# Ep 215 The Hidden Depths of Earwax

An episode of [This Podcast Will Kill You](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1299915173), 7 Jul 2026, 54 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/e0709a39-232b-4483-8e4f-b24c0111ae2c/6b809e96-e265-4b33-96ff-b45000f6758e/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=64b4c224-562e-4b2f-9f31-b24c0111ae53

In keeping with last week’s theme of “bodily excretions that are kinda gross that you don’t really think about but are actually really important”, we’re devoting this episode to earwax, aka cerumen. In one hour, we somehow manage to weave together stories of earwax impaction, misadventures in ear candling, glimpses of earwax in art history, and a whale of a tale as revealed by cetacean cerumen. The biology and history of earwax proves to be surprisingly rich and revealing and will have you second-guessing yourself as you reach for that cotton swab. Armed with this week’s episode on earwax and last week’s on boogers, you’ll be ready to take on even the most daunting office icebreaker. Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/3WwtIAu See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: A fifty year old woman presented to her GP following
[0:03] Speaker 1: an episode of ear candling. After fifteen minutes, the person
[0:07] Speaker 1: performing the candling burned herself while attempting to remove the
[0:10] Speaker 1: candle and spilled candle wax into the patient's right ear canal.
[0:14] Speaker 1: On examination, a piece of candle wax was found in
[0:17] Speaker 1: the patient's ear and she was referred to the local ear, nose,
[0:21] Speaker 1: and throat department under general anesthetic. A large mass of
[0:25] Speaker 1: solidified yellow candle wax was removed from the deep meatus
[0:29] Speaker 1: of the ear. The patient had a small perforation in
[0:32] Speaker 1: her right to panic membrane. Results of a pure tone
[0:35] Speaker 1: audiogram showed a mild conductive hearing loss on the right side.
[0:38] Speaker 1: At a follow up appointment one month later, the perforation
[0:41] Speaker 1: was still there and the patient's hearing had not improved.
[1:32] Speaker 1: An account of why not to ear candle.
[1:35] Speaker 2: I mean, just one example, just one that sounds horrific. Yep.
[1:43] Speaker 1: I agree. Every single account of ear candling that I
[1:48] Speaker 1: read was exactly like this. This particular account comes from
[1:52] Speaker 1: an article from two thousand and seven by Rafferty at
[1:55] Speaker 1: All published in the Canadian Family Physician that was titled
[1:58] Speaker 1: ear candling. Should general prec tishners recommend it? The answer
[2:01] Speaker 1: was no.
[2:02] Speaker 2: No, firmly. Wow that's awful. Yeah, that's awful.
[2:11] Speaker 1: It's not great.
[2:12] Speaker 2: Hi. I'm Aaron Welsh.
[2:14] Speaker 1: And I'm Erin.
[2:14] Speaker 2: I'm an Updike and this is this podcast will kill you.
[2:17] Speaker 1: Today we're talking about ear wax, ear wax, continuing our
[2:22] Speaker 1: bodily fluids.
[2:24] Speaker 2: There's so much more that I've been like mentally collecting them.
[2:27] Speaker 2: There's like saliva would be a great one, belly button lint.
[2:32] Speaker 2: What's in there tojam on skin cells?
[2:37] Speaker 1: It's probably the same thing as to jam.
[2:39] Speaker 2: Aaron, Well, we'll do an episode on it, babe.
[2:42] Speaker 1: Okay, I can't wait.
[2:42] Speaker 2: We'll have to see if there's enough material there. But
[2:46] Speaker 2: don't get it like, I'm sorry, absolutely done, thank you.
[2:51] Speaker 2: I am thrilled for this episode.
[2:53] Speaker 1: I can't wait because I have nothing to contribute, but
[2:56] Speaker 1: I really want to. You have to say, I'm sure
[3:00] Speaker 1: that you.
[3:01] Speaker 2: I mean, I want to know what makes up earwax. Yeah.
[3:03] Speaker 1: I have several pages of notes, but like it's I'm
[3:06] Speaker 1: here for you.
[3:08] Speaker 2: I'm here for you. I love you. I love you.
[3:12] Speaker 2: I also love quarantine time me too.
[3:15] Speaker 1: That's what time it is.
[3:17] Speaker 2: How is that done? Was that nicely done? Really? Really good? Good?
[3:21] Speaker 1: Good? What are we drinking this week?
[3:22] Speaker 2: Arin, We're drinking the gold Mine gold mine. Yeah, not
[3:26] Speaker 2: out ear wax is gold some.
[3:29] Speaker 1: Of it is so many different shades, so many different grays, blacks, yellowish, brown.
[3:38] Speaker 2: Do you already say brown? I did, Yeah, okay, yeah.
[3:40] Speaker 1: Lots of shades though.
[3:41] Speaker 2: Lots of shades within mustard. But we are we're drinking.
[3:45] Speaker 2: I mean, we named it gold mine because the amount
[3:48] Speaker 2: of information that you can tell from earwax is more
[3:52] Speaker 2: than I ever expected.
[3:53] Speaker 1: I didn't know that.
[3:55] Speaker 2: So I plus earwax is a resource, like not just informationally, well,
[4:00] Speaker 2: there's a lot to cover.
[4:03] Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay, you're gonna tell me everything. What's in
[4:08] Speaker 1: the gold mine?
[4:09] Speaker 2: It's I mean, we wanted to make it look goldish.
[4:12] Speaker 2: You know. It's got pineapple juice, Jlipino simple syrup and
[4:16] Speaker 2: lime club soda. It's refreshing, delicious. This episode will come
[4:20] Speaker 2: out summertime, I think, so it's great in the summer,
[4:26] Speaker 2: in the summer, in the Northern Hemisphere summer.
[4:29] Speaker 1: You can find the full recipe on our website, this
[4:31] Speaker 1: podcastikila dot com, and all of our social media channels
[4:34] Speaker 1: which you should be following us if you're not already,
[4:37] Speaker 1: because we're there posting things like this Quarantini recipe. Also,
[4:45] Speaker 1: I don't remember what else, rate review and subscribe. Thank
[4:47] Speaker 1: you to everyone who has left us a review. It
[4:49] Speaker 1: really does help other people find this podcast, and we'd
[4:52] Speaker 1: like for like I don't know, everyone to listen to it. Yeah,
[4:55] Speaker 1: if you are watching on YouTube, hi, hi, and we
[5:00] Speaker 1: we are there on a web subscribe on a website
[5:03] Speaker 1: we have called this podcast will Kill You dot com.
[5:06] Speaker 1: You can find transcripts, you can find sources from every episode, Merchpatreon,
[5:10] Speaker 1: bookshop dot org, bookmobile, bloodmobile. Who does the music?
[5:16] Speaker 2: There's a lot, there's a lot, and I just I
[5:19] Speaker 2: know we always thank everyone at the end of these episodes,
[5:22] Speaker 2: but I was thinking, how there are there's so much
[5:26] Speaker 2: out there, Like there are so many podcasts out there,
[5:28] Speaker 2: there's so much media to listen to, to watch, et cetera.
[5:31] Speaker 2: And the fact that people choose to engage with ours
[5:36] Speaker 2: is really it's really surreal and wonderful and so thank
[5:40] Speaker 2: you for choosing to spend your time with us. It
[5:43] Speaker 2: means the world truly really does.
[5:45] Speaker 1: It really does. Like we love getting to make this
[5:48] Speaker 1: podcast as our jobs, yeah, and sharing everything that we
[5:52] Speaker 1: learn with you. And I still can't believe that anyone
[5:56] Speaker 1: I know listen. It's truly say. Every time someone's like,
[6:01] Speaker 1: oh I listen, I'm.
[6:02] Speaker 2: Like, really, you've heard of this podcast? What why do
[6:06] Speaker 2: you listen? Thank you, thank you, thank you.
[6:11] Speaker 1: We appreciate it, we do.
[6:13] Speaker 2: But enough enough of all that. It's time for earwax.
[6:17] Speaker 1: Ear wax. Let's get into it right after this break. Earwax.
[6:55] Speaker 1: That's how I started good. I like it all caps,
[6:58] Speaker 1: so we all know what it is. It's the junk
[7:01] Speaker 1: in our ears. The official medical term for ear wax
[7:04] Speaker 1: is serumin.
[7:06] Speaker 2: Junk is you know I'm going to take issue with that.
