How to tell if you have a wax plug in your ears: symptoms
Although you do not believe that substance of yellowish color and serous appearance that appears inside your ears exerts important functions in the cleaning and protection of your ear. In fact, just take a look at the functions of wax or earwax to realize its remarkable role despite being actually so insulted.
For example, it exerts an interesting protective function by helping to trap dust, dirt and other impurities that could enter the inside of the ear, acting as antibacterial and antifungal. It also acts as a lubricant due to its lipid content, being useful to prevent fur, drying and itching of the skin found inside the ear canal. Finally, it also acts as a natural cleanser, since when it moves from the inside of the ear to the outside it cleans everything in the canal, taking with it and dragging dust and dirt.
But sometimes the wax or cerumen can accumulate in excess. It is what is known as wax stopper or earwax, and among its most common or habitual causes we can mention the follow-up of an improper cleaning process, which generates the obstruction of the ear canal and can in turn lead to injuries.
That is to say, The wax stopper is produced when there is an alteration of the natural mechanism of cleaning the ear, since as we discovered on a previous occasion in which we talked to you about How to remove excess wax, our ears already have a fundamental natural mechanism for proper ear cleaning. Its operation is simple: the wax or earwax tends to pass slowly through the middle ear canal to reach the external auditory canal, dragging all impurities and dust inside the canal. Then that wax is eliminated when we shower or bathe, practically without realizing it.
Most common symptoms of wax stopper
If you think you have a wax plug or earwax in your ears, you should first attend to what are the symptoms produced by the wax stopper, to know if you can or can not have your ears plugged as a result of an excess of cerumen. They are the following:
- Hearing loss: this hearing loss tends to be sudden, never gradual. It is the most typical and the most common symptom that helps to recognize whether or not we have a wax plug in the ears. The decrease in hearing is so drastic that it tends to appear from one day to the next. But we must be calm, since the hearing returns to recover again once the wax stopper is removed.
- Autophony: the person with the plug feels that when he speaks he seems to hear his own voice. The same happens when we chew, having the sensation that we hear the sound caused by the jaws colliding with each other.
- Earache: its intensity tends to be variable although in most cases it is rather mild or medium.
- Other related symptoms: in addition to the indicated symptoms, we may have a certain sensation of blockage in the ears (that is, as if we had something inside the ears that does not disappear when we massage the ear), listen to annoying buzzing or even suffer slight dizziness.
What if I have any of these symptoms? What I do?
Once you think you can have a plug in your ears, the most appropriate is go to an otolaryngologist in order to remove the ear plug. For this purpose it uses the introduction of warm water in the ear in order to soften the wax and let it out.
Instrumental surgery can also be used, useful to carry out an adequate microscopic control, cleaning itself in the correct way with the appropriate medical instruments. This article is published for informational purposes only. It can not and should not replace the consultation with a Physician. We advise you to consult your Trusted Doctor.