Ear Candling

Yesterday Serena and I decided to try ear candling. Ear candling is a process whereby a hollow candle is inserted in the ear and then lit. The heat from the candled combined with the seal between the ear and the candle's base is alleged to create a vacuum that pulls ear wax out of the ear canal. We had heard about it a year ago but after some quick internetting had concluded the whole business was bogus. On the airplane ride back to Oregon from the east coast, however, I met a guy and his wife who swore by them; said it cured his ear infection. I promised him we'd give it a try.

True to form, the local natural food store had candles in stock. We scooped up four--one for each of our ears--and headed home for some good old fashion ear cleaning.

Serena went first:


I went second:


Our candles ended up "removing" exactly the same amount of wax. Everyone knows that Serena has waxier ears that I, so that signaled the first alarm (or second considering The Internet said it was bunk). The third candle was sacrificed in the name of science. We burned it propped on a ceramic plate to see how much, if any, wax it could extract from the plate. Sure enough there was exactly the same amount of wax "removed" from the plate as was "removed" from our ears.

It doesn't even feel good.

Ear candling=fraud.

I feel like a MythBuster.