[7:09] Speaker 1: Oh I can't wait for you to take issue with that.
[7:13] Speaker 1: So serumin is this waxy substance that our ear makes.
[7:17] Speaker 1: Our ear makes this in order to stay lubricated, to
[7:21] Speaker 1: clean and protect our ear canal. And really it functions
[7:24] Speaker 1: a lot like the mucus in our nose, except it's
[7:29] Speaker 1: kind of also completely different.
[7:31] Speaker 2: So it was like, its just ear boogers.
[7:33] Speaker 1: It's ear boogers, yeah, more or less, but different. So
[7:38] Speaker 1: it is a protective barrier the same way that our nose,
[7:41] Speaker 1: mucus is it is a little bit acidic, and so
[7:45] Speaker 1: in being a little bit acidic, it keeps our ear
[7:48] Speaker 1: canal acidic, which helps to inhibit the growth of bacteria
[7:51] Speaker 1: and fungi which would really love to be able to
[7:56] Speaker 1: grow in our ear canal. There was a nineteen ninety
[7:59] Speaker 1: four pape which I didn't read this paper, but I
[8:01] Speaker 1: read a paper that quoted this paper that called the
[8:04] Speaker 1: ear canal quote the green house of the human body
[8:09] Speaker 1: end quote, because of how much fung i would love
[8:12] Speaker 1: to grow in our ear canal. And I was like,
[8:14] Speaker 1: wouldn't we have a lot of moist dark.
[8:17] Speaker 2: Eye was, yeah, there's gotta be more. I can think
[8:20] Speaker 2: of many greenhouses we too populate throughout our bodies.
[8:24] Speaker 1: But anyways, the potentially I mean every mucus membrane, really
[8:30] Speaker 1: every mucus membrane. Anyways, just like in our nose, in
[8:35] Speaker 1: our ears, we have these glands just underneath the skin
[8:39] Speaker 1: that are what produced the oily substance that ends up
[8:43] Speaker 1: getting mixed with shed skin cells and debris that all
[8:47] Speaker 1: together become our ear wax. There's two types of glands.
[8:52] Speaker 1: There are sabaceous glands and we have subacious glands all
[8:55] Speaker 1: over our body, and sabacious glands produce a substance called seam,
[9:00] Speaker 1: which is like this sort of oily type of substance.
[9:04] Speaker 1: And then we also have in our ears these modified
[9:07] Speaker 1: apicrin glands, and our apocrine glands are basically like our
[9:12] Speaker 1: sweat glands are a type of apricin gland as well,
[9:15] Speaker 1: and these glands produce a variety of substances, including lipids
[9:19] Speaker 1: so like fats, wax esters, alcohols, something called squaleen, which
[9:24] Speaker 1: is a kind of fatty substance, and cholesterol, and all
[9:29] Speaker 1: of these get together, the secretions from our apicrine glands
[9:33] Speaker 1: and the secretions from our sebum glands and mix with
[9:38] Speaker 1: our dead skin cells, which I find very fascinating because
[9:44] Speaker 1: the cells in our ear, like our skin cells, shed
[9:48] Speaker 1: all the time, right like rub your hand against your
[9:50] Speaker 1: skin and the top layer is sluffing off.
[9:54] Speaker 2: Okay, got it, It sluffed the top layer.
[9:57] Speaker 1: That's happening in our ears as well, and it moves
[10:02] Speaker 1: from the inside of our ear towards the outside of
[10:05] Speaker 1: our ear like the cells do this shedding thing in
[10:09] Speaker 1: a particular way. There's a paper from nineteen sixty four
[10:12] Speaker 1: that like tracked the way that our ear canal sheds
[10:16] Speaker 1: its own skin. How is it doing hairs? No, So
[10:22] Speaker 1: here's what's so fascinating. It's not little hairs or little cilia.
[10:26] Speaker 1: A big part of what moves the skin and all
[10:29] Speaker 1: of the debris within it is our jaw movements. So
[10:33] Speaker 1: when we are talking and chewing, it helps to move
[10:36] Speaker 1: the ear wax and these skin cells along the ear
[10:39] Speaker 1: canal itself. And this is all our Technically, our outer ear,
[10:44] Speaker 1: which is our ear, has three parts in our middle
[10:47] Speaker 1: and outer and this is all the outer parts, so
[10:49] Speaker 1: from the tympanic membrane out towards the outside world. Cool.
[10:54] Speaker 2: I have, very cool. I have a few questions.
[10:56] Speaker 1: Give it to me.
[10:57] Speaker 2: Where are these glands located? They located throughout our ear canal,
[11:01] Speaker 2: just in our inner ear. Okay, so yeah, they're throughout
[11:04] Speaker 2: our ear canal. This is all outer ear canal. This
[11:06] Speaker 2: is all outer ear, all outer ear. Okay, yeah, okay, yeah,
[11:09] Speaker 2: oh yeah, yeah, Okay.
[11:10] Speaker 1: It feels like it's inner because I like the oracle
[11:13] Speaker 1: or the pinnow, which is like the visible.
[11:15] Speaker 2: Part of your ear, the little hole.
[11:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's yeah, it's a canal that's like usually
[11:18] Speaker 1: like an inch or so long. It can be a
[11:21] Speaker 1: little bit windy, so it sometimes feels longer when you're
[11:24] Speaker 1: looking in it.
[11:25] Speaker 2: But okay, how much do we produced? And here's the
[11:32] Speaker 2: other question. Can you answer?
[11:33] Speaker 1: I don't have an answer to that question, and it
[11:35] Speaker 1: bothers me so much that I didn't see that anywhere.
[11:38] Speaker 1: Do you have an answer?
[11:39] Speaker 2: I don't have an answer. I mean, I I had
[11:41] Speaker 2: a hard time finding I was trying to find the
[11:43] Speaker 2: origin of these glands, the like seruminous glands, and like
[11:46] Speaker 2: when did they evolve and blah blah blah, and I
[11:49] Speaker 2: I mean maybe my search terms weren't great, but I
[11:51] Speaker 2: couldn't find anything. Okay, So then the other question is
[11:55] Speaker 2: does the amount that we produce what affects it? And
[11:57] Speaker 2: I was just thinking of like, if if you're grinding
[12:02] Speaker 2: your teeth at night and that's an eight solid hours
[12:05] Speaker 2: of just jaw movement movement, are you producing more ear
[12:08] Speaker 2: wax or are you moving more ear wax? Is there
[12:11] Speaker 2: an impact on earwax?
[12:13] Speaker 1: That's an excellent question. I have literally no idea. I
[12:19] Speaker 1: have no idea, but that's such an interesting question. So
[12:22] Speaker 1: we do are our ear the glands in our ears?
[12:25] Speaker 1: The cruminous glands. So the semum glands and the apocrine glands,
[12:28] Speaker 1: they reduce in number as we get older, and so
[12:31] Speaker 1: that's one thing that's going to affect how much earwax
[12:34] Speaker 1: we make. So the older that you get, the less
[12:36] Speaker 1: the dryer your ear wax tends to be because you
[12:38] Speaker 1: have less of these glands. Why don't ask me, I
[12:40] Speaker 1: don't know except that, like, I mean, your skin gets
[12:44] Speaker 1: drier in general as you get older, right, so you're
[12:46] Speaker 1: just losing sebum producing glands everywhere. I don't I don't
[12:49] Speaker 1: actually know they fall off?
[12:50] Speaker 2: Yeah, why do they fall fall off?
[12:53] Speaker 1: Or they just kind of like dry, you.
[12:55] Speaker 2: Know, I mean, I get you physically fall off. Okay,
[12:58] Speaker 2: what about ear?
[13:00] Speaker 1: Ear hair? Ear hair also increases in number as we
[13:04] Speaker 1: get older, and so the like, older people might have
[13:07] Speaker 1: quite a lot of hair in their ears, especially males,
[13:10] Speaker 1: and that can actually block the ear wax from coming
[13:13] Speaker 1: all the way out, so it can contribute to serum
[13:15] Speaker 1: and impaction, which I'll talk a little bit more about
[13:17] Speaker 1: in a minute.
[13:18] Speaker 2: Why do we get more ear hair when we get older.
[13:22] Speaker 1: I don't have it. I don't have an answer. We
[13:23] Speaker 1: get hair everywhere when we get older.
[13:24] Speaker 2: Right, Okay, we lose hair body hairs as an episode.
