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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And

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Speaker 1: if you were listening to this podcast, you are, in

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Speaker 1: fact listening to it through tiny little tunnels of delicious

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Speaker 1: ear wax. That's true. These these sounds waves have to

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Speaker 1: make their way through ear wax, and we discount the stuff.

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Speaker 1: But today we're going to talk about the merits of it.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about the smell of it, which I

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Speaker 1: didn't realize what it was a thing. Yeah, I mean,

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Speaker 1: I don't know that I'd ever sniffed ear wax because

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Speaker 1: I feel like you really at your sniffing stage with

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Speaker 1: bodily excretions at a far younger age, and I don't

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Speaker 1: remember encountering ear wax as a child. Bright. I mean,

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Speaker 1: that's more of your your parents domain right to deal

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Speaker 1: with whatever your ear wax situation is, or maybe the doctor.

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Speaker 1: But but then once you reach the age where you

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Speaker 1: are removing your own ear wax, hopefully you're at a

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Speaker 1: point where you're not going to smell it a lot.

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Speaker 1: That's my stance on the WHO way and if you do,

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Speaker 1: that's fine. This is not a place of judgment. I

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Speaker 1: will disclose not that I smell at your wax, but

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Speaker 1: that's one of those things that if I'm kind of

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Speaker 1: thinking about something or I'm lost in my head, I

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Speaker 1: will find that my finger is drifting up to my

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Speaker 1: ear and all. Sometimes you're like, yeah, I'm at work,

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Speaker 1: I don't need to be exploring my ear canals right now. Well,

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Speaker 1: as we get older, we have to explore our ear

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Speaker 1: canals more because all sorts of stuff goes wrong in there, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, you end up with hair growing for no reason.

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Speaker 1: You end up with I mean it has a reason,

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Speaker 1: but not but there's a limit, come on, body, you know, yeah? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and then then the ear wax can get a little

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Speaker 1: out of out of control. I think we've all been

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Speaker 1: in that situation where you've you've been around uh, an

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Speaker 1: older individual, maybe somebody you know or related to, or

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Speaker 1: maybe not, and you glimpse inside that ear and it

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Speaker 1: and you'll see something just horrific. Be it a big

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Speaker 1: tough of like rabbit fur growing out, or like an

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Speaker 1: orb of earwax just setting there like it's like it's

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Speaker 1: a spaceship that's going to be launched out of the

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Speaker 1: body and out into the void crude with with all

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Speaker 1: sorts of little organisms from the person's head well, which

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Speaker 1: is kind of like what we're going to talk about today,

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Speaker 1: this sort of time capsule that that you can sometimes contain.

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Speaker 1: And according to Dr Rick Tights, an emergency room doctor,

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Speaker 1: he said, I have over the year's teen live and

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Speaker 1: dead bugs, broken off Q tips, pieces of chocolate, nuts

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Speaker 1: and cookies, toy parts in some unidentifiable objects. So yes,

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Speaker 1: sometimes things get stuck in there, and particularly when you're

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Speaker 1: talking about Toddler's intentionally stuck in there. Yeah, thankfully I

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Speaker 1: have not experienced that firsthand yet, but I mean, you know,

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Speaker 1: it was more about the nose. Oh yeah, I'm experiencing

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Speaker 1: the nose big time. But yeah, that is good times,

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Speaker 1: by the way, Yeah, so far, it's just finger up

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Speaker 1: there most of the day. But they the yeah, the

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Speaker 1: the the ear canal and are sticking of things into it.

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Speaker 1: One of the stories that always comes to mind when

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Speaker 1: I think about Q tips going in the ear or

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Speaker 1: bugs going into the ear, which if you haven't experienced that,

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Speaker 1: it can be pretty horrific because a bugets in there

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Speaker 1: and starts flapping its wings. It's incredibly loud. Um. John

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Speaker 1: Hanning speak one of the gentlemen who discovered the source

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Speaker 1: of the Nile, along with the Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton.

