I'm a doctor, but I'm not here to take sides on the Q-tip issue.
I'm here to clarify how many (but not all) of us use medical research: the "pyramid of evidence."
The idea is that I rely upon the best available evidence, which (roughly in order) is: meta-analysis, randomized controlled trials and other prospective data, retrospective analyses, expert consensus, and (finally) clinical experience.
This is rough because there are good critiques of meta-analyses as a tool, the available data may be a bad fit for that patient, research biases, etc. A big one is that many questions don't have a big commercial upside, so nobody will ever fund a good prospective blinded trial. Which takes us to the last point: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Just because all the of the studies about Q-Tips are low quality doesn't mean a better study would find something different. We don't know the answer to that, and that would be a big assumption to make.
So, sometimes the best available evidence is not statistically ironclad. It falls on us to use a reasonable approach about how hard a line to take. Some do a better job than others.
That was long and rambling, but hopefully it helps to clarify some misconceptions. As an applied science, we have to go with the data we've got, which is almost always not an ideal fit for the patient in front of us.
Regarding the commercial upside: Wouldn't q-tip manufactures have an incentive to prove using q-tips is, in some way, beneficial? In the case there is no benefit, but it's unclear if they are harmful, for what purpose do they serve? At least with respect to human anatomy. Q-tips have other applications, like cleaning electronics, but I am considering those uses not germane here.
Soon after I moved to Vietnam, I discovered "ray tai" through a friend there. Nearly every barbershop has this service. I nicked named it the 'eargasm'. It is one of those things foreigners can't understand, but once you try it... omg... so good.
You sit in a chair or lay down on a table (my preference) and someone who does this all day long, puts a bright light near your ear and uses a razor to cut off the hair on the outsides of your ears (if you have any) and then uses a bunch of different tools [0] to extract out all the ear wax and anything else in there. I always come out feeling like my hearing is more 'clear'.
They literally touch your eardrum and the feeling is somewhere on the edge of uncomfortable, but oh so good at the same time. At the end, they use a very fuzzy q-tip and it makes this wonderful noise and feeling.
Of course, I've heard horror stories about this not going well. Punctured eardrums, infections, etc... but the fact is that literally millions of people every day get this service in Vietnam. You see people all over getting it in shops. You also learn quickly that if you don't like something, move your head away and they stop immediately.
If you get this often enough, you should purchase your own set of 'tools' (about $4-6) that you carry with you and have them sanitize them each time before use. I went to a whole bunch of different people and eventually found a few places that I liked a lot. For the most part the service is the same all over, but everyone has their own unique different technique too.
I once woke up at 3:30 in the AM to the sensation of something crawling on my face. I sat up quickly and attempted to brush it off, but missed and the thing dashed into my ear. It went all the way in and nestled up to my ear drum. After getting over the initial uncertainty of not knowing whether it was that kind that bites, I thought I'd hang tight until the urgent care facility opened at 8:30 and have them take it out. But it moved around frequently, which made a significant sound as it rubbed against the tympanum, so there was no way I was going to sleep.
Yes, it is as unpleasant as you imagine it would be.
I couldn't stand the various maladies I dreamed up that might befall my hearing and after about an hour, I drove myself to the emergency room.
Here's where it's relevant to the story. At first, they couldn't see it with their otoscope, so they cleaned my ear out. In order to open space for a better look, they scooped out a disturbingly large amount of ear wax. I was surprised at this, as I do use Q-Tip daily and couldn't imagine that I'd missed that much wax when cleaning (I hadn't, Q-Tip doesn't reach there). And I'd recently had a full audiologist exam that found no issues. I asked the Dr. about it as he was locating the bug and he said that actually, the earwax in the ear canal is part of the body's protections against germs & viruses, and the amount removed was typical. Once the wax was out, he could see the thing.
They then 'paralyzed' it by squirting in an anesthetic so it wouldn't cling to my ear canal, then washed the ear out, and the bug came out.
$1,850 lighter, I headed home.
So. Learning that I could have had an eargasm and saved that small fortune, well, it's good to know for next time I'm in Vietnam with a bug in my ear.
For those who absolutely have to know... it was a silverfish. Ick.
South-East Asians have 'dry' earwax, as determined by the ABCC11 gene. This is the same gene that makes their sweat have no odour. Just because Vietnamese people go around with sweaty shirts, doesn't necessarily mean you should... And just because they get their ears cleaned, doesn't mean you should.