[13:28] Speaker 1: Listen, I'm down. So there's two main types of earwax.
[13:47] Speaker 1: It's usually split. There's wet earwax and there's dry earwax.
[13:51] Speaker 1: And I think you're going to talk a little bit
[13:53] Speaker 1: more about this distinction, Arin, but it's genetically determined, which
[13:57] Speaker 1: I think is so interesting, except that obviously it does also,
[14:02] Speaker 1: like I said, get drier as we age. But the drier,
[14:06] Speaker 1: flakier earwax, which some people have, is usually lighter in color,
[14:10] Speaker 1: and it tends to be more common in people of
[14:12] Speaker 1: Asian and Native American descent. And then the sticky, dark earwax,
[14:17] Speaker 1: which is what I have say, very sticky wax, it's
[14:21] Speaker 1: more common in people of African and European descent. And
[14:26] Speaker 1: apparently the dry, flaky earwax is like a recessive trait. Correct,
[14:32] Speaker 1: you're gonna tell me more about that I got about
[14:34] Speaker 1: ear wax. There's not I tried to find if there
[14:37] Speaker 1: was like a big literature about like who's more likely
[14:41] Speaker 1: to get earwax impaction or something like that, And there
[14:44] Speaker 1: isn't a strong association between types of ear wax, like
[14:47] Speaker 1: you can get too much of it, whether you have
[14:49] Speaker 1: the dry, flaky stuff or the wet, sticky stuff.
[14:51] Speaker 2: Okay, that's interesting, Okay.
[14:53] Speaker 1: Yeah, And so under typical or ideal conditions, our outer
[14:58] Speaker 1: ear is kind of like a self clean oven. Okay.
[15:01] Speaker 1: So it makes this wax and then it pushes it
[15:04] Speaker 1: out in order to keep our ear canals free of
[15:09] Speaker 1: debris and bacteria and getting rid of all of these
[15:11] Speaker 1: skin cells once they're dead and done.
[15:13] Speaker 2: All right.
[15:15] Speaker 1: The biggest complication that we see is when this mechanism,
[15:18] Speaker 1: for one reason or another doesn't go as planned, and
[15:21] Speaker 1: so our ear wax builds up and gets stuck inside
[15:24] Speaker 1: of our ear canals. And this is called serumin impaction.
[15:28] Speaker 2: Why problem might that happen? Let me tell you.
[15:31] Speaker 1: There's so many different reasons. It's probably the biggest ear
[15:35] Speaker 1: wax complaints, certainly like that you see in primary care
[15:38] Speaker 1: or things like that. There's lots of other things that
[15:40] Speaker 1: you can get stuck in your ear canal, bugs and
[15:44] Speaker 1: legos and other small toys very common.
[15:47] Speaker 2: I feel like you have an ear invasion phobia. Dem
[15:52] Speaker 2: I remembering that, correct.
[15:53] Speaker 1: I love that you remember that and said it on
[15:55] Speaker 1: a podcast for the world. I do. It's because of
[15:59] Speaker 1: the wrath of con okay, okay. In the Wrath of
[16:03] Speaker 1: con they put a little like alien guy in this
[16:06] Speaker 1: is like the original star track of movie. They put
[16:10] Speaker 1: a little alien like mind control guy. And then in
[16:13] Speaker 1: Anamorphs that's also how they control or something. Is that
[16:16] Speaker 1: what they're called? Wow, something like that. Did you know
[16:19] Speaker 1: they're making a series, Eric, I do know that.
[16:21] Speaker 2: I am very excited about it, so excited about and
[16:24] Speaker 2: I'm also nervous because like those books.
[16:26] Speaker 1: Were very dark, I know.
[16:28] Speaker 2: So we'll see how it goes, so we'll see what happens.
[16:31] Speaker 1: But anyways, so yes, I do have a phobia of
[16:36] Speaker 1: like mind control creatures being put specifically.
[16:39] Speaker 2: I just figured it was like any bug.
[16:42] Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I don't like the idea of anybody.
[16:44] Speaker 1: I've taken some cockroaches out of ears, and it's not
[16:46] Speaker 1: like a pleasant experience for the person who has the
[16:49] Speaker 1: cockroach in their ear.
[16:51] Speaker 2: Sorry, I regret going down. It's well, it's.
[16:56] Speaker 1: Not it's not great, okay, But anyways, ear wax much
[17:01] Speaker 1: more common to get stuck in your ears than other things,
[17:05] Speaker 1: and the biggest issue that can happen from this is
[17:09] Speaker 1: that if the ear wax completely obscures your tympanic membrane,
[17:13] Speaker 1: which is the thing that separates your outer ear from
[17:15] Speaker 1: your middle ear, and this is like the membrane that
[17:18] Speaker 1: allows us to hear. Then, not only can this be
[17:22] Speaker 1: very uncomfortable, it can create the sensation of fullness, it
[17:25] Speaker 1: can be very itchy, but it also can cause hearing loss.
[17:29] Speaker 1: Right if you completely block the thing that we use
[17:31] Speaker 1: to hear, you can have substantially diminished hearing. And it
[17:35] Speaker 1: can really exacerbate tintous or that ringing in your ear
[17:39] Speaker 1: tonitics some people call it. I have that.
[17:42] Speaker 2: Yeah. It also could set you up.
[17:44] Speaker 1: For an ear infection because you're obviously blocking a tube,
[17:47] Speaker 1: which anytime you do that can set you up for
[17:49] Speaker 1: an infection. So this can happen for a few different reasons.
[17:53] Speaker 1: Number one, if you just have very tight or very
[17:56] Speaker 1: like snaky shaped ear canals, then you might be more
[18:00] Speaker 1: prone to getting those blocked. So we might see this
[18:02] Speaker 1: in small children who have smaller ear canals that they
[18:05] Speaker 1: might have be more likely to get ear wax built up.
[18:09] Speaker 1: Or if for whatever reason developmentally you have a different
[18:12] Speaker 1: shape of ear canal, or if you just happen to
[18:15] Speaker 1: be a person who makes a lot of ear wax
[18:16] Speaker 1: and I don't have any statistics on who you are
[18:19] Speaker 1: compared to anyone else. Yeah, So the biggest modifiable risk
[18:22] Speaker 1: factors are using things like cotton swabs that you stick
[18:26] Speaker 1: in your ear aus in.
[18:27] Speaker 2: Don't use them because using them will lead to impaction. Yeah.
[18:30] Speaker 1: Not only can they push the ear wax further in,
[18:33] Speaker 1: which can lead to impaction, they also can create little
[18:35] Speaker 1: microabrasions in your ear canal which can put you at
[18:38] Speaker 1: risk for infection. Also, hearing aids or all of the
[18:42] Speaker 1: earbuds that we use now, they just shove stuff down
[18:45] Speaker 1: into your ear.
[18:46] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[18:47] Speaker 1: And then, like we talked about, as we get older,
[18:49] Speaker 1: our earwax gets drier, which can make it sometimes more
[18:53] Speaker 1: likely to get stuck. But also the hairs that we
[18:55] Speaker 1: see in the outer, like the very outer part, can
[18:58] Speaker 1: just prevent all that earwax from leaving. So we actually
[19:00] Speaker 1: see even though your ear canals are larger when you're older,
[19:04] Speaker 1: we see more impaction in older adults than we do
[19:08] Speaker 1: in younger adults or children. Wow.
[19:11] Speaker 2: Yeah, m hm. How do you manage impaction removal? How
[19:20] Speaker 2: do you manage You're not supposed to use cotton swabs,
[19:23] Speaker 2: So don't use cotton swabs.
[19:24] Speaker 1: This is not a medical advice podcast, but please Yeah,
[19:29] Speaker 1: if it's impacted, like if you have true serumin impaction
[19:33] Speaker 1: in your ear, then usually you're gonna need a little
[19:36] Speaker 1: bit of help to get it out, though not always so.
[19:38] Speaker 1: In the office, we might use something that's like a
[19:41] Speaker 1: spray bottle with a special hose nozzle on the end
[19:44] Speaker 1: of it that we can stick just far enough but
[19:46] Speaker 1: not too far into your ear canal and spray warm
[19:49] Speaker 1: like lukewarm water, sometimes with hydrogen peroxide because the bubbles
[19:53] Speaker 1: can help, and you just spray spray spraying until you
[19:56] Speaker 1: can dislodge that thing. It's really really satisfying, like so satisfying.
