Ear wax is meant to be there. The aim is not to have none of it. Anyone who succeeds in stripping the canal completely will simply produce more, because the canal responds to being irritated by making replacement wax.
What you can influence is how often it builds up far enough to block the canal. Some of that is out of your hands, since how much wax you make and the shape of your ear canal are both largely inherited. The rest is habit, and habit is where most avoidable build-up comes from.
What actually helps
Leave your ears alone. This is the single most useful line on this page. The canal cleans itself. Wash the outer ear in the shower, dry it with a towel, and stop there.
Use softening drops if you are prone to build-up. Olive oil or sodium bicarbonate drops, two or three in each ear at night for three or four nights, will soften wax and help it clear. Used occasionally, in short courses, they are a sensible maintenance measure for anyone who knows they produce a lot of wax. Used every day indefinitely they irritate the canal, so they are not a permanent habit.
Treat the skin, not just the wax. If you have eczema or dermatitis affecting your ears, controlling it will reduce the scale that makes wax hard and sticky. That is worth raising with your GP.
Give your ears time out of your earphones. In-ear headphones, particularly sealing noise-cancelling ones, act as a plug and press wax inwards. Over-ear headphones do not. If you wear earphones for several hours a day, that alone will move you into the group who need wax removed regularly. Keep the tips clean and take them out between calls.
Clean hearing aids and ear plugs daily. Wearing a hearing aid all day means holding wax in the canal for all of those hours. Daily cleaning of the mould and the wax filter reduces both build-up and the risk of infection. Most hearing aid users do better with wax removal on a planned schedule than with waiting for the aid to stop working.
Book it in if you block up reliably. For heavy producers, a planned appointment every six to twelve months is far easier than waiting for the ear to block and then trying to be seen at short notice.
What to avoid
Cotton buds. They take out a little wax and push the rest deeper, past the point where the canal can clear it. They also scratch the canal skin, which causes irritation, which causes more wax. Most of the firm plugs we remove have been made worse by a cotton bud.
Ear candles. There is no evidence they remove wax, and the residue people point to afterwards is candle wax, not ear wax. There is good evidence of harm: burns to the face and canal, molten wax dripped onto the eardrum, and perforations.
Suction kits, picks and spirals bought online. Consumer suction devices do not generate enough controlled suction to move impacted wax, and the picks and spirals are sold with no way of seeing what you are doing. The canal is a few millimetres across and the eardrum sits at the end of it.
Home irrigation and syringing kits. Pushing water into a canal you cannot see, against a plug you cannot assess, risks pain, infection and perforation. Irrigation is also unsuitable for anyone with a perforated eardrum, a grommet, a mastoid cavity or previous ear surgery, and most people do not know which of those apply to them.
Hydrogen peroxide and improvised solutions. These irritate the canal skin. Olive oil or a licensed cerumenolytic is the safer choice.
Does diet make any difference?
This comes up often, usually as a claim that dairy, gluten, sugar or caffeine increase ear wax.
There is no good evidence for it. Cerumen is produced by the ceruminous and sebaceous glands in the ear canal, and how much you make is largely determined by genetics. No controlled study has shown that cutting out a food group reduces wax production.
Articles making these claims are common online, including on ear care sites. They are not supported by the evidence. A balanced diet is worth having for plenty of reasons; managing your ear wax is not one of them.
How often should wax be removed?
There is no single answer, and anyone quoting one is guessing.
- Most people never need it done at all.
- Heavy producers often settle into a pattern of every six to twelve months.
- Hearing aid users frequently need it more often, sometimes every three to six months.
- Some people need it once in their lives after a cotton bud incident, and never again.
The sensible approach is to have it done when symptoms appear, note how long it takes to come back, and use that as your interval.
The short version
- You cannot stop producing ear wax, and you should not want to.
- Most avoidable build-up comes from cotton buds and from things worn in the ear.
- Softening drops help a mild build-up. Nothing sold for home use will safely clear a firm plug.
- Diet makes no meaningful difference.
- If your ear is blocked, get it looked at instead of working on it yourself.
If you want the detail on what causes a build-up and which symptoms matter, that is covered in our guide to ear wax build-up.
If your ears have already blocked
Microsuction clears them in one appointment. It uses no water, needs no drops beforehand, and at Ear Care Lab every procedure is carried out by a doctor under a binocular operating microscope.
Appointments are £75 for one or both ears, adults and children alike, and usually take 15 to 30 minutes. Book online, or call us on 0208 004 7808.