The Wikipedia article for ear picks implies that it is necessary because of the dry earwax type. The source says:
> Dry wax, most common in Orientals and Native Americans, is gray and dry. It is flaky and may form a thin mass that lies in the ear canal.
There is something in China with airwax treatments and I just heard too many negative stories from foreigners even though Chinese people do it a lot, to not try it. It is just really sensitive equipment up there: not sure what works and what does not.
I had this procedure done (also in Vietnam) and found it highly unpleasant. It was like tickling/scratching deep in my ear canal, and left my ears uncomfortably sensitive, painful, and itchy for 24 hours; fortunately I didn’t get an infection. My companions at the salon had no such issues. Other commenters have remarked on genetic differences in earwax consistency; perhaps that’s the reason I found it so awful.
There are many things that doctors do not recommend because they don't believe the average person can use it correctly.
For example, a doctor prescribed two medications (A, B) to take twice per day. Yet there is an alternate medication (C) for one of them (B) that can be given 3 times per day, which reduces blood level fluctuations resulting in better symptom management. She told me that they don't usually prescribe that one because they don't trust the parents of their patients to correctly administer one drug only twice per day (A) when giving the other drug (C) 3 times (they are worried about overdoses of the twice daily medication A).
> There are many things that doctors do not recommend because they don't believe the average person can use it correctly.
> ...She told me that they don't usually prescribe that one because they don't trust the parents of their patients to correctly administer one drug only twice per day (A) when giving the other drug (C) 3 times (they are worried about overdoses of the twice daily medication A).
I wonder if they're not even worrying about "the average person", but a kind of "lowest common denominator" person. Depending on how severe an "overdose" is, that might be totally the right call. Even if only 1 in 100 patients would mess up and OD, prescribing the less-effective combination would actually end up helping a lot of patients.
IMHO, software engineers also end up infantilizing their users with similar "lowest common denominator" thinking, but usually with less justification.
Exactly. Anytime you are giving guidance to the public, you need to factor in that the average punter is capable of incredible feats of stupidity or craziness.
If you've had issues with your ear, you'll know that many treatments sound alot like the problems describe. People with lots of issues will have a procedure where they cut the eardrum and insert a tube. Or have a vaccuum or waterjet pull out earwax.
Are there people who will compulsively clean their ears and cause a buildup of wax? Probably. The only difference between that and people who damage their teeth or nose by picking is that they are using an implement to do so.
I believe an example is the use of alcohol to delay the onset of frostbite, at the cost of hastening the onset of hypothermia. Given the later is more immediately lethal and is accompanied by a loss of rationality, it would be irresponsible for doctors to admit that the vasodilative effects of alcohol will stave off frostbite by increase bloodflow to extremities (the same effect that hastens the onset of hypothermia.)
For prescriptions that are pills, I'd like to see a smartphone/tablet app to help with things like that.
At the simplest, it would just remind me when it is time to take pills and tell you which pills to take. That could help with the confusion of having pill A on a twice a day schedule and pill C on a thrice a day schedule.
Better would be if you could also show the app your pills using your device's camera when you first start a new prescription. Then when you take your scheduled doses you could show the app what pills you are going to take and it could check that you have the right number of pills and they are the right colors and shapes and sizes.
For anybody who actually deals with earwax buildup issues, the Debrox ear drops they sell at Target/Walgreens/CVS along with the irrigation bulb/warm water will resolve the issue in about 10 minutes. Keep your head tilted and enjoy the strange bubbly sound. Make sure you make the water lukewarm, closer to skin temperature before you spray it in your ear (if it's too cold, you'll be dizzy for 10 minutes). I've had temporary hearing loss resolved with this before.
When I was a kid, I used to get chronic ear infections. At some point, they did some testing that involved forcefully streaming cold water into my ear. As you stated, it made my head spin something serious.
As an adult I got a cholesteatoma in that same ear, which is probably directly related to the issue that caused so many infections in my younger days. I had surgery to remove it, and now I have to visit the surgeon once a year for ear cleaning because that ear doesn't self-clean so efficiently anymore.
I have to use oil drops the night before so it isn't painful. I really dislike getting it done, but it sure feels better afterward.
I've tried those effervescing concoctions, and I'm not convinced they actually do very much at all. It does sound really cool though.
Incidentally, Debrox is carbamide peroxide, which is basically equivalent to hydrogen peroxide. Debrox is $11/oz on Amazon, while hydrogen peroxide is around $.50/oz.
