Avoid Doing 5 Mistakes When Cleaning Your Ears

Illustration of ear cleaning tools (Pexels/Anna Nekrashevich)

JAKARTA - Cleaning the body is not enough with a shower. Because the wax hidden in the ear canal will not be splashed with water or just wiped with soap.

Well, there are many ways to clean earwax. What is most often done is to clean with cotton buds. However, is it appropriate to clean earwax with a pipe coiled with cotton at both ends?

Very thin-skinned ear canals or holes. If you get hit by a sharp object, you will certainly get injured, bleed and if you don't treat it immediately, you will get an infection. So, in order not to be at risk, avoid mistakes in how to clean your ears as listed below.

Regularly clean ears

According to Boris Chernobilsky, an ENT specialist from the Icahn School of Medicine in Mount Sinai, New York, suggests that you don't need to regularly clean your ears. Moreover, cleaning it every day, because the ear has a natural cleaning mechanism.

Earwax is produced from glands that produce wax or a waxy substance. It is cloudy yellow in color and aims to protect the thin skin in the ear canal. That means you don't need to clean it regularly because the presence of wax is useful as a lubricant.

Clean with cotton buds

If cleaning the ears with cotton buds, wait for the wax to move to the outermost part. You don't need to insert cotton buds too deep. Only safe up to a maximum of 2 centimeters into the ear canal.

In fact, cleaning your ears with cotton buds runs the risk of pushing the wax deeper and deeper. Even worse, it can damage the eardrums. That is, do cleaning dirt gently, not routine every day, and do not put the cleaning tool too deep.

Inserting objects that have the potential to injure

Pointed objects are certainly dangerous if used to clean ears, such as using hairpins or fingernails. The thin skin in the ear canal can be easily damaged if you use the object to scratch or clean it.

Illustration of ear vacuum (Pexels/Karolina Grabowska)

Candle therapy

This method of ear cleaning has been popular, even for those who do not know the risks, this method is still unsafe. Candle therapy uses wax that is heated and placed in the ear. According to some claims, this method can clean earwax.

However, according to Boris, candle therapy can increase the pressure in the area around the eardrum. The worst effect that can be experienced is a ruptured eardrum.

Using an ear vacuum

This is the way to avoid doing it, especially doing it yourself without medical knowledge. Ear vacuum or known as micro-suction is usually done based on a medical procedure. If you do it yourself at home with any tools, it's best to avoid it.

The ears, according to Boris, are not an irrigation system. This means that vacuuming the earwax with too high a pressure will not be safe to do especially without procedural knowledge.