Never stick anything in your ears smaller than your elbow. We’ve all heard this advice, but what is earwax anyway?
By Lisa Kurak, Doctor of Audiology
Earwax is technically called cerumen. It isn’t really wax in the ‘candle wax’ sense. It is a sticky fluid secreted by cerumen glands – only in the skin of the ear canal. It is there to protect your ear canal and eardrum from foreign materials. Without it, the ear canal would be more susceptible to infection.
Cerumen is naturally nudged towards the opening of the ear as you talk or chew — an efficient self-cleaning system. All we have to do is remove earwax from the outer ear.
If we produce more earwax than we can naturally push out of our ear canals, problems can occur. Earwax can cause hearing loss when it blocks the ear canal. The wax acts like an earplug, blocking sound waves from reaching the eardrum. Not only can earwax interfere with hearing, it can also trap moisture, setting the stage for infections. Earwax blocking the ear canal needs attention from a trained professional.
Last but not least, let’s talk about using cotton swabs. It is safe to swab the outer portion of the ear. However, don’t use swabs in the ear canal! You risk scratching the sensitive skin in the ear canal, which may lead to infection. Also, attempting to remove earwax with swabs may pack it deeper. It is safer to let your ear canal do the work or see a professional.
If you are concerned about earwax, call SoundPoint today. It only takes a minute to examine your ears. With our video otoscope, you’ll be able to see the ear canal and eardrum yourself!
Interesting Facts.
Did you know?
• 65% of those with hearing loss are under 65 years of age
• 1 in 6 baby boomers have hearing loss
• 1 in 14 of generation “X” have hearing loss
- The Thirty-Forty-Fifty “Health Matters” CNN segment
Did you know?
➢ 31.5 million Americans suffer from hearing loss.
➢ Nine in 10 users of hearing aids say their hearing aids improve their quality of life, according to a U.S. study among 1500 people with hearing aids.
➢ 93% of all hearing aid users experience improvements in their quality of life because of their hearing aids.
➢ Hearing aid users’ feelings and confidence in themselves and relationships at work have improved due to their hearing instruments.
- Sergi Kochkin: MarkeTrak VII:
Do I need a hearing test?
A hearing check is as simple as ‘raising your hand, when you hear a beep’. There are a lot more reasons why you should have your hearing tested. We’ve listed a simple few. If you have never had your hearing checked, you should. Also, if you answer ‘yes’ to any of the items, you should have your hearing tested.
• You’ve never had a hearing test
• You just celebrated your 50th birthday!
• Your ears ‘ring’
• You get ‘dizzy’
• You are concerned about your hearing
• Others are concerned about your hearing
• Hearing loss ‘runs in the family’
• You spend time around noise
• You have a loud hobby
Remember, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. Have your hearing checked BEFORE it is a problem to you or your family & friends! Better hearing means a better life.
How should I care for and maintain my hearing aids?
More than 75 percent of all hearing aid repairs are due to moisture and earwax accumulating in the hearing aid. The vast majority of these repairs are 100 percent preventable. It is extremely important to clean the entire hearing aid every time it is removed from your ear by wiping and brushing it. To better protect your investment, use a DRY-AID kit every night! Electronic dry-aid kits are the best. They include a germicidal light that kills most bacteria and other germs, desiccants to absorb moisture, and fans to circulate air around the internal components of the hearing aid. Get in the habit of cleaning the hearing aid after each use and keeping the hearing aid in the dry-aid kit at night. The hearing aid is electronic and moisture is the enemy! Preventive maintenance is the key to trouble free, long life from a hearing aid. A well maintained hearing aid can easily last 5 to 7 years, maybe longer.
Do I really need 2 hearing aids?
If you have two ears with hearing loss, and both ears could benefit from hearing aids, you need two hearing aids. Many people come in hoping to “get by” with only one hearing aid. People tried that for decades and it simply does not work very well.
In 2005, 86 percent of all new hearing aid wearers are fit binaurally (both ears).
It is important to realize there are no “normal” animals born with only one ear. Simply stated, you have two ears because you need two ears. If you try to amplify sound in only one ear, you cannot expect to do very well. Even the best hearing aid will sound “flat” or “dull” when worn in only one ear.
You need two ears to tell where the sound is coming from (localiztion). Localization is very important for determining the origin of warning signals, alerting sounds and of course, conversational speech.
Using both ears together allows your central nervous system (your brain) to better focus on, and process sounds you want to hear (human speech) while more or less ignoring sounds that you do not want to hear (i.e. background noise). One ear working by itself cannot do this very well. The brain needs to compare and contrast loudness, pitch and the timing of the sounds from the two ears to make sense of it.
It’s like using your eyes. If you close one eye, you cannot get depth perception. In other words, if you were to close one eye, it becomes very difficult to tell how far something is in front of you. It is also difficult to read and you’ll find you get tired more quickly as you are straining and working harder to make visual sense of the world. Of course, if you had two eyes that were far sighted, or two eyes that were near sighted, you wouldn’t even think about getting a monocle…and that would be similar to wearing one hearing aid.
Binaural hearing gives a quality of high fidelity to sounds, which cannot occur with monaural (one ear) listening. Understanding speech clearly, particularly in challenging and noisy situations is much easier while using both ears. Additionally, using two hearing aids allows people to speak to you from either side of your head – not just your “good” side!
People cannot hear well using only one ear. There are studies in research literature that show that children with one normal ear and one “deaf” ear are ten times more likely to repeat a grade when compared to children with two normally hearing ears. Additionally, we know that if you have two ears with hearing impairment and you wear only one hearing aid, the unaided ear is likely to lose word recognition ability more quickly than the ear wearing the hearing aid.
If you have an aidable hearing loss in both ears, do yourself a favor and get a hearing aid for both ears.