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Speaker 1: He was left temporarily temporarily deaf uh after a beetle

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Speaker 1: crawled into his ear and he tried to remove it

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Speaker 1: with a knife. That this is an eighteen fifty six

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Speaker 1: during an Eastern African expedition to find the African Great Lakes.

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Speaker 1: So I always think about that one whenever I because

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Speaker 1: there was a rather horrific portrayal of it in the

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Speaker 1: movie The Mountains of the Moon, which was about speaking Burton, well,

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Speaker 1: thank you, because this is high roach season in Georgia

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Speaker 1: where we live, and they're they're scattering themselves all over

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Speaker 1: the place, all over the floors and there after your canals. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean it's a nice safe refuge for them, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean until we have to stab them with something

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Speaker 1: and and and deafen ourselves. Or if you're going to

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Speaker 1: actually do the correct thing, uh, use some sort of

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Speaker 1: like alcohol or oil or some sort of water. Don't

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Speaker 1: go to the doctor, or go to the doctor, but

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Speaker 1: don't go don't grab a knife and start stabbing at

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Speaker 1: the beetle in your head. No, don't try to recreate

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Speaker 1: the eight Yeah, alright, So what exactly is ear wax?

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Speaker 1: This is kind of fascinating. It's a It's actually a

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Speaker 1: kind of sweat called saruman and apricrene. Sweat glands add

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Speaker 1: protein and fats to sweat, okay, And this is a

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Speaker 1: kind of modified form of these sweat glands found in

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Speaker 1: the ear canal, and its output is ear wax. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So this is oil and protein, but about half of

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Speaker 1: it is dead skin cells. Essentially. You can think of

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Speaker 1: it this way. This is what I'm thinking about it. Anyway.

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Speaker 1: Ear wax is a river of dead skin cells flowing

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Speaker 1: out of your ear. Because if you did not have

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Speaker 1: that outward flow, what would happen? You would just have

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Speaker 1: a build up of dead skin cells in your ear. Right,

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Speaker 1: It's true, and that's good that you say it that that way.

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Speaker 1: It is a flow. In fact, the cells inside the

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Speaker 1: ear canal are unique in the human body. They migrate

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Speaker 1: and according to Professor Shakil said, at London's Royal National

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Speaker 1: there was an ear hospital. You could put an ink

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Speaker 1: dot on the ear drum and then watch it move

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Speaker 1: over a few weeks and it would be carried out

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Speaker 1: by the movement of these cells, so that this is

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Speaker 1: very intentional. This flow of amber ear wax lava stuff

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Speaker 1: is dying in there. We have to get it out.

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Speaker 1: We have to get it out of the air canal.

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Speaker 1: And so it follows the river of your life. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and the normal sort of movement of the jaw also

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Speaker 1: helps it along. And you know, eating and talking that

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Speaker 1: assists with the with the movement. But let's talk about

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Speaker 1: the more interesting aspects of it, which are the protective qualities. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's right. It's uh, you know, certainly it's moving the

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Speaker 1: dead skin cells. It's help, but it's it's helping to

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Speaker 1: keep the canal clean overall. It's uh, it's preventing it

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Speaker 1: from itching. Yeah, and it's lubricating it in that way

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Speaker 1: so then it doesn't itch. And then it's kind of

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Speaker 1: like a fly catcher for dirt and bacteria, which is

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Speaker 1: so cool because we again this stuff is maligned, right,

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Speaker 1: we get Q tips. Uh, we try to get it

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Speaker 1: out of our ear. We're like, oh, it's disgusting, but

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Speaker 1: in fact it is protecting us. And between one thousand

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Speaker 1: to two thousand glands produce anti microbial peptides. It also

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Speaker 1: contains lie de zyme and antibacterial enzyme capable of destroying

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Speaker 1: bacterial cell walls. So it's not just ushering stuff out

