Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Ear wax!

Good way to break your ear drum.

Never had wax problems but recently had hearing loss in one ear. Went to family doc, she found wax, 5 min later she sent nurse with squirt bottle and tweezers. 5 min later done.

I tried the Hydrogen Peroxide trick and it fugged me up, made me dizzy as hell.

ent have always removed it. suction. wire loop. would seem weird that they would not.

docs use water in a syringe. yeah it sort of works depending.

q tips for me just push wax in further. thats what the docs and ent say too.

mine stay clear with gentle use of a bobby pin until it won't get it all. then its time for an ent again.

I've tried all the solutions mentioned above and what I've noted are the only things that work for me. but then my ears at times produce so much wax the liquid part of the wax as it forms runs out of the ear.

From as bad as it appears for sum of you, I think a good soaking with muriatic acid and then a shop vac might be in order.

the use of suction is quite the thing to get stubborn wax out. I think I first ran into this in the 80s. It was amazing what they got out if other methods failed.

full pass on the muriatic acid lol

When I was on the swim team and lifeguarding I was in the water for hours everyday 7 days a week. That much time spent in chlorinated water can cause ear infections and ear aches were common. We’d squirt rubbing alcohol in each ear tilting our head to allow it to “work” for 3 minutes and then do the other side…after that we’d gently dry each ear with a Q-tip and then a couple drops of apple cider vinegar. When I started doing that regularly my ear aches went away. The alcohol helped displace and dry the water and the vinegar established proper pH.

I’ve heard people say that q-tips only push it in but that hasn’t been my experience at all. If there’s no buildup of wax then there’s nothing to “push in”…anymore than showering just moves the dirt around on your body but doesn’t get rid of it. 😂. Since I use a q-tip after every shower or swimming session I don’t have any wax to worry about. By cleaning them at least daily the most wax I see a tiny bit of yellow on the q-tip. After a warm shower the wax is loosened, soft and wet and easily removed by a q-tip.

My FIL had ear wax issues and everyone else that I knew that had ear wax issues came from the school of thought that you’re only “pushing it in” by using a q-tip. I tried to explain the idea of prevention but the evil q-tip was worse than the buildup and subsequent doctors visit to remove a gross amount of ear wax. I’ll continue using the q-tip daily after my shower and not having the wax problems that others have. I never realized how many people have issues from ear wax but there’s a significant industry of fancy gadgets and technology that’s built up around ear wax removal. 😀

Not.

Those are hyped, but don't do anything useful. Probably don't hurt anything, but they have been proven a hoax long ago.

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions. After I made the first post I found out that CVS pharmacy has people that can remove ear wax. I've got some ear wax removal stuff on order that I'll get tomorrow. I'm going to use it every day for a while and see if I can flush out some wax. If I do I'll go to then go to CVS and get them to see if I got it all. If not I'll try to get an appt. with my primary Doc.

I used q tips daily for years. One day I couldn’t hear. Ears clogged up as a fugk. Went to the doc and he told me to never use q tips. He said you’re just pushing wax down deeper.
🤷‍♂️ Worked fine until it didn’t.

He used a water pik with warm water. It was amazing.

I use a syringe and warm water.

Hydrochloric acid and a Shop-Vac.

Mine can only be removed by an ENT MD using one of those vacuum devices. Water method doesn't work for me.

Am thinking that the stuff is not actually wax. But, what?

Dead skin cells and skin oils. Try a dermatologist. They'll probably put a few drops of olive oil in your ear to soften the wax up, then use suction. Sometimes suction with a looped wire or alligator forceps. It comes off in layers and you need to be damned careful of the eardrum. Best to let a Doc handle it if it's that bad.

30 years ago, Doc cleared my ears out with a Water-Pic. Worked extremely well.

I use a couple q-tips after every shower..... I chit you not.... had my general doc tell me my ears were "TOO" clean 🥴 Says you need "some" wax to catch anything that gets in there but fugg that.

Keeping the wax out of the ear is important with hearing aides.

What my mom used to do, she'd put my ear on a heating pad to really soften the wax, then put me bad ear up ant dump Hydrogen Peroxide in, you could hear it fizzing and bubbling.

If you do any of the water suggestions, make sure it is WARM water. Cold water to the ear drum will make you dizzy as snot and/or pass out. We do about 1-2 ear clean outs a week in our moderate sized local ER.

^^^^This...