YOUR HEALTH - MEDICINE 101

Ear Wax

These two elegant beeswax candles aren’t meant for a birthday cake – no they’re designed to be lit on fire and put in your ear. It’s called candling and it’s an ancient practice. It was originally designed to release the evil spirits in the brain by sucking them through the ear hole with the smoke from the candle. Today, candling isn’t done to rid the body of demons but rather of this ugly stuff – ear wax. But before you light your ear on fire … listen up

Medically speaking, earwax is grossly unappreciated. It doesn't look like much, but it is quite amazing stuff. It’s produced in the outer part of the ear … right here in this tube leading to the eardrum. And that’s what it protects by trapping fine particles of dust and grime. The wax lines the tubing of the external ear acting as a lubricant and humidifier, holding just the right amount of moisture in the little canal. This also has an anti-bacterial effect, keeping the opening free from infections. Normally, the ears are self-cleaning. The wax produced in the outer third of the canal is slowly pushed outwards, away from the drum, by microscopic hairs called cilia. When it reaches the outer ear; this part, the wax, dries up and falls off.

To look at the ear canal and the drum, doctors use and instrument like this, an autoscope - from auto: ear and scope: to look - it's simply a battery source in the handle connected to a fibre-optic light directed down this tube. A normal drum looks like this.

Are we, as a society, happy with nature's wax production and disposal plan - no we are not. We have invented devices in an attempt to clean out the wax we can see just as it's leaving the ear canal. But that backfires - because sticking something into the ear canal compacts the wax makes it more sticky and viscous, and prevents it from flowing out on its own.

If the canal is blocked with wax, it can cause pain and dizziness but more likely you'll develop hearing problems, even deafness.

You can treat this yourself by using mineral or baby oil drops to soften the wax. If that doesn't work, we doctors can syringe out the ear like this. We squirt lukewarm tap under pressure into the canal to soften and dislodge a plug of wax. But don’t try this at home … it can be painful and damage the eardrum if not done carefully. Not to mention what could happen with this on fire.