Health-Conscious #4 - Ear Coning: Fallacy or Not?

Ear Coning or ear vacuuming, also called ear candling is an old way to clean ears. It has been part of earliest civilizations, like that of Egyptians, Mayans and Tibetans. It's part of their religious activities as well as personal hygiene, as well.

The modern adaptation of the procedure will see you with immersed with the heat and smoke application of ear coning. Massage clinic personnel will conduct ear coning with the use of special filter paper or candled cloth being burned with its tip inserted in your ear, with a plate-like protector to prevent the residue of the flame dropping unto your skin. At the same time, she'll massage the ear lobe and all parts of outer ear to loosen up the ear wax. The burning outer tip will aid in removing earwax. It should be conducted twice a year

The procedure usually lasts for 15 to 45 minutes for your two ears.

Some of the harmful materials that you usually insert into your ears to remove earwax are:

1. hairpins
2. matchsticks
3. keys
4. ballpoint pen caps

I accidentally hurt my right ear (when I was still a year old) with a match stick handed to me by my elder sister while four of us played swaying in an abaca hammock.

I also used some of the above-mentioned dangerous stuff in my ears to remove earwax.

By the way, how do we know that it's time to remove earwax?

• a. It feels itchy.
• The ears feel heavy.
• You experience discomfort.

Ear-Nose-Throat (ENT) specialists say that ear wax has also benefits to the human ear.

It acts as moisturizer, anti-bacterial and anti-fungal. Too much cleaning of ear can lead to the destruction of your inner ear, loose of tiny hairs that filter excessive sound and dirt from the surroundings. It can also lead to partial and total deafness.

A seaman- friend who used to clean his ears daily, experienced a discomfort when transparent fluid flowed out his two ears. He had to take the prescribed medicine to prevent it. He suffered partial deafness that prompted the agency to transfer him to another manning agency.

Eastern alternative medical practice are often opposed by the Western culture.

I, too, am skeptic about this one. Because of my 4 decades of existence, I didn't undergo such ear cleaning process, except of the usual cotton buds and my pinky finger (laughs).

Okay, here's what I'm going to do. Instead of the usual candled cloth, I'm going to use an ordinary bond paper. I'll cut it into a square, roll it that can easily fit into my ear and dip the tip on my herbal ointment (consisting of eucalyptus extract, camphor oil, turmeric (yellow ginger),cilantro, lavender oil, rosemary oil and yerba buena).

When lighted, I felt that the oil-scented smoke penetrated my ear. For the duration of 30 seconds, the bond paper was halfway-burned. I removed it from my ear and put off the fire.

I felt the essential oils penetrated by eardrum. It felt cold. As if I was lightheaded. Then I noticed deposits of earwax at the tip of the rolled paper.

This rough experiment showed that heat and smoke can remove some of the earwax attached to the outer ear canal. Although I didn't massage the ear lobe and surrounding part of my ear, it proved that this ancient practice on ear cleaning is effective.

For the experts, they use beeswax that was obtain from the honeycomb of bees. It is mainly esters of fatty acids Beeswax is so important that its production extends into food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.