I used to use Q-tips all the time because my ears were always itchy from the earwax (ew, sorry.) My doctor told me the q-tips were irritating the inside of my ear, and that's why they were itchy. I stopped using Q-tips, and after a few months the itching went away. shrug ymmv.
My understanding [please correct me, I'm not a doctor] is that it's recently come to light that there is very, very little evidence, if any, that salt is bad for you (aside from people with certain heart conditions), yet the whole medical profession loudly proclaims that salt is in general bad for you.
Regardless of whether future evidence may demonstrate that salt is bad for you, or that q-tips are bad for you, this sort of thing seems to be the medical field's version of the urban legend. Everybody believes X because they heard someone else -- maybe a professor at school -- stating it, but ultimately it has little scientific basis, and it takes years to root it out. I wonder how often this happens, and what can be done to counter it.
It's not about mechanically causing build-up or impaction. It's about not disturbing the natural cerumen flow (epithelial migration).
Cerumen will thinly coat the ear canal to protect it. When you mess with that flow, you create little build-ups, kind of like road traffic. This accumulates and create the equivalent of a traffic jam.
This is also why Q-tips users swear by them: they are creating the issue that requires the Q-tips in the first place.
Worth noting that not all humans have the same kind of cerumen. There is wet cerumen (dominant, 50%) and dry cerumen (20%). It depends on your genetic. If you are asian, chances are that your cerumen will be harder and require scooping out. Again, this is done with a little spoon by a third-party or by using one carefully (they also come with cameras and flashlights). You remove the build-up with accuracy, you don't just jam cotton in there and randomly scrape at your ear canal.
> "Cerumen will thinly coat the ear canal to protect it. When you mess with that flow, you create little build-ups, kind of like road traffic."
I think the issue is that there is little evidence for Q-tips causing problems. With sincere respect, to me, this sounds like a "just-so story", a plausible-sounding explanation without actual basis.
> "Again, this is done with a little spoon by a third-party or by using one carefully (they also come with cameras and flashlights). You remove the build-up with accuracy, you don't just jam cotton in there and randomly scrape at your ear canal."
It sounds like the issue is not "little spoon" versus "cotton swab" but "accuracy" versus "jamming". Anyone jamming anything in their ear is gonna have problems, whether or not it's a little spoon or a cotton swab. If you can acknowledge that people can carefully use a little spoon on their own just by care and feel, then logically you would have to acknowledge that some people, perhaps those with wet earwax, can do the same with cotton swabs.
Take a walk along the beach. A small proportion by volume but a large proportion by number, of the pieces of plastic you will find, will be the stems of Q-tips. If you're going to use them, get the paper kind and leave the ones with plastic on the shelf.
Q-Tip brand q-tips are made of paper. As far as I'm concerned, they're the superior product all around, all the alternatives I've seen have inferior fluffiness. I'm not usually one for brand loyalty, but in this instance I haven't been able to find any generic version that's satisfactory.
One aspect that's often left out in conversations about earwax (cerumen) is that there are basically two very different types -- and they're determined by genes.
> There are two distinct genetically determined types of earwax: the wet type, which is dominant, and the dry type, which is recessive. While East Asians, Southeast Asians and Native Americans are more likely to have the dry type of cerumen (gray and flaky), African and European people are more likely to have the wet type (honey-brown, dark orange to dark-brown and moist).
So, the effectiveness of any tool is going to be wildly different for a 'wet' type vs a 'dry' type. And, the ability to be "impacted" will vary as well.
I use them after every shower, so basically every day. In my experience, there's never enough build up for there to be anything to push in and get impacted.
well, yeah, there's never enough buildup because you're cleaning it every day, what about the anti bacterial and foreign object protection you're giving up for no good reason.
For what it's worth: I have an incredible ENT with 40 years of experience, and she's consistently recommended Q-tips for her patients and held that the AAO is overcautious here (though it's certainly possible to cause impaction by, e.g., using a dry Q-tip in a dry ear canal).
'Choke up' on the q-tip, holding it closer to the business end such that your fingers prevent it from being inserted further than intended. That's what I do anyway.
YMMV of course, particularly since earwax consistency is apparently something that varies considerably between different populations.
Also don't jump on a couch at the dentist with your new tooth brush in your mouth and land face first requiring an emergency room visit to stitch a hole ripped into the back of your mouth.
I had a classmate in grade school that was deaf in one ear. He said he was cleaning his ear with a q-tip when his sister walked up behind him with a paper bag and popped it as a joke.
