Blocked ears

[Redchic12]

Gem….yes that also sounds like a good idea, however it won’t heal an infection.

Castor oil has a history of healing infections. Check out the Edgar Cayce website and also a book…The Oil that Heals by Dr. William McGarey"

Don’t know anything about olive oil tho.

[FairyCrystal]

Originally Posted by Gem

I think ear wax is typically quite oily, so I doubt olive oil will do much good.

My ENT advises to use olive oil. I'd say he knows what he's talking about :)
I've followed his advise and it indeed helps to...
A) prevent new buildup of wax
B) soften existing wax so it can be easily removed

Originally Posted by Gem

I think some astute businessman has found a way to sell cheap olive oil as ear drops and get like 400 bucks a litre.

Where have you seen that?
We're talking about olive oil that you buy in the supermarket for some 3 USD/Euro that lasts you a long time. You can also cook with it.

Originally Posted by Gem

I'd just buy medical ear drops like Waxol to soften it up and have a nurse clean it out with a water jet. That's sure to work.

So you put your trust in a chemical Big Pharma product that can have side-effects, and makes them even richer, over something natural that works great, doesn't cost a fortune, has no real sell-by date nor side-effects, and is even advised by ENTs?

I prefer to put a natural product in my ear over chemical stuff, but to each their own.

[FairyCrystal]

[quote=Redchic12]Putting the drops near the entrance may not have the required effect.[quote]
NOrmally, with olive oil for ear wax, I use a tea spoon, then lay on my side for at least 3 mins. You can then feel it go deeper and deeper and then kind of distort sound as it reaches the eardrum.

But since Castor oil is thicker I bought a dropper so I can use that. That way I can get a wee bit deeper but as I lay on my side for at least 3 - 5 mins, it gets warm and thinner. I basically wait for it to reach the eardrum, which you can tell as it distorts/dims sound. It also feels a bit odd, you can actually feel it on your eardrum.

Originally Posted by Redchic12

You poor thing…….six months! Omg that would drive most of us crazy.
Hope you get relief soon.

Thank you!
First-ever ear infection, and it got me good, haha. It hadn't caused me problems in a while as the treatment of the naturopath worked great! It was almost gone in December but the droplets and cream I had were finished and he didn't tell me to continue with them. Probably thinking it'd continue to heal.
After about a months I began to suspect it going wrong again, ever so slightly.
Thank goodness I went to GP in time (I hope) so it doesn't go from "almost" to "bad".

And you know what I'm VERY happy about?! My eardrum being closed again. After 6 months I can finally go in the shower without covering my left ear!! YAY!
May sound odd, but I'm actually excited about that, hahaha.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by FairyCrystal

...

I figure ENT's are part of the whole pharma thing anyway, but in the States they seem to favour hydrogen peroxide, which I thought weird. I have heard ENT's say don't use olive oil because it doesn't work and others saying use it. I have seen olive oil ear drops in little dropper bottles and Maybe olive oil works, what would I know? I just thought if wax is oily already, a soapy thing would break it up best, but that's not medical advice, so don't do that. I go with speciality products because they do experiments and find out what works best, but it's probably really strong so I wouldn't overdo it.

Apparently, ear candles are the worst, so I'm told, and as far as naturopaths go, I wouldn't trust them at all.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Redchic12

Gem….yes that also sounds like a good idea, however it won’t heal an infection.

Castor oil has a history of healing infections. Check out the Edgar Cayce website and also a book…The Oil that Heals by Dr. William McGarey"

Don’t know anything about olive oil tho.

Isn't Edgar Cayce some sort of mystic or something? I can't rate that as a qualified opinion on ears, and I have no interest in mystic experts of everything, butI''lhave a quick look at the doctor guy. Apparently castor oil is good stuff, and it was basically a cure-all when I was a kid. However, I hear about rubbing on the tummy hoping to get pregnant etc and I'm thinking, maybe not that. That was probably a naturopath thing .

[FairyCrystal]

Whatever the substance of earwax... what it's about is to get it to become softer as these things get quite solid and hard after a while. Oil is excellent to soften things, including ear wax. Plus it makes things slippery, and can get the wax to get loose from skin in the inner ear.
Sometimes it's attached to it and then a doctor or ENT cannot remove it without creating some damage (a tiny bit of blood) as the skin will tear, and it will then also hurts when it is removed.
A good doctor/nurse/ENT will tell you to go home, make a new appointment after you've oiled the ear for some 3 days. (that's what I did too when I still worked as a doctor's assistant when cleaning ears was part of my job as well)

Good thing with using oil once a week (so when ear is clean) is that you won't easily get buildup again.
The oil keeps any earwax soft and then whatever tiny bits will form will just come out, for instance under the shower.

Oil is the best, as it's not aggressive and with that won't cause other problems inside the ear. Mostly to the skin of the ear canal.
All GPs, doctors assistants (that clean the ear), ENT I've come across tell you to use oil. Just what you got in your kitchen, no need to buy anything fancy.

Naturopaths are great and in a way they know much more than a regular doctor.
Regular doctors are needed for acute things like broken legs, heart attack and so on.
For all other things alternative therapists are better. Regular doctors have no remedies for chronic things, just give you chemical 'medication' that doesn't remedy the cause, just dampens symptoms.

