Day 2: Ear Wax

Today I’m going to talk about the physics of ear wax.

I SAID WE’RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT EAR WAX!

Clean those things out, geez.

Ear wax, an oily secretion from the tiny hair follicles inside the outer ear, has many theoretical purposes ranging from collecting dust particles to trapping bugs before they get down into the ear.  I know about the latter as my father, missing an eardrum, has his ear wax cleaned out from down deep by a doc a few times a year.  Once the doctor pulled out a full-sized, fully intact fly…just in case you thought I was making the bug thing up.  The tackiness of ear wax is a good collector of foreign particles as well as a great catcher of sloughed-off dead cells from deeper places that aren’t used to much friction.  You probably don’t exfoliate your inner ear, which is a good thing, but inner ear skin and hair follicle cells still die and drop off your body just like skin does.  These cells need to clear outta there!  Ear wax is a great way to collect these tiny items into one heavy clump, making it easier to move  up and out of the ear canal.

Of course, if the ear wax doesn’t move, now you have lumps of wax and waste material sitting in your ears, decreasing the basic functions of the ear, which can include both hearing and balance!  How does this wax move out of the ear canal?  The muscle action of the jaw, of course.  Q-tips and cotton swabs are a recent invention, but Mother Nature’s plan requires full range of motion and regular use of the temporomandibular joint (that’s your jaw joint) to keep your ears functioning optimally.  If you eat and talk then chances are you are getting some good muscle action.  But, what if you carry your tension in your jaw? Tense jaw muscles decrease the range of motion of the joint, limiting the full movement of ear wax.  Also, many people talk more out of one side of their mouth as a learned speaking or accent pattern.  Some prefer to chew more on one side of their mouth.  In these cases, the muscle action is not symmetrical between sides, which (if you were paying attention) means one ear has more accumulation than the other.

The health of the ears is one of those things we assume will go with age, but many people are not suffering from age related hearing loss, but creating a “conduction deafness”.  When sound waves enter your ear they generate tiny vibrations in the hearing bones that your brain interprets as sound.  Accumulated materials and fluids in the ear decrease the ability for waves to enter and in the deeper part of the ears, can limit the movement of the three hearing bones.  Nerve health of the ear also depends on adequate circulation to the tissues, and a head projected forward of the torso, or hours of daily jaw clenching will reduce circulation to that area.  Muscular tension in the jaw is not only related to pathologies of the ears, but can also create issues of the teeth, jaw bone, and disk degeneration in the neck!

Healthy Ear Tips:

1.  Massage the area of the neck just below the ears and pull on your ears from all different angles to stretch and increase circulation to the temporalis muscle that your ear attaches to.

2.  Vigorously massage your “chewing muscles” before you go to sleep, or when you have a bit of free time in front of the TV or computer.

3.  Let your head hang forward to stretch the back of your neck, and take turns dropping each ear towards each shoulder.  Guess what – your chin should touch your chest and your ear should touch your shoulder.  Really!  Do this every day, spending a minute holding each stretch as you relax your shoulders.

4.  Reduce stress levels (are you seeing a trend here?)

Many people come in to the Institute and report they have “age-related” hearing loss…in one ear.  I always ask, How old is your other ear then?  We need to start thinking about these health items we accept to be true.  When I point out a little item like “if you have age-related hearing loss, but only in one ear” ask yourself, does that actually make sense?  Just putting a bug in your ear