Home Remedies for Earwax

Oscar Wilde's father, Sir William Wilde, was a distinguished ear surgeon in Dublin. He once observed in an epigram his son would have been proud of, 'there are only two types of deafness-one is due to earwax and is curable. The other is not due to wax and is not curable. This is no longer strictly true as deafness in children in particular may be due to glue ear and cured by the insertion of grommets. Nonetheless, earwax overwhelmingly remains the commonest cause for deafness and certainly the most easily treatable.

Earwax is a remarkable substance with anti-infective properties which prevent bacterial and other infections taking hold in what would other­wise be a particularly suitable environment for infection, as the ear hole is both dark and moist. Probably the most important home remedy is the injunction to resist the temptation to twizzle cotton buds into the ears as this only pushes the earwax further down and makes it more difficult to retrieve.

The solution for deafness due to earwax is to remove it, using the following procedure;

Olive oil: Olive oil moistens and loosens up the earwax and should be instilled in the ear for five consecutive days before attempting syringing the ear with water.

Water and syringe: There are few things quite as satisfying for a doctor than syringing out a pair of ears blocked by wax. In goes the stream of water. Out comes a brown oily glob, the deafness is miraculously cured and the pristine ear hole looks clean enough to dine off. It is not a good idea to try this on oneself but a Canadian physician, Dr. Maurice Ernis, describes how he treated himself while he was on holiday. While learning to windsurf some water shifted the wax in his ear so it became 'quite uncomfortable or worrisome, with hearing loss'. He goes on to say:

'This sort of thing spoils one's day and a lot of time is spent opening one's mouth as wide as one can in order to equalize the air pressure on both sides of the drum. On a trip to a local grocery store I saw a yellow refillable ketchup bottle of the plastic squeeze type and this seemed like a pos­sible instrument for the job at hand. With one hand I squeezed the bottle full of warm water about two or three times, several pieces of wax were removed and my hearing returned to nor­mal.'