a blog post written sideways

I'm currently lying on my side with olive oil in my ear. I woke up yesterday with not much hearing and an unpleasant feeling in my left ear. I looked it up on the NHS site and they suggested it was because of compacted earwax - which made sense to me. The treatment they suggested is to put a few drops of either olive oil or almond oil* in your ear then lie down on your side for 10 minutes for it to sort of mingle with the earwax and soften it up.

and I've seen this advice elsewhere, and my understanding is that the ear drops you can buy at pharmacies are mainly olive oil, plus maybe a bit of something else to justify being a different product (but which ultimately doesn't make much difference)

so my question is: why is olive oil better than sunflower oil or groundnut oil? is there something special about the olive? (or almond). is it just that there was a folk remedy that specified olive oil and so that's the one that got tested and now that's the one that has evidence?

and my follow up question is: given presumably people use cheaper olive oil for this (or, I mean, whatever they have on hand. but that's likely to be the cheap end of the market just due to demographics). and given that there's huge amounts of counterfeit olive oil, which is not actually made from olives but is in fact other oil. does that work worse? my olive oil is from Lidl, it is not expensive, is it fake? have I applied fake oil to my ear and is this period of lying on my side, writing this post on my phone and waiting for waxy substances to mingle all for nothing?

answer: no, it's fine, my ear is better since yesterday, I'm just following up to try to stop it from recurring, the oil does seem to have helped. but the other questions do remain, and I have made no effort to seek out the answers.

ok i think my ten minutes are up, time to get upright

* they clarify: unless you're allergic to almonds