[20:02] Speaker 2: Sure videos exist on the internet.
[20:04] Speaker 1: Oh yes, definitely. Sometimes we might use like a curette
[20:09] Speaker 1: or something, or there's like little vacuum aspirators that, like
[20:13] Speaker 1: the ant specialists might have to really suck it out,
[20:16] Speaker 1: depending on how it's in there or at home. There's
[20:20] Speaker 1: actually a lot of things that people can do that
[20:22] Speaker 1: are safe to not only help to soften up something
[20:26] Speaker 1: that might be stuck, but also just help get rid
[20:28] Speaker 1: of earwax if you feel like you have too much
[20:30] Speaker 1: of it. Though again, your ears are a self cleaning oven.
[20:33] Speaker 1: That's going to do it all on their own without
[20:34] Speaker 1: your help. But over the counter remedies might be even
[20:37] Speaker 1: just putting water or like saline drops in the ear
[20:40] Speaker 1: which can help to soften up dry ear wax, hydrogen
[20:44] Speaker 1: peroxide or there's similar drops that are made of carbamide peroxide.
[20:47] Speaker 1: That's like d Brox brand drops in the pharmacies here.
[20:51] Speaker 1: Those basically just help to soften and the bubbles can
[20:54] Speaker 1: kind of help to loosen up some of that wax
[20:56] Speaker 1: so that it can come out on their own. Some
[20:58] Speaker 1: people might use mineral oil, which is totally safe to use,
[21:02] Speaker 1: but in general, the goal is just to keep that
[21:05] Speaker 1: ear wax soft enough that your ear can do its
[21:08] Speaker 1: job of getting it out on its own. Ear candling
[21:12] Speaker 1: is a thing I want to mention real quick because
[21:14] Speaker 1: you heard about it in our first hand accounting. The
[21:17] Speaker 1: claim apparently on how it works is that it creates
[21:20] Speaker 1: a negative pressure in your ear canal to draw out
[21:24] Speaker 1: the wax.
[21:26] Speaker 2: I did not know that was the claim.
[21:27] Speaker 1: Apparently that's the claim. It also apparently is supposedly this
[21:32] Speaker 1: negative pressure also helps to treat other non ear wax
[21:34] Speaker 1: related things like allergic rhinitis or like sinus pressure in general.
[21:40] Speaker 1: So notwithstanding the fact that you can legitimately just be
[21:43] Speaker 1: setting yourself on fire, as you heard in our first
[21:46] Speaker 1: hand account, you can also end up with wax that
[21:48] Speaker 1: is not the ear variety, the candle variety, that gets
[21:51] Speaker 1: stuck in your ear, which can potentially cause really serious
[21:55] Speaker 1: damage to the tympanic membrane. And not only is there
[21:59] Speaker 1: no evidence in the literature that it works, there is
[22:02] Speaker 1: actually at least one study that shows that it does
[22:06] Speaker 1: not work and actually creates deposits of candle wax even
[22:10] Speaker 1: if you don't have like visible candle wax. Like in
[22:14] Speaker 1: our first hand account, it was obviously like a big
[22:16] Speaker 1: deal chunks got stuck. But even in this other study
[22:20] Speaker 1: there was just like deposits of like debris from the
[22:23] Speaker 1: smoke and the wax in the ear without removing any
[22:29] Speaker 1: wax whatsoever.
[22:31] Speaker 2: So you're just start adding gunk to.
[22:33] Speaker 1: Your ear, to your ear without removing any actual ear
[22:36] Speaker 1: wax whatsoever. Also, no negative pressure was created in this study.
[22:41] Speaker 1: They used like a fake ear canal and they put
[22:43] Speaker 1: an ear candle in it and they measured the pressure.
[22:45] Speaker 1: No negative pressure differential created, and they found all of
[22:48] Speaker 1: this like just stuff that was deposited in the ears,
[22:52] Speaker 1: I mean, without getting any ear wax out.
[22:54] Speaker 2: So it seems like there's no there seemed to be
[22:57] Speaker 2: no clear benefits whatsoever. Benefit just the well on the
[23:00] Speaker 2: list of cons and potentially severe.
[23:03] Speaker 1: Outcomes, severe outcomes, and that is Aaron earwax beautiful.
[23:10] Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you so much.
[23:14] Speaker 1: I think it's my shortest episode ever. Please tell me
[23:18] Speaker 1: everything I want to know from you.
[23:20] Speaker 2: God, There's so there's so much. It's going to be great. Okay. Wait.
[23:42] Speaker 2: One of the true absolute joys of doing this podcast
[23:46] Speaker 2: is discovering that there's like a whole world of study
[23:49] Speaker 2: out there about a topic that, on the surface seems
[23:53] Speaker 2: pretty mundane. Earx, earx. Earwax didn't immediately strike me as
[23:59] Speaker 2: a topic of fascination. Despite being like, we should do
[24:03] Speaker 2: earwax next and pushing to do it classic, I was like, okay,
[24:07] Speaker 2: I knew that it was probably important for ear health
[24:10] Speaker 2: and that you shouldn't use cotton swabs to remove wax
[24:13] Speaker 2: from your ears, but that was basically the limit of
[24:16] Speaker 2: my knowledge. As it turns out, earwax is, like our
[24:20] Speaker 2: quarantine suggests, a true gold mine of information. I came
[24:25] Speaker 2: across papers discussing earwax in the context of human migration,
[24:31] Speaker 2: art history, forensic analysis, and anthropogenic change. What I am now,
[24:39] Speaker 2: I'm a convert, I'm a believer. I love it, and
[24:43] Speaker 2: I think hopefully by the end of this history section
[24:45] Speaker 2: you might be too, or at least you'll have a
[24:48] Speaker 2: couple pieces of trivia to impress your friends with at
[24:50] Speaker 2: the next party.
[24:51] Speaker 1: I can't wait. No, I love that.
[24:55] Speaker 2: Ear wax has been a subject of at least minor
[24:57] Speaker 2: medical interest for millennia, mostly in the context of its
[25:01] Speaker 2: removal or what it signifies for total body health. So,
[25:05] Speaker 2: for instance, Hippocrates apparently viewed sweet earwax as an unfavorable symptom,
[25:11] Speaker 2: while bitter ear wax meant that you were in good health.
[25:15] Speaker 1: So people were out here just tasting earwax.
[25:17] Speaker 2: That's that is what I wrote. I was like, I
[25:19] Speaker 2: don't I can't think of any other way that you
[25:21] Speaker 2: can judge bitter versus sweet besides your taste buds. And so, yeah,
[25:25] Speaker 2: Hippocrates is out there going taste your patient's earwax.
[25:29] Speaker 1: I mean, they tasted a lot of urine, et cetera.
[25:31] Speaker 1: So it shouldn't surprise.
[25:32] Speaker 2: It shouldn't surprise, but it did surprise, and my capacity
[25:39] Speaker 2: for surprise is still is still present.
[25:42] Speaker 1: I think that's a good thing.
[25:43] Speaker 2: It's good. You know, there's wonder left in this world exactly,
[25:49] Speaker 2: And of course the typical recipes of unlikely ingredients for removal,
[25:54] Speaker 2: things like milk, cinnamon, mirrhr, almond, oyle, saffron. These were
[25:58] Speaker 2: described to cure earache or remove earwax.
[26:02] Speaker 1: I saw allmond oil listed still today, so that one's interesting.
[26:05] Speaker 2: Yeah, it is olive oil, but.
[26:08] Speaker 1: Not I don't know, I don't know what I read.
[26:12] Speaker 2: As far back as the second century, Celsus, who is
[26:15] Speaker 2: a Greek philosopher and physician, suggested using water to flush
[26:19] Speaker 2: out foreign bodies and potentially earwax impactions, so or ahead
[26:22] Speaker 2: of his time. Then the suggestion his suggestion to use
[26:27] Speaker 2: quote the saliva of a hungry man end quote, to
[26:32] Speaker 2: treat a larval infestation in the ear, which is like
[26:38] Speaker 2: so many questions, there, so many questions.
[26:40] Speaker 1: The saliva of a hungry man. Yeah, where does one
[26:46] Speaker 1: get this? How hungry do they have to be? How
[26:49] Speaker 1: much saliva does it all have to come from the
[26:52] Speaker 1: same man or can it be from multiple hungry.
