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If you are prone to ear wax that dries and hardens (and clogs up your ears), you can buy an "ear scraper" to scrape them out.After a long search, I finally found one at a Japanese "100 yen" shop.
It's amazing how many wax blobs came off after i did a few scrapes. Yuck!
But after that, it was amazing how much more high frequencies I can hear - brakes screeching, CRT monitor whine, etc. Plus of course music sounds much better.
Another product I would recommend is Audiclean - it's a saline based solution that you squirt into your ears, preferably every day, to dissolve and dislodge ear wax.
Follow Ups:
"If you think earbuds are not enough to keep your ears clean then this maybe for you. A gadget which has a camera and light attached to see deep into your ears and a viewer to view it. The Japanese translation seems to be weird but we are assuming it has the ability to clean your ears too."
I use a Dremel grinder myself!
thanks for the reminder...I got a big chunk of old wax out of my right ear today and all of a sudden, I could hear my shirt brush against my right shoulder, and my hi fi images much better. Cheers.
i use the wooden stick Q-tips daily to clean out the wax. having not been able to find the brand name wooden ones for years, i get the ones from frys intended for cleaning electronics.the minimal wax is wiped out daily and it feels GREAT most of the time, and sometimes only good.
...regards...tr
truck keys???? werks fer me.
roN
Ears are extremely sensitive instruments and pushing or scraping anything into them is a high risk adventure: a rupture can result not only from the tool but from forcing material against inner ear "components."
Keeping a saline atmosphere inside the ears, which drain into sinuses, may not be a wonderful idea, either.
I know you were trying to be helpful but...
.
ag
Those little propane soldering torches, melts that wax right on out...
Cost no concern.
Expensive, but your ears will thank you!
- This signature is two channel only -
nt
Best Regards,
Chris redmond.
I use the Murine system every time-change.
What I DON'T like about it is how noisy things like toilet paper are for the first few hours.......
"Could all variant aural opinion be just undue wax accumulation and curlicue canals?"
.
zs
Scuba diving. The pressurized saline wash does wonders for clearing the canal. I travel by air frequently and it makes altitude equalization much easier as well.
I forget the brand of the "interesting" tasting sweets in the first Harry Potter movie, but Dumbledore gets an ear wax flavoured one when he's visiting Harry in his infirmary bed at the end of the movie.There should be a chance for some profit in this :-)
They made an "assortment" package of various odd-flavored jelly beans to coincide with the Harry Potter movies. In addition to "earwax", the assortment also included "garlic", "vomit", "dirt", "booger", "grass", and a few others I cannot recall. Really funny idea, I just wonder if anyone eats these and thinks they are "yummy"; I certainly did not :) (The garlic and grass (the type found in landscaping...) were pretty spot-on (but in no way "delicious"), but I really have no (and want no) reference for how the others are supposed to taste so I can't comment on their authenticity.)
Geoff is probably working on marketing this truly natural dampening compound. Soon we'll applying it to speaker cones, interconnets, and DAC chips :)
Excessive cleaning can leave the skin tissue in the canal unprotected and susceptible to infection. That was not the cause in my case but I just went through a three month treatment to cure infection in both ears (part of this time was spent finding the right doctor). And as some have mentioned, pushing objects into the ear canal can compact the wax, making the problem worse. A little wax is healthy, too much of course is bad. If in doubt, get professional help.
people having no earwax at all are very common in Eastern countries. This condition is due to a mutation in one gene. The bearers of this trait have no hearing problems, they are absolutely normal.
If there is some segment of the population that does not produce ear wax, I would guess the tissue in their ear canals also evolved to be tougher and more resistant to infections.As I see it, the problem is not the presence of ear wax but excessive build up of wax. By this I mean occasional cleaning may be helpful but frequent cleaning could be harmful. If in doubt, seek professional help.
My son has stubborn, over active ear wax. Our pediatrician recommended this. Safer and easier than tools.
Elephant Ear Washer
US $26.00
http://www.doctor-easy.comIt squirts warm water in your ear and kind of tickles. Use with an ear wax softener for maximum ease.
I have used the Murine syringes for years but do wish they had great capacity. It often takes me six flushes to get the plug out.
It's real. Works well. Our son's ear wax is STUBBORN. A little softening first and then use the Elephant Ear Washer with warm water. Works like a charm. It tickles and ours squeaks when you pump it, so it is kind of funny. Hold a plastic container under your ear to catch the runoff (and the icky bits of ear wax).