The other day I've seen the inside of my mother's heart when he was scanning it. No cardiologist can do that unless they cut you open.
I've seen the inside of my brain, organs etc. when my naturopath scans the status of it all.

He can even do an oligoscan which will tell him any and all substances IN the cells. So it's 100% more reliable and helpful than having blood test done. Something being in your blood doesn't mean it's in the cells.
Plus, oligoscan doesn't require penetrating skin or veins so no risk of anything.

I know alternative healing isn't big in the US as it's so big with Big Pharma, hihi.
I know from my girlie when she lived over there that US doctors give you antibiotics for everything. You burp? Antibiotics! Got a pimple? Antibiotics! Flatulence? Antibiotics!
Thank goodness I could enlighten my daughter as she was being poisoned by her doctor, hihi. Sure-fire way to ruin your microbiome!

I know a helluva lot about health, medicine, alternative, Western (I'm a doctor's assistant), and I also know when to listen & trust my doctor and when I'm better of seeing my naturopath/other alternative. I use both, so I get the best of both because I'm quite educated in both. (not expert though).
I've got people coming to me with health questions as they know I'm well informed. Sometimes I send them to see a doctor ASAP, sometimes not.
For instance, my mother has issues with her blood, sometimes way too thick, sometimes way too thin. I'm of more help to her than the so called Western educated professionals. (they don't even know what to do!).

Ear candles I'm not sure about either. Some say they're great, others say they're not.
I've never experienced them, and not keen on the idea either.

[Redchic12]

Gem. No Edgar Cayce wasn’t a mystic. He was just an ordinary simple humble kinda guy with little education. He didn’t ask for this gift and didn’t understand why it was given to him. You can read more online.

No, maybe you can’t rate that as a qualified opinion judging by the man himself but let’s focus more on how many thousands of people he cured during his 40 years rather than the man himself. The amount of people cured in his lifetime is mind blowing.

All he did was lie down close his eyes and a voice spoke thru him concerning the healing of each person. Medical terminology was used and Cayce himself had no knowledge of that and no idea what had been said after coming out of his sleep/trance.

What is very interesting is that he spent about 40 years doing these healings for others and never charged anyone a cent! That says a lot to me. He said that it was a gift from God so should be given freely.

As for Dr William McCarrey. He had read about some of Cayces healings, especially with the castor oil and decided to ask his patients if they would consider trying it first, before he booked them in for surgery or wrote a prescription for the usual medication. He was so astonished by the positive results that occurred so he decided to incorporated this oil into his practice.

This is why he decided to write the book about the benefits of this oil.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Redchic12

As for Dr William McCarrey. He had read about some of Cayces healings, especially with the castor oil He was so astonished by the positive results that occurred so he decided to incorporated this oil into his practice.

I think what happens is a health person such as McCarrey will cotton on to something that is good stuff, but then develop a fixation and make claims that are unreliable and outlandish. McCarry most probably made such exaggerated, embellished claims because that's the general tendency. There's no shortage of medics on You Tube and Twitter doing it today, and of course they have a thousand positive testimonials in the comments section. but when you take it to observational studies or human controlled trials, measurable outcomes do not support what they say. People don't like it because no one wants to be proven wrong, but as a science guy, I try to understand my own biases and just go by the evidence we have so far. When we get more evidence, I understand it better and/or change my mind. In my history with sports science, there's are things I believed were true based on what we knew at the time, but new research showed other things, so I say I was wrong (along with everyone else). The data was clear, but we all interpreted it wrong.

The tendency is, a mild or acute malady which could go away on its own is treated with something 'natural', and then the claim is made that the substance made it go away, but we can't explain the mechanistic process of how it works, and when tested in controlled blinded trials, the results aren't statistically relevant.

When I was a kid it was common for mums to make their kids swallow a teaspoon of caster oil every day, horrible stuff, and it was a like a remedy for everything, so no surprise that Cayce repeatedly turned to the conventional wisdom of his era. I'm just as foolish as everyone else. Since I was brought upon the stuff I believe it works without any knowledge of how it works and with zero controlled evidence. That's my bias. Now I'm so curious that I'll do a bit if digging around and see what tests have been done and if there's any info on how it works.

I started with a video called 'the science behind castor oil' which has exactly zero science in it - I guess due to Cayce's uber-naturalness, there's a lot of quackery to waddle through.

[Redchic12]

I guess it’s a personal thing really.

For me, I don’t really care about scientific studies/trials. If it’s healed my problem then it’s done it’s job. End of.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Redchic12

I guess it’s a personal thing really.

For me, I don’t really care about scientific studies/trials. If it’s healed my problem then it’s done it’s job. End of.

It matters because a case study is the lowest form of evidence, and 'worked for me' doesn't imply 'it works'.


If we take a case study to be substantial, well, every snake oil has a thousand positive testimonials, but practically none of them work. That's why we test things, and by the time we have enough tests to do a meta analysis we get a pretty good idea how likely it is that something will work.


I saw an ENT on you tube doing a test of the most common remedies for ear wax, and the olive oil was actually the worst with no apparent effect. Distilled water showed a better result... I found that curious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkyX7KDzRzg