fluid into the ears with a bulb syringe until clear. It worked very well and disloged some fabulously disgusting ear build up. I don’t really know if it would have worked as well with plain water.