So, here in this thread we have three different sources from two different continents, documenting the same experiment, using similar (but not exactly the same) conditions along with experimental controls and all three achieving the same results. I believe that, if quackwatch was not enough to debunk the ear candles then these three studies should finish it off.
If you’re impressed with the gunk that an ear candle can suck out of your ear you should see what a band-aid soaked in vinegar will suck out of your feet.
Or a bandage with some potato scrapings on it works well too.
It’s not that it goes bad, as such. Hydrogen peroxide (H[sub]2[/sub]O[sub]2[/sub]) is a fairly unstable molecule. It would rather be water and an oxygen atom instead, which is a lower-energy state. That’s why it’s in brown bottles, to keep light out which hastens this transormation.
Ahhh, I understand, so it doesn’t become dangerous - just useless. Still, I would think it would be a bad thing to put into an ear canal. If the eardrum or area around it is even a tiny bit perforated and some leaked in then the foaming reaction would do some damage to the inner ear.
Also, this stuff isn’t hydrogen peroxide, it is some organic peroxide like benzoyl peroxide. I haven’t looked at the label in a while so I don’t know what it is specifically. Nonetheless, what Q.E.D. says is right, it will simply decompose to worthless over time. When the time comes, I may pick up a fresh bottle. What I am doing now, is working wonders and I’ve been doing it for years.
It doesn’t offend me at all. I would like to point out the following (I was reading fast got other work to do so tell me if I missed anything):
Cecil’s column doesn’t list any of these studies
The link you listed doesn’t actually describe any studies except one that tried candling eight ears (that sounds like a sample size of four people - how rigorous).
The main complaints seem to be that amazing claims are made for ear candles way beyond removing a bit of wax and that people can hurt themselves doing it.
I haven’t tried searching for articles about it myself, but when I get time, I will look for these peer-reviewed and replicated studies. Seriously it’s a topic I’m interested in and I was under the impression there haven’t been many studies actually trying it.
Couldn’t we end this once and for all by analyzing:
The wax left in a used ear candle that had been placed in an ear
The wax left in a used ear candle that had not been placed in an ear
Ear wax from the person into whose ear the candle had been placed
Also, some of the posts indicate there is a connection between the ear canal and the sinuses or eustachian tube. I really thought there wasn’t. I’ve blown my nose, but I’ve never seen anybody blow their ear, which presumably would be necessary from time to time if it was connected to the sinuses. Furthermore, if the eustachian tube is connected to the ear canal, doesn’t this imply that there needs to be another tube connecting the inner ear to the throat, otherwise you’d never be able to equalize your inner ear. And what would be the use of an ear canal-throat tube anyway? All I can come up with is that you could stick a straw in your drink a beer through it. Fun at parties, I suppose, but who wants to drink beer with a straw?
The Eustachian tube is the tube that equalizes pressure to the inner ear. Unless your eardrum is perforated, there’s no other connection between the inner ear and the outside world.
That’s what I thought, thank you. Iwas worried my Biololgy teacher got it wrong somehow. Some of the posts were making me doubt my map of my own head’s interior.
My guess is that anything that can suck stuff out of this tube will take the rest of the ear guts with it. Giving you Beethoven’s hearing ability but not his composing skills.
“(At Scripps) we do integrative medicine. We’re always dealing with the ‘alternative’ world. … If it works and it’s safe we want if for our patients. But pretty definitely (ear candling) is one you shouldn’t try,” he said. “At the very best it’s not going to work. At the worst it’s going to be dangerous. … It’s not effective and people should stay away…Studies have tested the contents of candles after the procedure and found that it’s definitely not anything from the ear itself. “In several studies they found the wax from the candle was deposited back into the ear,” he says."
Yes, we could. But it wouldn’t end this once and for all, because that work has already been done, and it hasn’t ended.
Doesn’t matter how many times you test something and find it utterly false and without merit, someone else will be along shortly to protest that no, it really does work, really.
At the shop where I get cinnamon extract (there’s some clinical evidence it helps Type 2 diabetics process sugar), I get a dose of misinformation as well. If the counter is being manned by the nice old lady from (I think) Jersey, I get misinformation about diabetes (i.e., that my medication will cause me to become insulin-dependent).
But if it’s the nice Hispanic lady with the chihuahua named Dingus, I get a recommendation for ear candles.
I don’t want to stand there and argue with her; this thread has been a pleasant release.
I was thinking about this thread, about how strong the confirmation bias is versus how strong the evidence against is and I started thinking “Why is the confirmation bias so strong in the first place?”.
Even in my earlier post regarding personal experience I admitted (and still readily admit) that “something” happened. It’s obvious that what ever that something was, it was not the advertised and commonly accepted answer, so what was it?
Well, I started googling “blowing smoke in the ear” and, along with about 50% to 60% ear candle sites, found a few anicdotes that rang familiar. It seems I remember this as a child, a kid with an ear ache would have smoke blown in their ear by an adult smoker. It’s been too long to remember but I imagine it was performed on me from time to time.
Looking through the websites I also found reference to the “Ancient” method of using a stone or clay cone to blow herbal smoke into a patient’s ear. This was called coning and, although the pages made parallels to the current practice I can’t see how blowing through a cone creates a vacuum. It might lower the air pressure outside the cone relative to the inside but that’s about it.
And regarding the smoke, when I was a kid the smoke of choice seemed to be tobacco, but the modern cones use muslin cloth (cotton) and wax (bees’). I guess my question is, does anybody else have a thought as to what is going on during ear candling as opposed to the already provided thoughts as to what is not going on? Is there some science behind the confirmation bias toward the shared experience of coning?
Note - I also noticed several anicdotes suggesting placing urine in the ear to relieve ear pain. As I recall, urea is a protien found in urine and commonly used as an unguant (sp) and moisturizer. Given this it is not suprising to hear of an ear treatment containing urea and peroxide, although I still think straight HP would be dangerous.
Pretty much. The one study cited here a couple times tested 8 people (one ear per person–the other ear was a control) and found no benefit; or, indeed, any difference between the candled ear and the uncandled one. In all 8 cases, ash from the gauze in the candle was found deposited in the ear canal on top of the cerumen deposits, which indicates that not only was no cerumen removed, but the very presence of the ash deposits precludes the possibility of the very mechanism which the candles are claimed to work by: the suction. Zero out of eight is an insufficiently significant result to justify a budget for a larger study.
I did this one time when I was younger just to satisfy my friend who shilled “natural supplements” like this in the mall, paying $7 for the experience. I can see how someone with no background in biology or medicine would look at ~50 grams of waxy yellowish powder and be tempted to think it’s 7 bucks worth of results instead of 7 bucks worth of burnt ear cone. I can’t see that it’s anything more than that.
If you ever do the experience, it’s more than obvious just from the sound and feel that there is zero suction, that the resulting material is way too yellow and powdery to be earwax, and that the amount that comes out of one ear canal is greater than what could possibly fit into both ear canals and both nostrils.