In this video we look at two ears which have been treated with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and discuss the chemistry and mechanism of action. Most drops containing hydrogen peroxide (dilute to around 5%) will release oxygen on contact with ear wax and the ear canal, reacting with an enzyme known as catalase. This reaction results in the production of water and oxygen, causing bubbling which may help break down the wax.
Hi everyone it’s connor here from durham hearing specialist i hope you’re doing well and welcome to another video we’ve got quite an interesting case here you can see in the ear canal we’ve got this sort of frothy material sort of looks like a liquidy sort of bubbly head of a beer perhaps but as you see as we go in with the suction probe you can see it’s not all
Sort of suctioning up as you would expect if it was very liquidy it’s actually quite thick and sticky so these bubbles are actually being suspended in what is quite a viscous slime basically and the reason that the bubbles are there is because this patient has used hydrogen peroxide drops quite extensively for about a week before seeing me and i rather suspect
They probably slugging slung in some more drops a couple of hours before the procedure which is why we’re seeing the bubbles so clearly and the reason that the bubbles are there or rather the reason that the hydrogen peroxide drops have created the bubbles is because when you put hydrogen peroxide into contact with many things but particularly the body so if
You if you use hydrogen peroxide to cleanse a wound or in this case tree earwax it will release oxygen as part of a chemical reaction and the reason that it releases oxygen is because if we think about hydrogen peroxide as a as a molecule it is fairly unstable so if we compare it to water for example we all know what that is h2o so that’s two hydrogen atoms and
Joined with one oxygen atom and that’s fairly stable right it doesn’t randomly explode doesn’t fizz doesn’t burn doesn’t really do much so it’s fairly stable but hydrogen peroxide is h2o2 so it’s basically water but with one oxygen atom added on so and that makes it unstable and what hydrogen peroxide wants to do is it wants to separate or decompose into water and
Oxygen and if you were to say have a glass of hydrogen peroxide and leave it out in the sun for a while then it would naturally start to decompose into those into those products so when we put hydrogen peroxide in an ear what the hydrogen peroxide will do is it will make contact with whatever’s in there but primarily it will be the reaction will occur because
The hydrogen peroxide will make contact with something called catalase and catalase catalase is an enzyme so an enzyme is just a very very complicated protein but catalase is an enzyme that’s that’s inside your body it’s inside all of the tissues and cells that are inside your body um it’s very very common it’s also inside plants and bacteria and things and
Catalase it’s one of its main jobs is to deal with the hydrogen peroxide that’s produced inside your body naturally anyway so it turns hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen just as i explained and the catalase will be present in the dead skin cells that are incumbent inside the earwax and of course it’ll be in the skin cell the dead skin cells that are lining
The ear canal as well so the hydrogen peroxide goes in meets the catalase and then it will go through this very through this very quick reaction where the hydrogen peroxide will turn into water and oxygen and it’s the oxygen that is released and creates these bubbles that you’re seeing it sort of effervesces and the theory is that this kind of mechanical movement
Created by the effervescence will somehow help the earwax break apart dissolve um and otherwise disperse how effective that really is is debatable so i mean there’s not much research into this area at all but the research that we do have as sparse as it is tells us that there really isn’t much difference at all between hydrogen peroxide sodium bicarb oil water
Okay they’re all just as effective as each other so if we go just by the research then i can’t really see a huge amount of point in using hydrogen peroxide given that it’s caustic so if they’re all as effective as each other you might as well use oil because at least oil isn’t going to irritate your ear canal as hydrogen peroxide might and anecdotally i’ve found
That people who use a lot of hydrogen peroxide drops it tends to turn the wax into this kind of soup or slurry which i’ve mentioned in other videos and more often than not that slurry kind of travels deeper into the ear and kind of slicks up against the eardrum which is then a nightmare to clean and you know it makes the patient feel even worse so um typically
If i had an earwax block a job just use olive oil drops so but that’s just me so here we have what is a very dark almost black piece of wax here and i’m struggling to get out of the ear canal so i’m going to apply some olive oil here and you can see i’m just going to slurp up the residue here through the suction probe and the olive oil will actually lubricate
The ear canal so i can actually just drag this piece out so you can see how easily that’s coming out there with uh with the application of the olive oil and we’ll now just clear up so you can see just on the left hand side here we’ve got some residual debris and we’ve actually got a very dark large piece of earwax which is right down near the eardrum i rather
Suspect that it’s actually resting on the eardrum and at this point during the procedure the patient felt like that it was much better but the hearing wasn’t quite 100 um so we’re just going to go in and get that black piece right there so the eardrum is back there it’s that sort of pale gray sort of bluish tinted disk of skin and this part here i’m just what
I don’t want to do is push on it and actually push it onto the eardrum so i’m just going to very gently coax it and just convince it out of the ear canal and that will come away quite easily so there we go easy as pie there and then the i’ll and i’ll show all of these pieces of debris um on a tissue next to a ruler so you can kind of get a a sense of scale
Last bit here just this little piece of dead skin so wax you know sort of smearings and smatterings of wax here and there is fine to leave dead skin is less preferable to leave behind um but there we go lovely looking eardrum there look at that look how shiny it is so that is absolutely fabulous and then if we have a look at the aftermath of the procedure very
Black wax now i did fiddle with the brightness and contrast a bit to try and make the wax look a bit more well less black but it just wasn’t happening i’m afraid so you have quite a significant blockage there and it turns black because it’s had lots of time to oxidize so there we go very interesting procedure they’re very satisfying to perform i hope you found
Um this interesting it was certainly interesting for me to talk a little bit about the chemistry and um a bit about the the sort of different reactions that occur when you put ear drops in your ears so if you have any questions please leave them down in the comment section and i will try my very best to get back to you but thank you for watching the video liking
And subscribing and i will see you on the next video
Transcribed from video
How HYDROGEN PEROXIDE Ear Drops Work (Ear Wax Removal) By Durham Hearing Specialists