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Speaker 1: and catching stuff, but it's also kind of washing it

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Speaker 1: at certain moments and making sure that bacteria does not

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Speaker 1: live in your body. Yeah, because this is just another

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Speaker 1: open doorway into the head, and therefore it, I mean,

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Speaker 1: it makes sense that it should have certain protections in place. Indeed,

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Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna take a quick break, and when

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Speaker 1: we come back, we're gonna have a little more about

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Speaker 1: the science of ear wax, what our ear wax can

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Speaker 1: tell us about ourselves and others. Hey, we're back, um

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Speaker 1: talking about ear wax. Here's a little to that that

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Speaker 1: I wasn't aware of until I was looking around for

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Speaker 1: odd bits on ear wax, and I found out that

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Speaker 1: in medieval times, ear wax was actually used as a

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Speaker 1: pigment component in the illumination of manuscripts, which instantly made

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Speaker 1: me think of the various uh fictions where you'll encounter

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Speaker 1: and and of course also occasionally real life examples of

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Speaker 1: say a book that's bound in human skin or a

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Speaker 1: book that's written in human blood, but I've never seen

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Speaker 1: a horror movie or horror story where there's some sort

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Speaker 1: of mysterious volume that's written in human ear wax. So

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Speaker 1: is it the preservative qualities of the fats in it?

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Speaker 1: I guess that might be part of it. I mean,

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Speaker 1: there's not a whole lot of color to it. I mean,

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Speaker 1: we would well discuss We definitely would be talking about

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Speaker 1: western ear wax here, so we'll be talking about, oh,

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Speaker 1: you know that that that waxy yellow tint, but uh,

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Speaker 1: or and it's gonna get a little darker in age,

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Speaker 1: so I could see it possibly playing into into coloration

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Speaker 1: as well. Or maybe you're just setting there in the

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Speaker 1: scriptorium all day, Uh, you're eliminating manuscripts, and occasionally your

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Speaker 1: brush is going to go into the ear canal. You know,

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Speaker 1: it's gonna go out, it's gonna go in the notes,

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Speaker 1: it's gonna go a lot of places, and it's gonna

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Speaker 1: make its way into the final version of the manuscript,

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Speaker 1: and then you have your oprah aha moment. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: all right, So that's kind of the perfect segue into

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Speaker 1: what we're about to talk about. And you had already

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Speaker 1: mentioned that western ear wax is far different than someone

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Speaker 1: from say East Asia. Yes, And this was borne out

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Speaker 1: by scientists at the Monell Institute, and they were inspired

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Speaker 1: to see if ethnic groups have different ear wax odors

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Speaker 1: after they learned that the same gene controls both the

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Speaker 1: person's underarm odor and the type of ear wax that

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Speaker 1: they make, so that's the place they will come from.

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Speaker 1: Does the ear wax smell differently? They measure the concentration

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Speaker 1: of twelve volatile organic compounds found in ear wax in

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Speaker 1: groups of East Asian and white men, and what they

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Speaker 1: found is that if you are East Asian or Native American,

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Speaker 1: it's likely to be dry and white, kind of flaky,

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Speaker 1: and but if you would describe yourself as white or black,

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Speaker 1: your ear wax would probably be yellow and sticky and smelling. Yea.

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Speaker 1: My wife and I actually rando a little this. We

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Speaker 1: brought our child in to see the pediatrician because he

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Speaker 1: is is racially Han Chinese and the we are Uh Caucasian,

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Speaker 1: and he initially had a certain amount of of wax

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Speaker 1: build up in his ears that had to be taken

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Speaker 1: care of. But the pediatrician had some difficulties figuring exactly

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Speaker 1: what was going on because I don't think she was

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Speaker 1: as exposed as much to to this this East Asian

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Speaker 1: variant of ear wax, which is again flaki or dryer.

