How often do you clean your ears?

[whatonearthisthatabout]

I'll tell you mine and my dps frequency after some replies. To be quite frank I'm a bit disgusted!

And yet with all these posters only one person has admitted to injuring themselves - not that dangerous after all

This thread is an ENT specialist’s nightmare.

Exactly! People are deluded if they think it's good to clean inside the ears. I say this as someone who used to be addicted to it. I found it very pleasurable and would clean my ears daily with cotton buds.
Then I started having problems - vertigo, repeated ear infections. My ears have never been the same since. Every time I get tempted to clean them, even extremely gently, they get infected now. I feel like the skin inside them has become weak and sensitive.
When my doctor examined them she told me off. She said they looked like they'd been surgically cleaned and it was very damaging for the ears. She was I was altering the internal flora of the ears and that ears need wax. It serves a purpose so leave your ears alone!

For those who don't, how do you deal with the irritation? Especially at this time of year with hayfever making everything go nuts?
I can't sleep when I can feel the itch of a lump of wax. Have to go and dig it out.

I forgot to put my experience with cotton buds. They felt good, rolling around gently in my ears, every so often, i'd 'clean' them using olive oil, sometimes with Kirby grips! I'd roll the Kirby around and admire its findings afterwards.

Then my ears started to tickle/itch a little and i'd clean them more often. Eventually, if i didnt 'can' them it would itch furiously. What was i doing wrong? i'd been cleaning my ears like this since i was born, so what was wrong at the grand age of 40yrs?? One day i put the cotton bud in and 'cleaned' yet again whilst at work, when i removed it I felt a deep throbbing in my ear. The throbbing was so bad, I had to leave work. I couldn't speak, couldn't yawn, couldn't lie on my right side and couldn't shake my head. The pain was excruciating! an emergency visit to the walk in clinic and it was confirmed, all the yrs of cleaning had seriously irritated the ear canal and it was all inflamed as well as become infected. I had always used the buds very gently not digging except once or twice when after applying oil it felt like the oil had closed my ear drum so i just used the cotton buds to 'gently' open it up. It was the worst pain I've EVER experienced. Never ever again!

I used to use cotton buds but I got a dreadful ear infection which spread to my jaw and the GP advised me never to use ear buds.

When I was a child my mum would go at my ear canals with darning needle!!

Once a week, we pop them in the machine and put it on the wool cycle, with NO spin or tumble drying, just allow to dry naturally and don't iron either.

I know right. I am cringing at the 'not dangerous to poke cotton buds in your ears' posters. God help them when they start getting stuff happening, like what's been happening to you. The level of ignorance from some, is both laughable, and worrying - in equal measures.

do you mean the inside? if yes, please stop. have had to deal with many impacted wax situations during my ENT rotation due to use of cottonbuds

also had to remove a fair few disgusting, infected, impacted cotton buds from ear canals..... just don't do it peeps

I've done the cotton bud thing for years until yesterday when the stick came out bud-less. I don't think it's still in there but buggered if I can find it 😳

I never clean inside my ears, there's no need.

Oh gawd! Go to the nurse tomorrow!

One of my kids has loads of really dark, wet earwax, which despite wiping with a wet wipe each day, can often still be seen if she wears her hair up, and she was understandably quite self conscious about it. Mindful of the rules about not using cotton buds, I found a device called a "Tvidler", which is a soft silicone spiral that works a treat. I bought it a few years ago for around £15, and it came with lots of silicone heads, so you just change them when you want to. I've just googled and loads of other companies are doing them much cheaper these days, I'd definitely recommend!

I do clean my earbuds every now and then. And the earplugs I use for swimming.

My ears are not waxy. The only time I have had a problem I think it was perimenopause related, was in early 40s at the time. I could barely hear anything in the affected ear and it was such a relief to get it syringed.

Outside, daily. Inside, when I wash my hair (every 3-4 days) as I use a cotton bud to dry these after using pinkie’s to agitate water inside…

I used to clean inside my ears with cotton buds every other day. Having had them syringed as a child, I thought I had to keep getting rid of the wax to avoid build up and needing it done again. Until I got an ear infection and couldn’t sleep for days as I couldn’t have my head or ears touching anything the pain was so severe.

I clean the outside of them everyday but never inside despite being tempted when they get itchy. My GP says I have eczema in them and that it’s odd I don’t have it anywhere else. And I have tinnitus. Not sure if both of those are a coincidence or the resulting damage of poking about them for years.

Literally never once in my adult life. I had chronic ear infections as a child and multiple surgeries, so I am no stranger to ear trauma! Poking something in my ear has never appealed. It doesn’t seem to have done me any harm having “dirty” ears!

I don’t have waxy ears thankfully so little need to “clean” them. I’m aware you’re not meant to poke Q-tips in your ears, but I agree it feels so nice! I do it maybe every couple of weeks, if I happen to think about it. I tend to feel prompted to do it if I have a bit of water in there and it needs to be dried, or the water is tickling me. Or I do it if I feel like I was particularly sweaty or grubby.

9 times out of 10 the Q-tip comes out clean 😂 pointless. Occasionally I get a tiny bit of yellow on it, but not much.

Never. Leave them alone.