[26:54] Speaker 2: Well, it says a hungry man, not the saliva of
[26:57] Speaker 2: hungry men.
[26:58] Speaker 1: Okay, and what larva are infesting your ear?
[27:01] Speaker 2: I mean you described cockroaches? Yeah, but okay, I don't know.
[27:08] Speaker 2: I apologize for that haunting thought, but I read it,
[27:10] Speaker 2: so now you have to read it, thank you, Just
[27:14] Speaker 2: like the booger taste thing last week. Over the centuries,
[27:20] Speaker 2: physicians became more interested in earwax in the context of
[27:23] Speaker 2: ear health and hearing overall. It was recognized by the
[27:29] Speaker 2: late seventeen hundreds that earwax held several important functions, including
[27:33] Speaker 2: preventing dirt and insects from injuring the ear drum. They
[27:36] Speaker 2: seemed particularly preoccupied by insects. Quote. The yellow humor purged
[27:41] Speaker 2: by the ears defendeth them against fleas, little flies, and
[27:45] Speaker 2: other small worms and beasts that might otherwise enter within
[27:49] Speaker 2: them end quote.
[27:50] Speaker 1: So it's not just me who has a like fear
[27:53] Speaker 1: of creepy caralis in my ears.
[27:55] Speaker 2: No, I think that's a reasonable thing to fear, thank you. Yeah, sorry,
[28:00] Speaker 2: sorry if I imply that it wasn't. I also fear
[28:04] Speaker 2: the year.
[28:08] Speaker 1: I appreciate that.
[28:10] Speaker 2: And so you you described how ear wax you're producing
[28:13] Speaker 2: it continuously. It's just going out of your ears continuously.
[28:17] Speaker 2: And this continuous production was shown by a professor who
[28:21] Speaker 2: carried out a very simple experiment. I think this is
[28:24] Speaker 2: in the seventeen hundreds, just by wiping his ears with
[28:27] Speaker 2: a piece of black velvet one hundred times an hour,
[28:31] Speaker 2: and no matter how many times he wiped, there was
[28:33] Speaker 2: always a little bit of wax on the cloth. I've
[28:40] Speaker 2: just loved that imagery.
[28:41] Speaker 1: That's amazing.
[28:42] Speaker 2: Physicians also noted several cases where someone's hearing improved or
[28:46] Speaker 2: worsened depending on earwax compaction or removal, and so in
[28:50] Speaker 2: this way, earwax kind of helped to turn hearing into
[28:53] Speaker 2: a more fluid, dynamic state where it could be permanent
[28:56] Speaker 2: or temporary, It could change over the course of your life,
[28:59] Speaker 2: and it could be partial or complete. Earwax related deafness
[29:03] Speaker 2: was apparently not uncommon or other issues related to earwax compaction.
[29:08] Speaker 2: So the seventeenth century scientist Robert Hook described his month's
[29:13] Speaker 2: long experience with tenitis or tindas and impaired hearing that
[29:17] Speaker 2: was ultimately found to be caused in part by a
[29:20] Speaker 2: hard compacted stone of earwax, which was not a rare occurrence.
[29:26] Speaker 2: All sorts of remedies were employed and attempts to remove earwax,
[29:29] Speaker 2: like applying heat, plugging the ear with perfumed wool or
[29:33] Speaker 2: cotton to try to stimulate the flow, liquid injections with
[29:36] Speaker 2: various ingredients. Hook used warmed honey that he wriggled in
[29:41] Speaker 2: his ear. Okay, yeah, I feel like that would attract bugs.
[29:45] Speaker 1: Yeah honey. Yeah sounds real sticky.
[29:48] Speaker 2: It sounds sticky the logic. But he used it warmed
[29:52] Speaker 2: and that you know, I'm not saying that that's any better.
[29:55] Speaker 2: I'm just saying that that logic of warming something that
[29:59] Speaker 2: heat to help remove earwax that held support in the
[30:02] Speaker 2: lab actually is where it was found to be supported.
[30:05] Speaker 2: In the late seventeen hundreds, a chemist who had become
[30:08] Speaker 2: interested in the topic. He had a friend with prodigious
[30:12] Speaker 2: ear wax production. I think it was the same guy
[30:14] Speaker 2: who did the black velvet ear wax extremes, Okay, And
[30:18] Speaker 2: he supplied the chemist with heaps of earwax, and he
[30:21] Speaker 2: discovered that it hardened over time, it melted with heat,
[30:24] Speaker 2: and it dissolved in water.
[30:26] Speaker 1: Makes sense. So yeah, do you know what's also interesting
[30:29] Speaker 1: about warm things in your ear versus cold? This is
[30:33] Speaker 1: like a separate topic entirely. But if you put cold
[30:36] Speaker 1: water in your ear, Like if you used cold water
[30:38] Speaker 1: to try and juj out your ear wax instead of
[30:41] Speaker 1: warm water, it would make you super dizzy. It would
[30:45] Speaker 1: give us really really wild vertigo because it does a
[30:48] Speaker 1: weird thing that messes with your inner ear. Cold water
[30:52] Speaker 1: versus warm water. Why I don't it's a different episode
[30:57] Speaker 1: next week, next not next week, next week.
[31:01] Speaker 2: Next week, we're doing cholesterol colors. But when all l's fails,
[31:09] Speaker 2: any of your honey, whatever situations fail, there's always physical removal.
[31:15] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[31:16] Speaker 2: Ear spoons or ear scoops were popular devices, and what
[31:21] Speaker 2: was appealing about these tools was that you could just
[31:23] Speaker 2: own one yourself and you didn't have to seek out
[31:25] Speaker 2: a doctor. If you're like, hey, I you know, can
[31:27] Speaker 2: you clean my ear out? No, you didn't have to
[31:30] Speaker 2: do that. Ear scoops have been around for millennia, as
[31:33] Speaker 2: evidenced by historical writings and archaeological finds. But similar to
[31:38] Speaker 2: the way there are just so many parallels between earwax
[31:41] Speaker 2: and boogers. So with boogers, you know, I talked about handkerchiefs,
[31:45] Speaker 2: and they became status symbols and they transcended their role
[31:49] Speaker 2: as just a snotrag. A market of decorative grooming tools grew,
[31:55] Speaker 2: and there are examples of these really intricately and ornately
[31:58] Speaker 2: carved earpicks and ear scoops. Really yeah, little ear scoop,
[32:04] Speaker 2: beautiful ear scoops. There's one. There's a paper you can
[32:06] Speaker 2: see an image of this. There was one that was
[32:08] Speaker 2: found at Jamestown, the English colony established in what is
[32:12] Speaker 2: now Virginia in sixteen oh seven, and in like the
[32:14] Speaker 2: first iteration of that town, they found in archaeological digs
[32:19] Speaker 2: a combination toothpick and ear scoop. It's shaped like a dolphin,
[32:23] Speaker 2: and so the toothpick part comes out of its little mouth,
[32:26] Speaker 2: and then there's an ear scoop coming out of its
[32:28] Speaker 2: tail wo and then it has a little loop on
[32:31] Speaker 2: its back, and so you could wear it as a
[32:33] Speaker 2: necklace what and carry it around with a little ear scoop.
[32:38] Speaker 2: Who knew?
[32:39] Speaker 1: Who knew? I definitely did not know.
[32:41] Speaker 2: That I did not, And also I was like, dolphin,
[32:44] Speaker 2: why why a dolphin? Yeah? And apparently sea creatures were
[32:48] Speaker 2: featured heavily in jewelry and decorative items at the time
[32:52] Speaker 2: because maritime supremacy was blossoming in England. And I just
[32:56] Speaker 2: was like, that's very that's very interesting, because there was
[32:59] Speaker 2: another ear scoop found somewhere in England that was similar
[33:03] Speaker 2: and they were like, we think it's a dolphin, it
[33:05] Speaker 2: might be a fish, it's some sort of marine or creature. Yeah,
[33:11] Speaker 2: but these ear scoop tools also signify that earwax was
[33:14] Speaker 2: not solely relegated to the realm of medicine. Everyone was
[33:17] Speaker 2: individually concerned with it. It was just a routine part
[33:20] Speaker 2: of life to clean out your ears, and those who
[33:23] Speaker 2: could afford to do so often had their ears cleaned
[33:26] Speaker 2: out by a barber who use special tools to scoop
[33:29] Speaker 2: out any crud there. And this is referenced in place.
