Let’s be honest: there’s something oddly satisfying about a cotton bud in the ear. That gentle tickle, the sense of accomplishment as you ‘clean’ out the wax—it’s a ritual many of us have indulged in ...

Sang, the Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT ... hearing is that when using a cotton bud to clean earwax, you push the wax deeper into the ear, and it will be piling up like the way sedimentary rocks ...

When we use cotton buds, what we actually end up doing is pushing earwax deeper into the ear where it gets stuck in the parts that don’t, and can’t, clean themselves. The trapped earwax may ...