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Speaker 1: And and therefore, if you're if you look going into

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Speaker 1: an ear and you're expecting to see Western ear wax,

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Speaker 1: you're gonna be a little thrown for a curve of

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Speaker 1: the material itself has a has a different a different consistency.

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Speaker 1: See Okay, And that's that's one of those things that

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Speaker 1: you just don't know until you get in the ear canal. Right,

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Speaker 1: so did she smell it? I don't think she smelled it.

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Speaker 1: I haven't smelled it either, you know, But but it

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Speaker 1: would but would apparently have less of an odor, as

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Speaker 1: would as would his sweat, which I'm all for anything

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Speaker 1: to keep this child less stinky right on. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: considering again that this is a variant of the apocrine

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Speaker 1: sweat gland, and we know the apprine sweat gland producing

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Speaker 1: some really funky stuff. So it's not too crazy that

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Speaker 1: your ear wax might smell. But you're probably still wondering, like,

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Speaker 1: why are there scientists sniffing ear wax? Why do they

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Speaker 1: think that's so important? Well, it turns out that they

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Speaker 1: also that the Institute Monel Institute studies a rare genetic

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Speaker 1: disorder called maple syrup urine disease ease, which can be

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Speaker 1: easily diagnosed through the scent of ear wax compounds and

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Speaker 1: swabbing someone's ears is much simpler and cheaper than doing

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Speaker 1: genetic testing. And when I when we talk about this

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Speaker 1: maple syrup urine disease really literally your your sweat and

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Speaker 1: your ear wax smells like maple syrup because it's a

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Speaker 1: metabolism disorder and it's passed down through families and which

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Speaker 1: the body can't break down certain parts of proteins. And

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Speaker 1: it might seem like, oh, that's lovely if you just

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Speaker 1: smell like maple syrup all the time, but in fact

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Speaker 1: it's it's a it can be really dangerous that disease.

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Speaker 1: It can cause bring damage, coma and cognitive disabilities. So

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Speaker 1: all of this makes sense right that that ear wax

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Speaker 1: would provide some insight into what's going on genetically, because

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Speaker 1: again it's composed of dead skin cells. It's a uh,

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Speaker 1: it contains the output of of of the two thousand

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Speaker 1: different glands working at once, So it's not just some

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Speaker 1: stupid byproduct of a human body. It's a very very

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Speaker 1: telling by product of the human body. Yeah, And the

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Speaker 1: hope is that by examining this ear wax we can

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Speaker 1: begin to tell more and more about someone's health and wellness. Um.

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Speaker 1: But because we're talking about these again portable time capsules

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Speaker 1: telling us something about the body. And there's nothing more

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Speaker 1: indicative of this ability than whales and their gigantic ear

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Speaker 1: plugs of ear wax. Yeah, and it really is like

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Speaker 1: an ear plug composed of their own ear wax that

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Speaker 1: they accumulate throughout their entire life. Uh. And they eventually

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Speaker 1: reach a size of in length. Yeah, they're huge and

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Speaker 1: unlike humans, you know, which we shed our ear wax

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Speaker 1: and our our dead skin cells. Um, these filter feeding

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Speaker 1: whales do retain it your entire lives. And so what

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Speaker 1: happens is that it's recording life events similarly to the

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Speaker 1: rings of a tree. And in fact, they used to

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Speaker 1: They've known for a while that this is a good

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Speaker 1: way to tell how old a whale was. Just see

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Speaker 1: how how big the ear plug is. But you can

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Speaker 1: tell been more exactly because the wax is laid down

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Speaker 1: in light and dark bands, with each band correlating roughly

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Speaker 1: to a six month period, so all of that can

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Speaker 1: be examined and you can figure out what's going on.

