Yep – I get mine levaged every year as part of my physical and my hearing is so cool afterward! I hear things I haven’t heard for months – mostly sibiliance. I produce a good ball of wax out of each ear every time. I have to admit I was a little creeped out when my doc referred to it as “Let’s see what kind of potatoes you’re growing in there”. :dubious:
I am a q-tip user and have only had to have my ears cleaned once. My late husband had to have his ears cleaned all the time. I went with him once and what was left in the bowl looked like two cigarette butts.
Makes one wonder how prehistoric man dealt with this.
Waxy or dry, your cerumen type is genetically determined. It is a single gene with two alleles. There appears to be a fairly strong natural selection advantage to those who have the dry ear wax allele - the dry wax folks have about a 1% fitness advantage. And those of us stuck with wet ear wax tend to have stronger body odor. Nice!
Based upon distribution of the trait, it appears that the recessive dry allele arose in northeastern China or perhaps Korea about 2000 generations ago. The dry allele is extremely common in northeast Asia, and almost completely absent in Africa - a very strong geographic skew. Dry is rare in Europe but more common in the Americas - which could be an endorsement of the Bering Land bridge migration hypothesis!?
On the other hand, this article claims (claim from a holistic doctor) that having dry earwax increases your chance of having heart disease.
Earwax type could be an indicator of likely risk factors, because of genes with coincident distribution in certain populations. The earwax doesn’t actually do anything.