To Ear wash or not to Ear wash: My predicament
I have been brought up with the idea that ears should be sprayed / washed with water while bathing, to clean them. My father has lived by this rule and follows this bath routine everyday since times immemorial.
As for me, I tried to follow in his footsteps but many times I would feel clogged after washing. As a result I was not able to follow his advice. Now whenever he used to check my ears (being a doctor, he had got his own ear checking microscope device), they would be stuffed with wax. And I would get a nice lecture. :( When I used to tell him of my predicament, he would show me, very patiently, how to dry my ears - he would take a cotton handkerchief, wrap a single layer around his little finger, tilt his head, insert the finger into his lower ear and then he would shake his finger quite vigorously.
'All the water will come down and will be absorbed by the cotton cloth', he would say after the demonstration.
But somehow, I never got myself to do it properly. Later when I was grown up and all, I got to know that ear wash is not a recommended practice because of the chances of infection due to trapped moisture in ear. To clean the ears, it was recommended, to either put ear drops or go to a doctor to get the wax out.
Is he right or wrong, I cannot tell really. May be a doctor visit is not really required and we should be able to clean our ears ourselves at home. Or may be that both the approaches are valid on a situational basis. Whatever it is, I feel that I am really prone to ear wax buildup so I visit an ENT doctor (usually every 5-6 years) to get my ears cleaned. Last time I visited this centre in Sarjarpura, Bangalore. It’s a nice, serene place styled on Kerela Ayurveda theme. The place is full of greenery . The best thing is that the doctor will show you your inside ears on a computer screen before wax removal and then after wax removal too. So you can actually see the difference! That made the difference for me!