All humans and most other mammals have earwax. If you’re talking to doctors and such, it’s better to say ‘cerumen’, so they can understand you better. Cerumen is doctor-speak that comes from the Latin word cera, which, unsurprisingly, means ‘wax’. “Earwax?”, you say. “I know all about it. It’s that yellow-brownish guck on the Q-tip after you’ve cleaned your ear.” Well, there’s a bit more to it than that.
What is it?
Earwax is a mixture of sticky substance called sebum that is produced by the sebaceous glands and some less sticky stuff secreted by special apocrine sweat glands in the skin of the outer third of the ear canal. The sebum contains fatty stuff called lipids, like cholesterol, and some long-chain alcohols and such.
Now if someone ever asks you what do the caucasoid and negroid families of man have in common, you can say we have the same kind of earwax, which is formally known as the wet type. This differs from the dry, flaky type, which most native peoples of Asia and the Americas have. It’s a genetic thing, like whether or not you can curl your tongue. True to its name, the dry flaky earwax is dry and flaky. It’s also greyish rather than brownish.
Why do we have it?
Having earwax is a blessing. No, it is not just dirty stuff to be cleaned out frequently. Well, it does get pretty funky after a while, because it traps dust, tiny insects and the like that try to get into the inner ear canal and cause trouble. But don’t worry. The ear design includes a self-cleaning mechanism that can’t be beat. New skin cells grow from the eardrum and migrate slowly outward, carrying the increasing funky earwax with them. Little hairs on the skin facilitate that expulsionary movement. When the wax reaches the opening of the ear canal, it just dries up and flakes off or gets washed off by normal bathing.
Earwax also helps guard the sensitive inner canal and eardrum from invasion by water. If water does get in, however, the wax can tend to hold it in there. When that happens, use an ear-drying solution that can be found in any drugstore, rather than the infamous alien cotton probe.
Earwax also helps protect the ear from infection by bacteria and fungi. It is acidic enough to discourage many germs and also contains chemicals that can keep germs from growing.
What’s wrong with sticking things into my ear?
Many of us have heard time and time again from doctors, mothers and other wise people, and also from other people who just like to sound authoritive, “Don’t put anything into your ear that is smaller than your elbow.” That means no fingertips, no Q-tips, no bobby pins, or anything else that will actually fit in there.
I know, I know. You’re going to say if Q-tips shouldn’t be used to clean ears, why do they sell them? Well, the official answer is that they are supposed to be used to clean out your navel (bellybutton). The truth, of course, is that cotton swabs are made by evil megacorporations that get rich off of the ignorance and suggestibility of the common person, because nobody believes the good advice and everybody uses the cotton swabs to “clean their ears”.
Because Mom Nature is so thoughtful, as described above, we don’t normally need to clean the wax out of our ears. There are only two times when ears need to be cleaned. One of those times is when the doctor pokes that hard, cold, pointy thing in your ear to see what’s in there, but can’t see for all the earwax. Don’t worry, doctors are licensed to stick things smaller than your elbow into your ear to swab out the obscuring wax. The other time cleaning is required is when a wax plug completely blocks your ear canal. That can cause loss of hearing, discomfort and even pain. But guess what causes the plug to form in the first place. Right. Sticking things into your ears, like earplugs to mute sound or keep water out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerumen
http://www.entnet.org/healthinfo/ears/earwax.cfm