[33:32] Speaker 2: So there's a play I believe from the seventeen hundreds
[33:34] Speaker 2: where a soldier worries that the king has had his
[33:37] Speaker 2: ears picked too much, and so he has no protection
[33:40] Speaker 2: from flies, from earwigs and from flattery. He's like, anyone
[33:47] Speaker 2: has the ear of the king with his ears cleaned
[33:49] Speaker 2: of earwax.
[33:50] Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's so funny, hilarious.
[33:53] Speaker 2: And there are occasionally hints at the recognition that earwax
[33:58] Speaker 2: holds some value, like the situation that I just described
[34:02] Speaker 2: where it's like, well, we need some ear wax there.
[34:04] Speaker 2: Mostly it was considered a waste product or junk, as
[34:08] Speaker 2: you put it, junk.
[34:10] Speaker 1: So sorry for calling it.
[34:12] Speaker 2: That, I accept. I accept your apology. And so. For instance,
[34:17] Speaker 2: in Shakespeare's Troilis and Cressida, Agamemnon is described as not
[34:21] Speaker 2: having quote so much brain as earwax. Quote devastating, devastating. Yeah,
[34:29] Speaker 2: put that in your back pocket. Yeah right. In reality, however,
[34:35] Speaker 2: earwax held far more uses than I would have guessed. So,
[34:39] Speaker 2: for instance, in the American Frugal Housewife, which was written
[34:42] Speaker 2: by Lydia Child in eighteen thirty two, holds ear wax
[34:47] Speaker 2: in quite high regard. What quote, nothing is better than
[34:51] Speaker 2: earwax to prevent the painful effects resulting from a wound
[34:54] Speaker 2: by a nail skewer, et cetera. It should be put
[34:57] Speaker 2: on as soon as possible. Those who are troubled with
[35:01] Speaker 2: cracked lips have found this remedy successful when others have failed.
[35:06] Speaker 2: It is one of those sorts of cures which are
[35:09] Speaker 2: very likely to be laughed at. But I know of
[35:12] Speaker 2: it's having produced very beneficial results. So she's using it
[35:16] Speaker 2: as vacine, using it as chapstick.
[35:19] Speaker 1: Yeah, taking out the ear wax, put it on your cuts. Literally,
[35:24] Speaker 1: I have like an aqua force stick that I do
[35:26] Speaker 1: that with, not earwax. Okay, yeah, uh huh yeah, ear
[35:30] Speaker 1: wax on your lips. I don't know if I'm going
[35:33] Speaker 1: to try that.
[35:34] Speaker 2: I don't. I mean, you can.
[35:35] Speaker 1: You're certainly entitled to got enough earwax, that's for sure.
[35:39] Speaker 2: I feel like I'm a super producer as well. Me too.
[35:42] Speaker 1: I've always felt that way, saying what are you gonna
[35:45] Speaker 1: do about it?
[35:45] Speaker 2: It's just it's life. It's life.
[35:47] Speaker 1: Like you know, we probably make a very typical amount
[35:50] Speaker 1: of ear wax.
[35:51] Speaker 2: We probably do. We probably do.
[35:54] Speaker 1: They're probably not special in any way. No wear earwax.
[35:58] Speaker 2: No, we'll see. I mean, maybe somebody will do a
[36:02] Speaker 2: paper and we'll revisit this topic and discover our specialness. Okay,
[36:09] Speaker 2: So I didn't see it mentioned in The American Frugal Housewife,
[36:12] Speaker 2: but the author may have also been familiar with the
[36:14] Speaker 2: common practice of using earwax while stitching and sewing. It's
[36:19] Speaker 2: really great at keeping the ends of cut thread from unraveling.
[36:22] Speaker 1: I could see that, actually.
[36:24] Speaker 2: Yeah, And so in fact, there are some bodkins which
[36:27] Speaker 2: are these like large blunted needles with a big eye
[36:31] Speaker 2: to hold ribbon, kind of like a tapestry needle you'd
[36:33] Speaker 2: use to sew to weaven ends, but like bigger. Yeah,
[36:37] Speaker 2: some of these have ear scoops on the end of them.
[36:39] Speaker 1: So that you can scoop and then use it for
[36:41] Speaker 1: your best is so interesting.
[36:44] Speaker 2: Right wow. Ear wax was also favored by many artists,
[36:48] Speaker 2: who used it to help bind pigment to the paper
[36:51] Speaker 2: or other surfaces they were working on. So I asked
[36:54] Speaker 2: you to find a paper for me because I couldn't
[36:56] Speaker 2: find it. And this is what this is what was
[37:00] Speaker 2: inside that paper. Okay, I didn't read it, Okay, okay,
[37:03] Speaker 2: good spoilers. Yeah. So you know illuminated manuscripts, those beautiful
[37:08] Speaker 2: books with intricate color, colorful decorations or illustrations around the side,
[37:12] Speaker 2: and they were like all hand drawn and everything. The
[37:15] Speaker 2: Book of Kel's is a famous one if you want
[37:17] Speaker 2: to look up, like a really exceptionally beautiful example. But
[37:20] Speaker 2: apparently many illustrators of these manuscripts were regular users of
[37:25] Speaker 2: earwax to prevent bubbles from forming in their metallic paint mixtures.
[37:30] Speaker 2: What and so the author of a paper that I
[37:33] Speaker 2: read about this actually tried it out himself. He made
[37:36] Speaker 2: a couple of bronze pigment egg white mixtures, one that
[37:42] Speaker 2: had earwax added to it and one without. You mix
[37:45] Speaker 2: them together. Of course egg white's going to create bubbles
[37:47] Speaker 2: and it's and he was like, yeah, there were fewer
[37:50] Speaker 2: bubbles in the earwax one. And then he used it
[37:52] Speaker 2: to like paint. I think UCSF it was the example.
[37:57] Speaker 2: It must have been, that must have been where he was. Yeah,
[38:00] Speaker 2: but one that so he compared the one that had
[38:03] Speaker 2: ear wax and the one that didn't, and you can
[38:05] Speaker 2: kind of see that the one with ear wax is
[38:08] Speaker 2: smoother and the color seems more consistent. So any artists
[38:12] Speaker 2: who are out there listening who've been struggling blending ear
[38:16] Speaker 2: or egg whites into paints, try it to have a
[38:18] Speaker 2: ear wax, let us know, let us know how it goes.
[38:21] Speaker 1: They probably use like artificial things now that are just
[38:25] Speaker 1: that have waxes in them or whatever.
[38:27] Speaker 2: Yeah, you might not eat ear wax, like get purpose.
[38:29] Speaker 1: Did that guy use his own ear wax or someone else's.
[38:32] Speaker 2: I believe he used his own.
[38:33] Speaker 1: Interesting. I wonder if it depends, like if it got
[38:36] Speaker 1: to be wet ear wax or is dry ear wax okay?
[38:39] Speaker 2: Right? Which I mean? So that's a great question. I
[38:43] Speaker 2: think he I think, I mean he said he had
[38:46] Speaker 2: wet earwax, okay, But I don't know if he experimented.
[38:50] Speaker 2: That could be another Bat'll be another paper, other paper,
[38:53] Speaker 2: someone someone get a master's thesis at the very least, right.
[38:59] Speaker 2: But yeah, it's a more powerful resource than I expected. Rich,
[39:04] Speaker 2: not just in the application of the stuff itself, but
[39:07] Speaker 2: also what it can tell us about ourselves. So Aarin,
[39:11] Speaker 2: you mentioned that there are basically two types of earwax
[39:14] Speaker 2: and humans, dry and wet, and there might be some
[39:17] Speaker 2: that fall in between, but for the most part, the
[39:19] Speaker 2: distinction seems to be pretty clear, like pretty night and day,
[39:23] Speaker 2: and it is strongly associated with ancestry, like you mentioned,
[39:26] Speaker 2: So people with East Asian ancestry tend to have dry earwax,
[39:30] Speaker 2: those of European and African ancestry have wet earwax, and
[39:33] Speaker 2: those who have Southern Asian Pacific Islands, Central Asian, Native
[39:38] Speaker 2: North American, and Inuit have intermediate proportions of wet and dry.
[39:42] Speaker 1: Okay.