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Speaker 1: Sasha Usenko and environmental scientists at Baylor University in Waco,

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Speaker 1: Texas extracted an ear plug from a blue whale. It

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Speaker 1: was killed in a collision with a ship off the

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Speaker 1: coast of Santa Barbara and California. And that plug of

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Speaker 1: ear wax was a nice, big, healthy, twenty four point

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Speaker 1: five centimeters long. But they found is that this twelve

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Speaker 1: year old male had come into contact with sixteen different

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Speaker 1: pollutants like pesticides and flame retardants. Wow. So you can

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Speaker 1: look at this thing, which is again like a like

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Speaker 1: a core sample of the different segmentary layers in this

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Speaker 1: in this creature's life, it's a timeline, a waxy timeline

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Speaker 1: of its life. You can see where has it come

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Speaker 1: into contact with pollutants. You can see where as it

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Speaker 1: had a lot of stress. Where can you see the

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Speaker 1: stress hormones in the wax sample. Yeah, you can even

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Speaker 1: see the testosterone and surge indicating when it was maturing.

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Speaker 1: And then as you say, yeah, these cortisol levels going

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Speaker 1: up doubling in some cases. In fact, one of the

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Speaker 1: biggest peaks in stress hormone cortisol that they saw was

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Speaker 1: right after the whale had reached sexual maturity about ten

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Speaker 1: years old, suggesting that there was stress from sexual competition.

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Speaker 1: You can even see the amount of pollutants and hormones

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Speaker 1: transferred to the whale from its mother while it was

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Speaker 1: while it was inside her, and apparently the majority of

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Speaker 1: those contaminants of those um those bits of chemical pollutants

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Speaker 1: were transferred during that time. So this is of course

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Speaker 1: all very useful information in studying the blue whale and

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Speaker 1: trying to figure out how we can keep the population

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Speaker 1: of blue whales from shrinking even further. It's already far

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Speaker 1: smaller than it needs to be. Yeah, And even the

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Speaker 1: effects of pollution, because although flame retardant has been banned

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Speaker 1: for fifty years, it's apparently still out there particles of

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Speaker 1: in the ocean. So we've talked about this before, the

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Speaker 1: ocean being this great, big, unexplored area for us. We

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Speaker 1: don't have a great understanding of the breadth and depth

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Speaker 1: of it and how our environment impacts it. And this

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Speaker 1: is just one other indication of of how stuff that

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Speaker 1: we just use on a regular basis really has a

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Speaker 1: long term impact indeed, I mean that the shadow cast

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Speaker 1: by any of these these these pollutants is far greater

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Speaker 1: than we typically realize. Indeed. All right, but back to

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Speaker 1: the ear wax and humans, I think we should probably

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Speaker 1: end this podcast by saying, obviously, don't pick up that

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Speaker 1: Q tip as much as you want to and jam

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Speaker 1: it into your ear canal, and please please do not

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Speaker 1: get an ear cone and engage in what's called ear candling,

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Speaker 1: which we've talked about at length. Have you have You've

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Speaker 1: done it before, I've done it before, and there's you know,

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Speaker 1: you know there's something wrong when you have your head

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Speaker 1: tipped over and you have something on fire in your ear.

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Speaker 1: You know that that shouldn't be going on. And the

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Speaker 1: flame on these things climbs pretty high. It's it's not

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Speaker 1: really I mean, it's to be honest, the sensation is

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Speaker 1: kind of interesting. You know. I won't I won't say

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Speaker 1: that I hated having my ear candled, but but it's

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Speaker 1: it also felt very dangerous, like we're going to catch

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Speaker 1: the health and fire at any given moment doing this

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Speaker 1: and ultimately doesn't really do any good. In fact, they

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Speaker 1: can have it can it can actually harm you. The

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Speaker 1: FDA warrants. They not only can ear candles lead to

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Speaker 1: obviously burns, they can also block the ear canal or

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Speaker 1: perforate the ear drums. So there's really no reason to

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Speaker 1: do it, and you want to explain that in your situation, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So I decided to candle my ear whole and they're like,

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Speaker 1: all right, go getting that line. I just got your candled. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but the Q tip, of course, that's still a cautionary thing.

