Role and Anatomy of the ear
The ear has two very important functions: hearing and balance, hence the absolute necessity to respect a specific interview.
The ear consists of three parts: the outer ear, the middle ear and the inner ear.
The outer ear consists of the pinna, which picks up sounds, and the outer ear canal, which is covered with skin, hair and earwax glands.
The middle ear consists of the eardrum, which transmits sounds, the eardrum body, which amplifies sounds, and the eustachian tube, which acts as a ventilator.
The inner ear ensures the transmission of sound in the form of an auditory wave via the brain.
Did you know that the ear reaches its adult size at the age of 7?
Earwax and Plug
All secretions from the external ear canal are referred to as cerumen. It is a creamy, yellowish, soft, waxy substance that is not soluble in water.
Cerumen has essentially a protective role: it protects the skin of the ear canal and the eardrum, fixes impurities and limits infections and viral and bacterial development.
While under normal conditions, the role of cerumen is beneficial, its excess can lead to various inconveniences:
The accumulation of cerumen favours eczemas, allergies, mycosis and microbial attacks; this results in very unpleasant itching.
The build-up of earwax can lead to hearing loss, sometimes even to deafness with possible buzzing and dizziness.
The plug suddenly becomes intolerable following certain favourable factors: cleaning of the canal leading to the plug being pushed in, a bath in fresh or salt water causing the plug to swell, hence the need to remove it quickly and thoroughly!
Treatment
In the case of exaggerated wax production:
There's no product to reduce this hyper-production...
It does not seem logical to recommend daily irrigation of the ear canal with an aqueous product, always in order to avoid maceration of the skin.
Cotton swabs are of no help, and sometimes they can even help to settle the earwax.
In the case of an already constituted earwax plug:
Removal is necessary either to allow an examination of the ear or because the functional discomfort (hearing loss, pain, itching) is present. This extraction must be as minimally traumatic as possible. To this end, it is often useful to precede this procedure by 3 or 4 days of instillation of products in oily phase, which will reduce the adhesion of the plug with the walls of the external auditory canal, and dissolve it.