the type of earwax you have comes down in part to your skin type, Dr. Shapiro explains. People with oilier skin may have wet earwax, while those with drier skin tend to have dry earwax, she says.

People of East Asian descent are more likely to have dry earwax, while wet earwax seems to be more common with everyone else

  • @njm1314
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    736 months ago

    “Earwax is one of those things that you probably think about for around 0.2 seconds every other month, if that.”

    Article lost all credibility in the first sentence.

    • @Frozengyro
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      306 months ago

      Yea, if I’m not cleaning out my ears once it twice a week, I’m getting a blockage.

  • @[email protected]
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    326 months ago

    “The only safe way to clean wax from the ear canal at home is with earwax drops,” Dr. Tweel says. That means applying a few drops of something like baby oil, mineral oil, glycerin, or hydrogen peroxide in your ear canal and letting it sit for a day or two

    That’s one way to spend your weekend.

    • _NoName_
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      126 months ago

      I’ll continue to live dangerously via Q-tips. Been doing it since I was a child, and no doctor’s told me I’ve irreparably damaged my ears yet.

      • @[email protected]
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        36 months ago

        The trick with Q-tips is to not go far. I mainly use it to clean the initial part of my ear and only rubbing it in a circular manner to prevent cramming anything in there. If I find myself the need to go deeper, I will use eardrops.

    • @[email protected]
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      46 months ago

      The best discovery in my life is something called the Elephant Ear. It’s a squirt bottle for getting water behind your earwax and pushing it out from the back

      • 0^2
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        66 months ago

        Hydrogen peroxide dissolves it, when the bubbling stops it’s done.

        • @Macropolis
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          16 months ago

          I just recently discovered the use of peroxide in this way. It’s cheap and works better than anything else I’ve tried.

          • 0^2
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            16 months ago

            Yeah from what I was reading it’s used professionally in dr offices. IIRC they use like slightly more concentrated h2o2 (hydrogen peroxide) but I wouldn’t even if you could get your hands on stronger stuff as it could cause DMG and it’s mainly, again from my understanding, used to speed up the process so you aren’t sitting there for like 30 minutes or something. Again, probably wrong and may have forgotten this incorrectly. Consult a Dr not some rando online.

      • @Chev
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        46 months ago

        This seems to be a plant… Can you provide a link or something?

    • @Dasus
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      16 months ago

      That was done to me and it sounds worse than it is.

      For me it was using eardrops and then putting earplugs on and sleeping the night. The next day the school nurse (this was >20 years ago) flushed my ears. Felt orgasmic afterwards, could actually hear properly. After that I learned how to wash my own ears — inside and out.

  • Chris
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    306 months ago

    Apparently this is the one thing which is controlled by a single gene, and works as you were taught in school with dominant and recessive traits.

    Nothing else does, including the things you were taught like eye and hair colour - they are much more complicated.

    • @ChicoSuave
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      186 months ago

      I’m going to doubt the single gene hypothesis. I have dry ear wax in one ear and wet in the other.

      • Chris
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        106 months ago

        Hmm, maybe it’s one per ear?!

      • tiredofsametab
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        56 months ago

        Do you notice that the amount and/or scent of your perspiration is different comparing the two sides of your body?

    • @wjrii
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      6 months ago

      Something (maybe Alexandrite") borked the link for me. If anyone else has the same issue, here you go:

      https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaqQJj24yCY_bDQ35jS0Gvw

      And yeah, that’s nasty. I had to get my earwax flushed out once. It was unpleasant and super gross, and I’ve used the specialized peroxide solutions a couple of times in the years since. My wife has the dry wax gene, and finds wet wax both gross and confusing.

      The only thing I’ll add is that having used a cheap camera earwax cleaner, the magnification makes every normal little waxbooger look like a Star Trek brain slug, so while still dramatic (don’t get me wrong), the videos always look just a touch more dramatic than they really are.

      • @[email protected]
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        26 months ago

        I had to get my earwax flushed out once.

        Like, with a warm water jet by a nurse?

        It’s ooky but it certainly works.

        • @wjrii
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          16 months ago

          Yup. Big-ass syringe full of warm water, possibly with some solution in it (I don’t recall that part). It was affecting my hearing in one ear, and the flush fixed it right up.

    • Zerlyna
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      26 months ago

      Whoa. O. M. G. 🥺

        • Zerlyna
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          6 months ago

          🤣 TIL too much lol. Never seen that much come out of an ear before!!

        • @[email protected]
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          16 months ago

          I think it’s just really impressive to see that much ear wax coming out of someone’s ear. I honestly had no clue

    • @Lemming421
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      16 months ago

      My god, that’s glorious

  • @Avialle
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    96 months ago

    If you are the wet type you may reconsider buying expensive in-ears. The chance to ruin them quite fast is not that low.

  • @[email protected]
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    86 months ago

    I remember reading a fact that the same gene that leads to dry earwax also leads to higher likelihood of big boobs

  • @z00s
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    66 months ago

    Which tastes better?

    • @cosmicrookie
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      56 months ago

      Eew… Dry saliva sounds way more unpleasant than dry earwax

      • @HeyThisIsntTheYMCA
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        16 months ago

        If you’ve ever been working out too hard and you want to spit but your saliva won’t, that’s that saliva. It sucks.

  • Maple Engineer
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    46 months ago

    I have the ABCC11 gene. I have dry ear wax and no body odor.