Eax wax therapy, and an inner ear stroke.

Date:   1/6/2009 6:05:22 PM ( 15 y ago)

I had my ears checked out by my doctor last month after an unusual ear episode that I will describe later. The Doc used his special scope and said he could not see the eardrum on one side due to wax buildup, and the other side was almost as full, and that it appeared hardened.

Wow - how did I get to this point??

He said I should book an appointment to have my ears "washed out" with his special syringe that squirts warm water and will dislodge the plugs of wax.

Meanwhile, he suggested that I should try to soften it up so that the washing will work better. He said "there are special ear drops, or put some warm mineral oil or olive oil in each ear", and he even said I might want to try an ear candle. Ear Candles seem to be all the rage with the alternative health crowd lately; I thought it was cool that a mainstream doctor would suggest it!

I believe in "the speed of nature", meaning that most things work as a process and that the body will function at it's optimum if we just give it a chance. That is why I wanted to avoid the ear syringing and the ear candling if I could.

Ear wax is just 'wax', I fugured, and wax will turn liquid if it gets warm enough, and it will then just flow out slowly, probably appearing as flakes or just an oily smear in the outer canal of the ear. That is the speed of nature too. However, if it gets hardened, using some oil will soften up the outer layers so that it can start to flow.

With that in mind, I warmed up some olive oil in a tin cup on the stove burner - but on the lowest setting. just for a minute, and keeping the oil moving around. Then I took a "dropper" [the kind with a rubber bulb on one end] and sucked up the oil and TESTED IT FOR TEMPERATURE on the BACK of my hand [that is where we test baby bottle temperature too, I remembered from my child-rearing days]. Not too hot, I tilted my head sideways and put 6 or 8 drops in one ear, and let it sit for 10 or 15 minutes. Then the other ear.

I had set up a heating pad on a pillow, and a cloth on the heating pad, and warmed up the ear without the oil on it while waiting.

The next day, I continued "operation ear wax" by doing something I had never heard anyone else suggest - steaming the ears! I took a paper coffee cup and cut a one-inch hole in the bottom and turned it upside down and held it over the boiling kettle's steam, about a foot above the spout. I gradually - VERY GRADUALLY - got my ear closer to the 1" hole until it started feeling warm. I held the coffee cup's hole slightly away from my ear so that the steam would flow easily, but pointed right into the ear canal. I fed the steam into one ear for several minutes, and then did the other one.

I found that having the kettle almost full of water to start with produced a more even steam, and I could just leave it plugged in for the whole time I was doing this. Sometimes I would unplug the kettle and get closer to the spout, but then I would have to bend down.

I can see that this might not be easy for a shorter person to do because they would be too close to the kettle and the steam would be too hot. Steam can burn badly, so be carefull!!

Thirdly, between steamings, I put some H202 - hydrogen peroxide, my favorite medical tool - in a dropper and warmed it under the hot water tap and put 6 to 8 drops in each ear [one side at a time of course] and let it bubble away! If nothing else, that would keep infections from starting.

Also, a bit dangerous perhaps, I added a little bit of baking soda, which really makes it bubble - what an odd sound in the ear!! I sprinkled just a little bit of baking soda in the outer ear and let the liquid H2O2 wash it down into the ear that way. I suppose someone will tell me this could be bad, but I had no problems.

AND THAT IS ALL THAT WAS NEEDED - a few of those "steamings" over a couple days, and the H202 and olive oil, and I was at the doctor again and he scoped my ears and said there was no need to do a syringing at all - MY EARS WERE TOTALLY FREE OF WAX!!

I never did notice any big blobs of wax coming out. Sometimes my ear canal would feel ticklish, and I would put a kleenex on my pinky and GENTLY, not deeply, rub the outer ear canal and see some moisture, but nothing much. Nonetheless, my ears were declared free of wax.

I have seen how much wax comes out when the doc syringes them, and people say that the ear candling produces lots of wax, but maybe "at the speed of nature" it just ends up as moisture. No big effect, no startling amounts - the way I like it!!

You see, once when I got the doctor to syringe my ears, several years ago, the end of the syringe came off - he didn't have it fitted right - and it went shooting off into my ear and my ear canal was bleeding, and painfull. That is why I wanted to try other ideas. Also, some people have had the ear candles drop hot stuff into the ears, but I have never seen that happen personally do I don't know.

I think that going to a sauna or steam room in winter is a great idea too, for the ears and for other reasons too. In winter, the constant exposures to cold air probably keeps the wax from flowing out like it would on a hot summer's day. Maybe that is how I got to the point of having "hardened looking wax" plugging my ear canals so bad the doc could not see my eardrum.


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But back to the "weird episode", which was why I got the doc to look into my ears in the first place - I was working at my computer and the "tinnitus" - ringing in the ears - that I have had for a long time gradually got worse over a couple hours, in just one ear, until it went WILD and was so loud I could not believe it. Like a jet engine was in my living room!! This was not like my usual tinnitus at all.

Then I started feeling dizzy and shut off the computer and went to my recliner. I could not hear very well out of that ear [but I could hear ok with the other ear], and eventually, after a few HOURS of this, I turned the TV on and the voices sounded like they were coming from a tinny-sounding hearing aid, or tiny speaker, that was right in my ear. So odd.

It gradually went away after about 5 hours.


I went online to research it, and found an article that had information and a possible diagnosis - SSHL:
"Sensorineural hearing loss", more commonly called "nerve deafness," which refers to hearing loss caused by damage to the cochlea (inner ear) or auditory nerve.

It also says that "sensorineural hearing loss is often irreversible" [lucky me, mine went away, this time].

The article continues:
Possible Causes:
- A tumor on the auditory nerve (acoustic neuroma), or other brain tumors
- Some infections have a well-known association with SSHL: syphilis, meningitis, reactivated chicken pox infection (herpes zoster oticus), congenital cytomegalovirus infection, measles and rubella.
- Head trauma can certainly lead to SSHL and/or sudden conductive hearing loss.
- Some antibiotics, chemotherapeutic agents and other drugs can cause SSHL.
- certain medications may lead to hearing loss.

It concludes with this statement:
"Unfortunately, most cases of SSHL remain unexplained. Possible explanations of such unexplained cases include: unidentified viral infection, immunologic diseases (such as systemic lupus erythematosus), and vascular occlusion (essentially, an inner ear "stroke"). "


Ahhhh, surprise!! - so I might have had an "inner ear stroke". If so, I think it was triggered by the EMF fields of my desktop computer. I wish I could get my laptop going again...

What next in the Path of My Life?



 

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