this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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You're telling me not to clean my ears with swabs???? I'm sorry, but I will swear forever that they are intended for the ears. The only issue is that the makers don't want to get sued if anyone hurts themselves. I mean, c'mon, the Japanese use both ends of these in their ears! You want me to start doing that?
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They were specifically created for cleaning ears. First line of the wikipedia history.. The reason Q-Tip says not to use them in ears is plausible deniability. They know they mostly get used to cleaning ears. But it's incredibly easy to puncture your eardrum doing that. In order to stop people from suing them for using their product in its main use case and hurting themselves, they simply specifically instruct against using it that way. While that is a wholly ridiculous falsehood, without it they'd have probably been sued so much that no one would make them. And then I wouldn't be able to clean my ears.
I've been cleaning my ears with an "ear syringe" for years. Just squirt some warm water from the faucet in there and you can hear again. Works great and is reusable. They are like 10 bucks at your local drug store.
I don't like having water stuck in my ear.
Water only gets stuck in your ear if you have wax built up in your ear canal. Regular washing of your ear with warm water (and nothing else!) keeps the wax build-up under control and water will just pour out of your ear canal as soon as you level your head.
Pro tip if this happens, add more water.
Sometimes I need a couple of more passes to unclog my ear. If I do it once and there is water stuck in my ears, it means I need to do it again. If I do it a few more times so my ear is unclogged, water will no longer be stuck in my ears.
If your ears are clogged so severely that water alone won't help, use something like Debrox or hydrogen peroxide first to loosen your wax plug. Leave it in there for a few minutes to let the wax soften. Then follow it up with mechanical disruption from water in the ear syringe.
If your ears are too clogged so that even that doesn't work, your clog is probably so severe that you need to see an ear, nose, and throat doctor.
I've been doing this for a long time now too. So much better than anything else I've tried and you'd have to do something incredibly fucky to injure yourself.
I actually got advised by my doctor to use vegetable oil for my daughter's clogged ear. A drop of oil and some massaging for 20 seconds three times a day did the the trick. Took a few days, but the clog was eventually dissolved.
I use glycerin myself, but I'll have to try vegetable oil next time.
The other thing that greatly helps speed things along is letting the oil / glycerin sit for 5-10min, then following up with an ear syringe full of warm water. Instead of spraying directly ahead, they're designed to safely spray to the sides, and the agitating motion of the water works well to clear the clog very quickly.
Most Japanese people have dry earwax: http://drypharmacist.com/types-of-earwax.html
Obviously this is cleaned differently compared to wet earwax.