[39:43] Speaker 2: Interesting, Yeah, And this observation first started to garner attention
[39:47] Speaker 2: around the mid twentieth century, and researchers made note of
[39:50] Speaker 2: a couple of things. It was also associated with armpit odor,
[39:55] Speaker 2: So those who have wet earwax have much more odoriferous pits,
[40:00] Speaker 2: we have stinkyr armpit have stinky pits, agreed, And it
[40:04] Speaker 2: seemed to follow a pretty straightforward pattern of inheritance. And
[40:09] Speaker 2: just how straightforward was determined in two thousand and six,
[40:12] Speaker 2: and this is when researchers publish their results that the
[40:14] Speaker 2: difference between dry and wet earwax was down to one
[40:19] Speaker 2: letter change in one gene of our DNA, one single
[40:23] Speaker 2: nucleotide polymorphism.
[40:26] Speaker 1: That's so weird.
[40:27] Speaker 2: Yes, just one nucleotide changes earwax composition and has strong
[40:32] Speaker 2: associations with armput odor.
[40:38] Speaker 1: And the drier earwax is well, and that makes sense
[40:40] Speaker 1: because it's all apricrine gland secretions, right, which is like
[40:43] Speaker 1: what your armpit odor is, why that is there and
[40:47] Speaker 1: your earwax your earwax.
[40:49] Speaker 2: And it follows this dominant recessive Mendelian inheritance, which is
[40:53] Speaker 2: the thing that you learn about in school and it's basic,
[40:57] Speaker 2: basic jicks. But you so, if you have two copies
[41:00] Speaker 2: of the G version, which is the wet earwax version
[41:04] Speaker 2: or one G in one a wet earwax. But if
[41:06] Speaker 2: you have two copies of the A version that's the
[41:09] Speaker 2: nucleotide substitution, then you have dry.
[41:13] Speaker 1: Earwax and you're less stinky, and you're.
[41:14] Speaker 2: Less stinky, and so for context, I feel like eye
[41:17] Speaker 2: color is often taught as a simple Mendelian trait involves
[41:20] Speaker 2: at least sixteen genes, if not more. Yeah, yeah, but
[41:25] Speaker 2: this is very interesting and I didn't go down this
[41:27] Speaker 2: rabbit hole. But in addition to being associated with earwax
[41:31] Speaker 2: type and armpit odor, this same letter swap might be
[41:34] Speaker 2: associated with the amount of colostrum produced, with people with
[41:38] Speaker 2: dry earwax producing less colostrum.
[41:41] Speaker 1: Fascinating. Yeah, also apricin glands.
[41:45] Speaker 2: Exactly, So like what yeah, yeah, how interesting. So does
[41:51] Speaker 2: earwax type matter or was it just like a random
[41:54] Speaker 2: mutation that's spread And it seems like it might actually matter,
[41:59] Speaker 2: although it's unclear why. So. Some researchers suggest that it
[42:02] Speaker 2: could be because of the cold. As humans migrated out
[42:05] Speaker 2: of Africa and spread across Eurasia, cold temperatures would have
[42:08] Speaker 2: had would have been a strong selection pressure and So
[42:11] Speaker 2: the dry earwax phoenotype emerged around forty five thousand years
[42:16] Speaker 2: ago in North and east North or East Asia, where
[42:19] Speaker 2: it was colder, and it's thought that maybe the reduced
[42:22] Speaker 2: sweating could have been an advantage or the reduced stinking.
[42:26] Speaker 2: I don't yeah, I don't know. But in any case,
[42:29] Speaker 2: like what these researchers have proposed is that because it's
[42:33] Speaker 2: so widespread, it seems like there is some positive selection.
[42:37] Speaker 2: It seems like it was like this is selected for it,
[42:39] Speaker 2: not just like it happened to spread.
[42:41] Speaker 1: Right, not just random, because it's too too prevalent for that.
[42:45] Speaker 2: Yeah, right, that's that's the idea. How interesting, Okay, So
[42:50] Speaker 2: earwax can tell us about human migration, it can be
[42:53] Speaker 2: used as a lip bomb. It's great if you're illustrating
[42:57] Speaker 2: a medieval illuminated manuscript, and it can be analyzed to
[43:01] Speaker 2: tell us about the individual that produced it. So there's
[43:04] Speaker 2: some interest, and I don't know how much interest in
[43:09] Speaker 2: in the forensic applications of earwax analysis, things like tobacco exposure,
[43:15] Speaker 2: cortisol levels, et cetera, stuff like that in your earwax.
[43:20] Speaker 2: And so there's there's more. I mean, because your ear
[43:23] Speaker 2: wax is also like.
[43:25] Speaker 1: It's being exposed, just like you no right to the
[43:28] Speaker 1: outside world. Yes, you're getting other junk stuck in your
[43:30] Speaker 1: That's why I say junk erin defending myself.
[43:37] Speaker 2: Debris. You didn't know about chapstick and right idea. Now
[43:42] Speaker 2: that you know, you won't make that same mistake. But
[43:47] Speaker 2: that's just the uses of human earwax. Oh oh yeah,
[43:53] Speaker 2: because humans are not the only producers of this glorious stuff.
[43:58] Speaker 2: Seruminous glands the glass that produce earwax are widespread among mammals, dogs, raccoons, pigs, goats, foxes, cats, whales, whales.
[44:08] Speaker 2: Whales have ears. Oh yeah, okay, there are some fascinating
[44:16] Speaker 2: papers on whale cetacean hearing that I really enjoyed. Okay, yeah, okay, whales.
[44:24] Speaker 2: So this is now we've arrived at the last and
[44:28] Speaker 2: my personal favorite chapter in the air wax story.
[44:32] Speaker 1: Me too.
[44:33] Speaker 2: All cetaceans, whales, dolphins, porpoises evolved from a land dwelling,
[44:37] Speaker 2: carnivorous cat like creature that began its aquatic journey around
[44:42] Speaker 2: fifty million years ago. Going from land to water is
[44:45] Speaker 2: a heck of a transition, and so many different aspects
[44:48] Speaker 2: of anatomy and physiology had to change to allow for
[44:52] Speaker 2: that to happen. Like hearing, which in land dwellers is
[44:56] Speaker 2: done using air adapted ears, when whales evolve of those
[45:00] Speaker 2: ears and they're hearing more generally adapted to an aquatic environment,
[45:05] Speaker 2: but the canals and the wax that they produced did
[45:08] Speaker 2: not simply disappear. Instead, bayleen whales keep producing ear wax
[45:15] Speaker 2: that accumulates over their entire life, rather than getting continuously
[45:20] Speaker 2: expelled like ours.
[45:22] Speaker 1: What yeah, what does that do?
[45:26] Speaker 2: Okay? Over time, these waxy layers form an earplug that
[45:31] Speaker 2: is centimeters long, like twenty five centimeters in one adult
[45:34] Speaker 2: male blue whale. A long whale earplug. You can look
[45:40] Speaker 2: up pictures of these. I will, yes, okay, but that's
[45:44] Speaker 2: not even the coolest part, Like it just keeps getting cooler.
[45:47] Speaker 2: What is amazing about these layers is that they're distinct,
[45:51] Speaker 2: about two formed every year, so they're predictable in their
[45:54] Speaker 2: deposition stop it, and their color corresponds to times of
[45:59] Speaker 2: like feeding migration. People have used these ear plugs to
[46:04] Speaker 2: estimate the age of whales like tree rings, tree rings,
[46:08] Speaker 2: and that's they've used this for a while. But what
[46:11] Speaker 2: they're doing now is even cooler than that. Researchers are
[46:15] Speaker 2: using these ear plugs to detect layer specific levels of hormones, contaminants,
[46:21] Speaker 2: and other compounds, and so you end up getting a
[46:24] Speaker 2: more detailed picture of what a whale's entire life was. Like,
[46:29] Speaker 2: what time is this where you thought this would go?
[46:33] Speaker 1: No?
[46:34] Speaker 2: No, I know, I was so excited when I was
[46:38] Speaker 2: reading these papers. So, for instance, there was a blue,
[46:42] Speaker 2: a male blue whale that was killed in a boat
[46:44] Speaker 2: collision and was found to be around twelve years old.
[46:48] Speaker 2: Based on these the earplug, his testosterone spiked enormously a
[46:53] Speaker 2: couple years prior, which is when he reached sexual maturity,
[46:57] Speaker 2: and his corticol increased over his lifetime, and most of
[47:01] Speaker 2: the contaminants that he was exposed to occurred in the
[47:04] Speaker 2: first six months of his life, which suggested transfer through
[47:09] Speaker 2: gestation and lactation, which is really depressing.