Joni Mitchell or, for that matter, Ry Cooder?
"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to" Mark Twain
No loss of detail, very "liquid" - a real pleasure to listen to! It actually did sound more "relaxed" than the remastered CD.Ry Cooder was "interesting" - I don't know his music much, apart from snippets played on 2JJJ-FM's "Ambience" programme in the 80s. I liked his cover of Bacharach's Mexican Divorce.
Anyway, I'm currently compiling a set of CD-Rs to send to you, so expect something in your mailbox in probably two week's time.
"Sister Morphine."
Do yourself a BIG favor and get a copy of "Bop 'Til You Drop' - this was the first digital Pop recording and it sounds terrific. The songs and arrangements are fabulous. His "Borderline" is another fabulous recording...
Try Debrox. Been using it for ....cheeze...maybe 25 years. You can get it in your local drugstore.
IMO Debrox is much safer than inserting anything into the ear. That old eardrum is back there behind all the wax.
Curiously Japanese researchers studied ear was and released their findings about a year ago. Dry ear wax was genetically linked to mainly Asians, while the wet/sticky type to Caucasians. The ear scrapers, despite the admonitions of most western doctors, is very common in Asia and, if carefully used, should present little or no problems. I've been using them for 4 decades.
I far prefer the design of the Japanese ear scraper I bought than the Chinese ones I have seen before, which, frankly, look dangerous.Anyway, probably a good idea to sterilize these before use, as I imagine they increase the chance of an ear infection.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/522706
You can do medline searches for abcc11 polymorphisms if you want more information and have access to scientific journals.... ;)
No links, but it was published in our local newspaper, more as a curiosity than anything else.
Never, never, press hard enough to draw blood. A bit of alcohol will sterilize the instrument. You can also use a cotton swab and gently swab your eaer also. If you irritate the sensitive lining a bit of baby oil on the swab will sooth ethe tissue (not dripping!)
I went to the doc last week because I had this ringing in my skull whenever I used an electric shaver on my left cheek. It was a gradual thing but became so bad my eyeballs were oscillating. As it happens, if the outer canal is blocked enough, vibrations rattle through the bones. Even walking drove me crazy.Turns out I had a wad the size of a champagne cork jammed in down against the drum. When I ride my motorcycle, I wear earplugs to save my hearing, but ironically, I was compacting cerumen over a long period. I didn't have a clue to what I was doing until my shaver was rattling my brain.
I tried digging it out but no luck. I quickly found out that the skin inside an ear canal is very sensitive. It became inflamed and painful, so I had to seek help. I told the doc that maybe blasting caps or a firehose would do it, but she had other ideas. She got out a 50cc syringe, and shot warm water up there so hard I thought I was getting a cranial enema. But presto! Out rolled this cork. I could immediately hear sounds that I hadn't heard in a long time, such as traffic and cursing, CNN, gunshots, ... all the little things one misses.
That works great. As a child, my hearing was insanely sensitive. It would dull down to normal around the same times of major pain which lead to getting them cleaned that way about twice a year. They would test my hearing before and after and it usually ended up with the guy saying "Hey Joe get IN here" because I could hear anything their machine could do.Things like crinkling paper or tin foil, lights at Sears, and just overall ambient noises were sheer torture for the first month after a cleaning.
After years of loud music, my hearing is now just normal. I love music and got into high end mostly because if things weren't reproduced properly it really annoyed me. It's been 15 years since I have had my ears cleaned so I assume I have grown out of it.
The funny thing is that it's not the hearing so much as the training to listen. I can pick out more things in music now than ever even though my hearing is no longer fantastic. Of course, I now have friends who are better at it than I. I joke about their "golden ears" and love to get their opinions on things.
and damned if you don't.I worked in an extremely noisy environment for a decade: pneumatic tools, hammering, loud machinery, etc. The wax build up was quite tremendous, and the doctor informed me that it was due to the earplugs I wore daily. Apparently the ear secretes wax to push foreign debris out of the ear, and it 'sees' the earplug as a huge bit of rubbish. If you use earplugs, including those in the ear headphones, expect to have your ears cleaned on a regular basis.
Then again, once your ears were cleaned ,your hearing acuity would have been increased dramatically, with the wax having protected your hearing....
I've noticed the wax build up ever since I started using IEMs. They also probably push the wax upwards every time they are inserted in the ear canal.
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