I've cleaned my ears with q-tips every single day for almost 30 years and haven't had a single issue. In fact, every visit to the doctor I get a comment about how clean they are followed by a word of caution.
Maybe letting it build up then trying to use a q-tip causes impaction?
Has the author considered asking people instead of speculating and blindly discrediting studies? As with others in this thread, I have had earwax compaction issues from attempting to use q tips to clean. Don’t do it, use the squirt bottles. They’re great and like $20 for infinite uses.
This looks very interesting but does one really need one in most cases? I've stopped using Q-tips when I found about Bamboo Oriculi which I could get in any Chinatown (now they're everwhere, just found them on etsy). They're reusable and a lot less problematic than Q-tips. Q-tips sometimes push the wax in rather than take it out.
Similarly (and obliquely referred to near the end):
Dietary cholesterol is not bad for you. At all.
Saturated fat is not bad for you. At all.
Sugar is all kinds of bad. The more they look, the worse it gets. Particularly fructose and sucrose. (Glucose is fine.)
Meat still causes heart trouble, but it's not the saturated fat at fault. After all these decades, we still don't know what is. Nobody was looking, because "sat fat!"
Obviously make sure you are alone and in a place where you won't be startled or jostled or otherwise put yourself in a situation where you jam the bobby pin into your ear drum.
The amount of junk that gets built up in your ears is pretty impressive.
[+] [-] phren0logy|5 years ago|reply
I'm here to clarify how many (but not all) of us use medical research: the "pyramid of evidence."
The idea is that I rely upon the best available evidence, which (roughly in order) is: meta-analysis, randomized controlled trials and other prospective data, retrospective analyses, expert consensus, and (finally) clinical experience.
This is rough because there are good critiques of meta-analyses as a tool, the available data may be a bad fit for that patient, research biases, etc. A big one is that many questions don't have a big commercial upside, so nobody will ever fund a good prospective blinded trial. Which takes us to the last point: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Just because all the of the studies about Q-Tips are low quality doesn't mean a better study would find something different. We don't know the answer to that, and that would be a big assumption to make.
So, sometimes the best available evidence is not statistically ironclad. It falls on us to use a reasonable approach about how hard a line to take. Some do a better job than others.
That was long and rambling, but hopefully it helps to clarify some misconceptions. As an applied science, we have to go with the data we've got, which is almost always not an ideal fit for the patient in front of us.
[+] [-] JMTQp8lwXL|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] latchkey|5 years ago|reply
You sit in a chair or lay down on a table (my preference) and someone who does this all day long, puts a bright light near your ear and uses a razor to cut off the hair on the outsides of your ears (if you have any) and then uses a bunch of different tools [0] to extract out all the ear wax and anything else in there. I always come out feeling like my hearing is more 'clear'.
They literally touch your eardrum and the feeling is somewhere on the edge of uncomfortable, but oh so good at the same time. At the end, they use a very fuzzy q-tip and it makes this wonderful noise and feeling.
Of course, I've heard horror stories about this not going well. Punctured eardrums, infections, etc... but the fact is that literally millions of people every day get this service in Vietnam. You see people all over getting it in shops. You also learn quickly that if you don't like something, move your head away and they stop immediately.
If you get this often enough, you should purchase your own set of 'tools' (about $4-6) that you carry with you and have them sanitize them each time before use. I went to a whole bunch of different people and eventually found a few places that I liked a lot. For the most part the service is the same all over, but everyone has their own unique different technique too.
[0] https://chamsoccothe.com/uploads/images/san-pham/lay-ray-tai...
[+] [-] 11thEarlOfMar|5 years ago|reply
I once woke up at 3:30 in the AM to the sensation of something crawling on my face. I sat up quickly and attempted to brush it off, but missed and the thing dashed into my ear. It went all the way in and nestled up to my ear drum. After getting over the initial uncertainty of not knowing whether it was that kind that bites, I thought I'd hang tight until the urgent care facility opened at 8:30 and have them take it out. But it moved around frequently, which made a significant sound as it rubbed against the tympanum, so there was no way I was going to sleep.
Yes, it is as unpleasant as you imagine it would be.
I couldn't stand the various maladies I dreamed up that might befall my hearing and after about an hour, I drove myself to the emergency room.
