Ear Wax

myangellaura

If your cancer is hormone receptive and your prescription drug treatment is Arimidex, please be aware that your body produces excessive ear wax due to low estrogen and that leads to muffled hearing. You need to get your ears unplugged once a year. I am in remission for 5+ years and I just learned of this from my ENT Doctor.

Cowgirl13

Thank you for posting. I had a terrible time last time I had my ears cleaned as it had been sometime since I had them cleaned. I'm actually now going to have them cleaned every 6 months.

ChiSandy

Would that it’s just ear wax. The mechanism by which estrogen deprivation damages your hearing is way more depressing and probably irreversible: it’s yet another symptom of aging, accelerated by loss of estrogen. As we age, the cilia (hairlike projections) in the fluid-filled cochlea of the inner ear become less supple and can’t react as smoothly as before in response to the vibrations from the bones of the middle ear that touch the cochlea and transmit the vibrations from the eardrum. The motion of the cilia transfers the waves to the auditory nerve, which translates them into electrical impulses to be perceived by the brain. Not only that, there’s less fluid. Also, as the cilia lose their flexibility they are also more vulnerable to noise, and can actually be flattened permanently. Finally, to add insult to injury, the bones in the middle ear (hammer/anvil/stirrup) deteriorate and stiffen (sort of like osteoarthritis of the ear) and are not only less sensitive to the vibrations from the eardrum but also less able to transmit them to the fluid in the inner ear. But wax can aggravate things by sticking to the eardrum, impeding its vibrations, and as we age everything in the ear that vibrates needs all the help it can get.

alpLewes24

Thanks for this, I actually have a scheduled routine ear doctor appt next week . My ear canals are small and I get wax build up but now will say something about being on arimidex

Moderators

Welcome, myangellaura, and thank you for posting this! If helps too, here is what we have in our main site on Hearing Problems and tips to manage them.

Best wishes,

The Mods

ShetlandPony

Also, my ENT explained that flakes of dry skin can contribute to the ears getting clogged. Many of our treatments cause dry skin. He prescribed an ointment, but I asked if I could just use a tiny bit of whatever unscented moisturizer I am putting on my face, and he said that was ok.

sas-schatzi

Bump

WarriorG

This is good to know! I have had trouble with earwax before! Thanks for the post