Your ears produce wax because two types of glands in the ear canal are constantly at work: oil glands that lubricate the skin and modified sweat glands that release antimicrobial proteins to fight off germs. Everyone makes earwax, but some people genuinely produce more than others, and certain habits can make the problem worse. About 19% of the general population deals with enough buildup to cause a blockage, and that number climbs to roughly 30% in older adults.
What Earwax Is Made Of
Earwax is mostly sebum, the same oily substance your skin produces everywhere else on your body. Small sebaceous glands attached to hair follicles inside the ear canal secrete this oil to keep the delicate skin from drying out. A second set of glands, called ceruminous glands, adds antimicrobial proteins that trap dust, debris, and bacteria before they can reach the eardrum. The mixture combines with dead skin cells, cholesterol, fatty acids, and other compounds to form the sticky or flaky substance you recognize as earwax.
Under normal conditions, your ears are self-cleaning. The skin of the ear canal slowly migrates outward, carrying old wax toward the opening. Chewing and talking help this process along by shifting the jaw joint, which sits right next to the ear canal. When this conveyor belt works properly, wax dries up and falls out on its own without you ever noticing.
Genetics Play a Bigger Role Than You’d Think
A single gene called ABCC11 determines whether you produce wet or dry earwax. Wet earwax is sticky and honey-colored. Dry earwax is flaky and gray. The wet type is dominant, meaning you only need one copy of that gene variant to produce it. Nearly 100% of people of African and European descent have wet earwax, while the dry variant is close to 100% in people from northern China and Korea, with intermediate frequencies in Japan, southern Asia, and the Americas.
Wet earwax tends to be produced in larger quantities because the ABCC11 protein is more active in people who carry the wet variant. If your earwax has always been abundant, sticky, and golden-brown, your genetics are a major reason. Some people simply have more productive glands, and no amount of cleaning will change that baseline.
Habits That Trigger More Wax
Cotton swabs are one of the most common culprits. Research shows that inserting a swab into the ear canal stimulates the tiny hairs lining its walls, and those hairs send signals to the glands to ramp up wax production. So the tool most people reach for to clean their ears actually causes the opposite effect. On top of that, the cotton tip rarely pulls wax out. It pushes the existing wax deeper, packing it against the eardrum where it can harden into a plug.
Earbuds and headphones create a similar problem through a different mechanism. Wearing them for hours blocks the ear canal’s natural outward migration of wax. The wax has nowhere to go, so it accumulates. If you wear earbuds most of the day for work, music, or calls, you’re more likely to notice buildup than someone who doesn’t.
Hearing aids have the same effect and are a major reason older adults experience higher rates of impaction.
Age Changes Your Earwax
As you get older, the glands inside the ear canal change. They produce less oil, which makes the wax drier and harder. Dry, stiff wax doesn’t travel out of the ear canal as easily as the softer kind. The self-cleaning mechanism slows down, and wax accumulates. This is why earwax problems tend to worsen with age, even in people who never had issues before. The roughly 30% impaction rate in older adults reflects this shift in wax consistency more than an increase in production volume.
Skin Conditions Can Add to the Problem
Eczema and psoriasis don’t just affect visible skin. Both conditions can occur inside the ear canal, where they cause extra dead skin cells to shed faster than normal. Psoriasis in particular creates thick scales that mix with earwax and can physically block the canal. These flakes of dead skin get trapped in the wax and create a denser, stickier mass that’s harder for the ear to push out on its own. If you have psoriasis or eczema elsewhere on your body and notice excessive ear buildup, the two are likely connected.
Scratching or poking at itchy ear skin pushes these dead cells deeper into the canal, compounding the blockage.
How to Tell If Wax Is Actually a Problem
Earwax that sits near the opening of the ear and doesn’t cause symptoms is normal, even if there seems to be a lot of it. It only becomes a clinical issue when it forms an impaction, meaning a blockage that presses against the canal walls or eardrum. Common symptoms of impaction include a feeling of fullness in the ear, muffled hearing, itching, ear pain, ringing (tinnitus), and occasionally a reflexive cough. In rare cases, a large plug can cause a mild sense of imbalance.
If you can hear fine and your ears don’t feel plugged, the wax you’re seeing is probably just your body doing its job efficiently.
What Actually Works for Removal
If you do need to soften or remove excess wax, the type of ear drop you choose matters. A comparison study published in the Australian Journal of Otolaryngology found that water-based drops were significantly more effective than oil-based ones at dissolving and softening wax. Sterile water had the greatest effect. Common oil-based remedies, including olive oil, performed poorly. Hydrogen peroxide, a water-based option available over the counter, was among the more effective choices regardless of wax consistency.
The American Academy of Otolaryngology recommends leaving earwax alone if it isn’t causing symptoms. Their guidelines specifically warn against cotton swabs, hairpins, and ear candles. Ear candles do not remove wax and can cause serious burns or damage to the eardrum. If you’ve had ear surgery or a perforated eardrum, don’t use any drops or irrigation without clearance from a specialist.
For people who naturally overproduce wax, periodic professional cleanings may be the most practical long-term approach. A clinician can remove impacted wax safely using irrigation or suction in a matter of minutes, and some people find they need this done once or twice a year to stay comfortable.