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Speaker 1: I mean, the package says don't stick it in your ear,

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Speaker 1: which leads to the question, what are they want? What

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Speaker 1: are we supposed to be using them for? I always

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Speaker 1: think just the outside of the ear, just a little

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Speaker 1: maze around the actual ear canal. Sure, okay, that's valid.

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Speaker 1: That's a good place to use it. You know, I've

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Speaker 1: I've heard of individuals who have traveled to other countries.

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Speaker 1: I think this particular friend of a friend that went

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Speaker 1: to Eastern Europe and they went to the store. They

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Speaker 1: were staying there for a nextended period of time no

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Speaker 1: Q tips, So he was like, what am I gonna do?

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Speaker 1: How I'm gonna clean my ears? So he ended up

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Speaker 1: just getting pieces of tissue and then you know, twisting

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Speaker 1: it up and then trying to clean his ears that way.

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Speaker 1: That doing that, he ended up getting tissue caught in

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Speaker 1: his ear, stuck in his ear canal, and then had

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Speaker 1: to go to the doctor for that. So that raises

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Speaker 1: the question, Well, if we live in a world without

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Speaker 1: Q tips, then when we still stick things in our

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Speaker 1: ears and we'd still have to go to the emergency room,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I feel like the e er there

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Speaker 1: was would probably be like another American tried to d

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Speaker 1: I O y a Q tip. That's my Eastern European.

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Speaker 1: That's good, that's good. I was buying it. Um. And

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Speaker 1: if you need a little something else to encourage you

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Speaker 1: not to go digging around with a Q tip, I

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Speaker 1: recommend using out the scene in the most recent season

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Speaker 1: I think it is of Girls, Oh Yeah, where she

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Speaker 1: she ends up going a little too deep with a

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Speaker 1: cute tip and then has to do the other ear

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Speaker 1: to cancel it out. Well, she has obsessive compulsive disorder,

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Speaker 1: which is why she's jamming it into her ear in

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Speaker 1: the first place. Um. But like a lot a lot

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Speaker 1: of a lot of that show is painful to watch,

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Speaker 1: but that scene in particular was was painful on a

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Speaker 1: very physical level, because you're just going don't do that

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Speaker 1: to your ears? Yeah. Yeah, And if you really need

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Speaker 1: to do that, you feel like you've got at your

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Speaker 1: wife poem, you gotta go see the doctor. Right. And

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Speaker 1: in fact, there is a great little video that I

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Speaker 1: sent you and I said, green geting awful, which shows

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Speaker 1: a professional extraction of a giant chunk of ear wax.

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Speaker 1: And it looks like when they're taking it out, looks

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Speaker 1: like a croissant that's been stuped into someone's ear. Can

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Speaker 1: you imagine? I can imagine. I can picture it because

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Speaker 1: you made me watch the video. Are are we going

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Speaker 1: to turn that video into a science on the Web episode?

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Speaker 1: I think so? All right, we must be down look

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Speaker 1: forward to that everyone in the meantime. Uh And certainly

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Speaker 1: if you want to go ahead and see if that

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Speaker 1: video has published yet, and it may have, who knows

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Speaker 1: what the timeline isn't the sort of thing, UH, go

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Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is

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Speaker 1: where you will find all the podcast episodes. That's where

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Speaker 1: you'll find links out to our very social media account

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Speaker 1: to find our blog posts of videos, everything you could

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Speaker 1: want to know about Julie and myself and uh you

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Speaker 1: know we'd like to hear from you on this ear

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Speaker 1: wax situation. Yeah, it's a safe place you can send

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Speaker 1: us your thoughts on it. You can let us know

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Speaker 1: what the consistency and the smell is if you happen

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Speaker 1: to know that any odd ear wax stories were gained

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Speaker 1: for them, and you could do that by sending an

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Speaker 1: email to blow the mind at how step works dot

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Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

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Speaker 1: Does it, how stuff works dot com be you or

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Speaker 1: about