Is it a good idea to remove wax inside the ear with cotton-tipped swabs?
No. The ear has a natural self-cleaning mechanism. Ear skin normally sheds from the inside out. If you place a drop of ink on the eardrum and wait a few weeks, it will turn up near the opening of the ear. The ear canal is also a shaped like a funnel, with the narrow end near the eardrum. Cotton swabs generally push wax deeper into the ear than it normally is (wax forms only in the outer segment of the ear canal), and packs it into a mass. As long as there is even a pinhole opening in the packed wax, hearing is usually good. However, when the canal is completely blocked by wax, a substantial hearing loss develops.