[47:12] Speaker 1: Wow.
[47:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, that's just one whale.
[47:17] Speaker 1: One whale, one ear plug.
[47:19] Speaker 2: One ear plug, And as it turns out, people have
[47:21] Speaker 2: been collecting and preserving whale ear plugs for decades.
[47:26] Speaker 1: Just should surprise me, I know.
[47:27] Speaker 2: Shout out to natural history museums, to collections like we
[47:31] Speaker 2: can learn so much it's been unbelievable. And so that
[47:34] Speaker 2: same research group who did this study on this single
[47:37] Speaker 2: male blue whale looked at cortisol levels in twenty preserved
[47:41] Speaker 2: whale ear plugs collected from eighteen seventy to twenty sixteen. Wow,
[47:47] Speaker 2: And they found that cortisol was which is associated with stress. Yeah,
[47:52] Speaker 2: it's one of our stress hormones, one of our stress hormones.
[47:54] Speaker 1: Yeah. They found so essential for life functioning, like it
[47:56] Speaker 1: is essentral life to be alive, right, yeah, right, yeah.
[48:00] Speaker 2: And what they found was that cortisol was pretty closely
[48:03] Speaker 2: tied to whaling counts, as in years where more whales
[48:08] Speaker 2: were hunted were more stressful for whales. So the higher
[48:11] Speaker 2: the whaling count, the higher and above whales killed, the
[48:13] Speaker 2: higher the cortisol level and the whale in the whale
[48:17] Speaker 2: earplugs they collected. The exception is World War Two, when
[48:20] Speaker 2: whaling counts were low but stress was high, no doubt
[48:24] Speaker 2: due to the war also being explosions and submuntins and
[48:27] Speaker 2: all that. And this relationship was especially pronounced in the
[48:32] Speaker 2: years following nineteen seventy two, when the Marine Mammal Protection
[48:36] Speaker 2: Act was passed just a big drop in cortisol levels.
[48:39] Speaker 2: Oh wow. And that drop remained fairly low until you
[48:44] Speaker 2: get to the past few decades where courtisol increases again
[48:49] Speaker 2: in certain years. Why abnormally warm sea surface temperatures.
[48:55] Speaker 1: In those years to global warming? Yeah, yep.
[48:59] Speaker 2: And the relationship between this is just like it is
[49:03] Speaker 2: it's very grim, right, Like this research is so grim,
[49:08] Speaker 2: but it is vital.
[49:10] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[49:10] Speaker 2: These earplugs are able to show us something that has
[49:13] Speaker 2: been kind of hard to measure in certain populations or
[49:17] Speaker 2: in certain situations especially, I mean, cetaceans are incredibly difficult,
[49:21] Speaker 2: so hard to study long term as well, and so
[49:26] Speaker 2: these ear plugs being able to show us the non
[49:30] Speaker 2: lethal human impact on organisms is incredibly important and tell
[49:36] Speaker 2: you so much, yes, like oh wow, yeah, so will
[49:42] Speaker 2: we do anything with that information that's remaining? But that
[49:48] Speaker 2: is all that I have on earwas wow.
[49:51] Speaker 1: And I have not thought about whale ears.
[49:58] Speaker 2: Okay, there are some papers and there is a researcher.
[50:02] Speaker 2: I watched a video of hers on I think it
[50:04] Speaker 2: was like an old PBS video or something like that,
[50:07] Speaker 2: and she was so engaging and wonderful and I just
[50:12] Speaker 2: I really liked it. There was one of the papers
[50:14] Speaker 2: I will shout out at the kind as soon as
[50:15] Speaker 2: I find the name of it.
[50:16] Speaker 1: But I love it. Their ears are just like flat,
[50:19] Speaker 1: just like holes, right.
[50:20] Speaker 2: They're small, but then they use a lot of like
[50:22] Speaker 2: jaw fat or something like that that absorbed and I
[50:25] Speaker 2: didn't I yeah, I should have spent more time learning
[50:28] Speaker 2: about ear or whale hearing overall.
[50:30] Speaker 1: But okay, this wasn't an episode about hearing. I didn't
[50:33] Speaker 1: talk about hearing at all.
[50:34] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[50:35] Speaker 1: How interesting though, Yeah, wow, I want to know so
[50:40] Speaker 1: much more. People can learn more, which aware can learn more.
[50:46] Speaker 2: I have a bunch of sources all over the place,
[50:50] Speaker 2: but I'm going to shout out a few here. If
[50:51] Speaker 2: you want to learn more about hearing in wales overall,
[50:54] Speaker 2: there's Darlene Kenton is the researcher that I was thinking of.
[50:58] Speaker 2: And there's a paper from nineteen ninety seven that I
[51:00] Speaker 2: liked called Structure and Function in Whale Ears. And then
[51:04] Speaker 2: if you want to check out that paper on the
[51:07] Speaker 2: whale cortisol levels over time, there's a paper by trumble
[51:11] Speaker 2: at All from twenty eighteen called Baleen Whale cortisol levels
[51:15] Speaker 2: reveal a physiological response to twentieth century whaling and then
[51:20] Speaker 2: a couple more. So there's that paper about wet versus
[51:23] Speaker 2: dry earwax and how it's just one snip, and that's
[51:27] Speaker 2: by Ohashi at All from twenty eleven, and then ear
[51:31] Speaker 2: Wax and Art History by Petrakis from two thousand called
[51:36] Speaker 2: Earmarks of Art History, Seruman and Medieval Art, and a
[51:40] Speaker 2: lot more.
[51:41] Speaker 1: I also have a number of papers, but the two
[51:45] Speaker 1: that were cited in every other paper effort that I
[51:49] Speaker 1: read were one from nineteen ninety seven by Rosa and
[51:54] Speaker 1: Bala Chanda that was called Physiology, Pathophysiology and Anthropology slash
[51:59] Speaker 1: Epidemiology of Human earcanal Secretions from the Journal of the
[52:03] Speaker 1: American Academy of Audiology, and then one from nineteen sixty
[52:06] Speaker 1: four by Alberti called Epithelial Migration on the tympanic Membrane.
[52:12] Speaker 1: It was actually really interesting. I don't read a lot
[52:15] Speaker 1: of papers from the sixties, but I always get a
[52:17] Speaker 1: kick out of it when I get to.
[52:18] Speaker 2: I love reading papers from the sixties. Sometimes it's yeah,
[52:22] Speaker 2: it's just they're so different in vibe, so different, they're
[52:25] Speaker 2: so different. Yeah.
[52:26] Speaker 1: And then I have a bunch of papers on like
[52:29] Speaker 1: Impacted the Room and and s Room and impaction and
[52:31] Speaker 1: how we deal with it, and then a few as
[52:33] Speaker 1: well on the ear candling business. You can find all
[52:39] Speaker 1: of these sources on our website, This podcast will Kill
[52:41] Speaker 1: You dot com under the episodes tab.
[52:44] Speaker 2: You certainly can a big thank you to Bloodmobile for
[52:47] Speaker 2: providing the music for this episode and all of our episodes.
[52:50] Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you to Leanna and Tom and Mark
[52:54] Speaker 1: and Pete and Jessica and everyone. There's like so many
[52:59] Speaker 1: people to sink exactly right. Network, Thank you all for me.
[53:02] Speaker 1: Thank you as possible.
[53:03] Speaker 2: Yes, thank you also to anyone who you know watches
[53:07] Speaker 2: this podcast listens to this podcast, We appreciate it. Like
[53:11] Speaker 2: like we said, you have a lot of different ways
[53:13] Speaker 2: you can spend your time, and we really appreciate you
[53:15] Speaker 2: spending that time with us. It means everything, It really
[53:18] Speaker 2: truly does.
[53:19] Speaker 1: So thank you and a special thank you to our
[53:22] Speaker 1: patrons for your support over on Patreon. It really does
[53:24] Speaker 1: mean like we we're not good. I think at using
[53:27] Speaker 1: words to explain how much it means to us, but
[53:29] Speaker 1: it really means a lot.
[53:30] Speaker 2: It does.
[53:31] Speaker 1: It does.
[53:32] Speaker 2: Until next time, wash your hands
[53:34] Speaker 1: You feelthy animals

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