Here's where it's relevant to the story. At first, they couldn't see it with their otoscope, so they cleaned my ear out. In order to open space for a better look, they scooped out a disturbingly large amount of ear wax. I was surprised at this, as I do use Q-Tip daily and couldn't imagine that I'd missed that much wax when cleaning (I hadn't, Q-Tip doesn't reach there). And I'd recently had a full audiologist exam that found no issues. I asked the Dr. about it as he was locating the bug and he said that actually, the earwax in the ear canal is part of the body's protections against germs & viruses, and the amount removed was typical. Once the wax was out, he could see the thing.
They then 'paralyzed' it by squirting in an anesthetic so it wouldn't cling to my ear canal, then washed the ear out, and the bug came out.
$1,850 lighter, I headed home.
So. Learning that I could have had an eargasm and saved that small fortune, well, it's good to know for next time I'm in Vietnam with a bug in my ear.
For those who absolutely have to know... it was a silverfish. Ick.
[+] [-] rozab|5 years ago|reply
The Wikipedia article for ear picks implies that it is necessary because of the dry earwax type. The source says:
> Dry wax, most common in Orientals and Native Americans, is gray and dry. It is flaky and may form a thin mass that lies in the ear canal.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABCC11
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ear_pick
[+] [-] spike021|5 years ago|reply
Several years back it got quite bad, so I went to an ENT doctor in SF and they did this suction thing. It felt so strange but it worked like magic.
Even jingling my keys was a bit sensitive at first until my eardrum got used to the sound again due to (probably) having a clearer surface area.
[+] [-] tluyben2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fmajid|5 years ago|reply
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20181029-in-china-chengdus-p...
I suspect whether you have liquid or solid earwax (genetics) makes a huge difference.
Every Japanese shop sells bamboo or plastic earpicks (and more exotic materials like titanium) designed to scoop out the gunk from your ears.
And then you have these French cotton buds that have a small flexible spoon-like end on one side:
https://www.quies.com/product/otospoon-dual-action-earwax-re...
[+] [-] philsnow|5 years ago|reply
> There are stories of customers leaving wives for ear pickers and a life of in-home ear pleasure.
[+] [-] tartoran|5 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9KWuwiKXvM&ab_channel=YOU-G...
[+] [-] ericbarrett|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eps|5 years ago|reply
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1215255/rare-practic...
[+] [-] giantg2|5 years ago|reply
For example, a doctor prescribed two medications (A, B) to take twice per day. Yet there is an alternate medication (C) for one of them (B) that can be given 3 times per day, which reduces blood level fluctuations resulting in better symptom management. She told me that they don't usually prescribe that one because they don't trust the parents of their patients to correctly administer one drug only twice per day (A) when giving the other drug (C) 3 times (they are worried about overdoses of the twice daily medication A).
[+] [-] ardy42|5 years ago|reply
> ...She told me that they don't usually prescribe that one because they don't trust the parents of their patients to correctly administer one drug only twice per day (A) when giving the other drug (C) 3 times (they are worried about overdoses of the twice daily medication A).
I wonder if they're not even worrying about "the average person", but a kind of "lowest common denominator" person. Depending on how severe an "overdose" is, that might be totally the right call. Even if only 1 in 100 patients would mess up and OD, prescribing the less-effective combination would actually end up helping a lot of patients.
IMHO, software engineers also end up infantilizing their users with similar "lowest common denominator" thinking, but usually with less justification.
[+] [-] Spooky23|5 years ago|reply
If you've had issues with your ear, you'll know that many treatments sound alot like the problems describe. People with lots of issues will have a procedure where they cut the eardrum and insert a tube. Or have a vaccuum or waterjet pull out earwax.
Are there people who will compulsively clean their ears and cause a buildup of wax? Probably. The only difference between that and people who damage their teeth or nose by picking is that they are using an implement to do so.
[+] [-] bigbubba|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzs|5 years ago|reply
At the simplest, it would just remind me when it is time to take pills and tell you which pills to take. That could help with the confusion of having pill A on a twice a day schedule and pill C on a thrice a day schedule.
Better would be if you could also show the app your pills using your device's camera when you first start a new prescription. Then when you take your scheduled doses you could show the app what pills you are going to take and it could check that you have the right number of pills and they are the right colors and shapes and sizes.
[+] [-] auganov|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kylehotchkiss|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] function_seven|5 years ago|reply
But it’s just pure satisfaction to hear the Pop Rocks crackling in my ear (“that means it’s working!”), and the clarity of my hearing afterward.
[+] [-] ksaj|5 years ago|reply
As an adult I got a cholesteatoma in that same ear, which is probably directly related to the issue that caused so many infections in my younger days. I had surgery to remove it, and now I have to visit the surgeon once a year for ear cleaning because that ear doesn't self-clean so efficiently anymore.
I have to use oil drops the night before so it isn't painful. I really dislike getting it done, but it sure feels better afterward.
I've tried those effervescing concoctions, and I'm not convinced they actually do very much at all. It does sound really cool though.
[+] [-] karaterobot|5 years ago|reply
Incidentally, Debrox is carbamide peroxide, which is basically equivalent to hydrogen peroxide. Debrox is $11/oz on Amazon, while hydrogen peroxide is around $.50/oz.
[+] [-] LTL_FTC|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notJim|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] windock|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SeanLuke|5 years ago|reply
Regardless of whether future evidence may demonstrate that salt is bad for you, or that q-tips are bad for you, this sort of thing seems to be the medical field's version of the urban legend. Everybody believes X because they heard someone else -- maybe a professor at school -- stating it, but ultimately it has little scientific basis, and it takes years to root it out. I wonder how often this happens, and what can be done to counter it.
[+] [-] Raphmedia|5 years ago|reply
Cerumen will thinly coat the ear canal to protect it. When you mess with that flow, you create little build-ups, kind of like road traffic. This accumulates and create the equivalent of a traffic jam.
This is also why Q-tips users swear by them: they are creating the issue that requires the Q-tips in the first place.
Worth noting that not all humans have the same kind of cerumen. There is wet cerumen (dominant, 50%) and dry cerumen (20%). It depends on your genetic. If you are asian, chances are that your cerumen will be harder and require scooping out. Again, this is done with a little spoon by a third-party or by using one carefully (they also come with cameras and flashlights). You remove the build-up with accuracy, you don't just jam cotton in there and randomly scrape at your ear canal.
[+] [-] rendall|5 years ago|reply
I think the issue is that there is little evidence for Q-tips causing problems. With sincere respect, to me, this sounds like a "just-so story", a plausible-sounding explanation without actual basis.
> "Again, this is done with a little spoon by a third-party or by using one carefully (they also come with cameras and flashlights). You remove the build-up with accuracy, you don't just jam cotton in there and randomly scrape at your ear canal."
It sounds like the issue is not "little spoon" versus "cotton swab" but "accuracy" versus "jamming". Anyone jamming anything in their ear is gonna have problems, whether or not it's a little spoon or a cotton swab. If you can acknowledge that people can carefully use a little spoon on their own just by care and feel, then logically you would have to acknowledge that some people, perhaps those with wet earwax, can do the same with cotton swabs.
[+] [-] satisfaction|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smackay|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bigbubba|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] interestica|5 years ago|reply
> There are two distinct genetically determined types of earwax: the wet type, which is dominant, and the dry type, which is recessive. While East Asians, Southeast Asians and Native Americans are more likely to have the dry type of cerumen (gray and flaky), African and European people are more likely to have the wet type (honey-brown, dark orange to dark-brown and moist).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earwax
So, the effectiveness of any tool is going to be wildly different for a 'wet' type vs a 'dry' type. And, the ability to be "impacted" will vary as well.
[+] [-] chaoticmass|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hcurtiss|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smileysteve|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] npinsker|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ElDji|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bigbubba|5 years ago|reply
YMMV of course, particularly since earwax consistency is apparently something that varies considerably between different populations.
[+] [-] whalesalad|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 83457|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snarfy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brandonmenc|5 years ago|reply
But when I see people use them in both ears simultaneously, I cringe. Better hope you don't have a seizure or sneeze while doing that.
[+] [-] lutorm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kgwxd|5 years ago|reply
Maybe letting it build up then trying to use a q-tip causes impaction?
[+] [-] jakear|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] modeless|5 years ago|reply
I got one after I had to have a doctor unblock my ear. I use it once a month or so and haven't had any problems since.
[+] [-] tartoran|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chairmanwow1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ncmncm|5 years ago|reply
Dietary cholesterol is not bad for you. At all.
Saturated fat is not bad for you. At all.
Sugar is all kinds of bad. The more they look, the worse it gets. Particularly fructose and sucrose. (Glucose is fine.)
Meat still causes heart trouble, but it's not the saturated fat at fault. After all these decades, we still don't know what is. Nobody was looking, because "sat fat!"
[+] [-] war1025|5 years ago|reply
Works much better than a qtip in my experience.
Obviously make sure you are alone and in a place where you won't be startled or jostled or otherwise put yourself in a situation where you jam the bobby pin into your ear drum.
The amount of junk that gets built up in your ears is pretty impressive.