Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Speaker 1: if you were listening to this podcast, you are, in
Speaker 1: fact listening to it through tiny little tunnels of delicious
Speaker 1: ear wax. That's true. These these sounds waves have to
Speaker 1: make their way through ear wax, and we discount the stuff.
Speaker 1: But today we're going to talk about the merits of it.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about the smell of it, which I
Speaker 1: didn't realize what it was a thing. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know that I'd ever sniffed ear wax because
Speaker 1: I feel like you really at your sniffing stage with
Speaker 1: bodily excretions at a far younger age, and I don't
Speaker 1: remember encountering ear wax as a child. Bright. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's more of your your parents domain right to deal
Speaker 1: with whatever your ear wax situation is, or maybe the doctor.
Speaker 1: But but then once you reach the age where you
Speaker 1: are removing your own ear wax, hopefully you're at a
Speaker 1: point where you're not going to smell it a lot.
Speaker 1: That's my stance on the WHO way and if you do,
Speaker 1: that's fine. This is not a place of judgment. I
Speaker 1: will disclose not that I smell at your wax, but
Speaker 1: that's one of those things that if I'm kind of
Speaker 1: thinking about something or I'm lost in my head, I
Speaker 1: will find that my finger is drifting up to my
Speaker 1: ear and all. Sometimes you're like, yeah, I'm at work,
Speaker 1: I don't need to be exploring my ear canals right now. Well,
Speaker 1: as we get older, we have to explore our ear
Speaker 1: canals more because all sorts of stuff goes wrong in there, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you end up with hair growing for no reason.
Speaker 1: You end up with I mean it has a reason,
Speaker 1: but not but there's a limit, come on, body, you know, yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then then the ear wax can get a little
Speaker 1: out of out of control. I think we've all been
Speaker 1: in that situation where you've you've been around uh, an
Speaker 1: older individual, maybe somebody you know or related to, or
Speaker 1: maybe not, and you glimpse inside that ear and it
Speaker 1: and you'll see something just horrific. Be it a big
Speaker 1: tough of like rabbit fur growing out, or like an
Speaker 1: orb of earwax just setting there like it's like it's
Speaker 1: a spaceship that's going to be launched out of the
Speaker 1: body and out into the void crude with with all
Speaker 1: sorts of little organisms from the person's head well, which
Speaker 1: is kind of like what we're going to talk about today,
Speaker 1: this sort of time capsule that that you can sometimes contain.
Speaker 1: And according to Dr Rick Tights, an emergency room doctor,
Speaker 1: he said, I have over the year's teen live and
Speaker 1: dead bugs, broken off Q tips, pieces of chocolate, nuts
Speaker 1: and cookies, toy parts in some unidentifiable objects. So yes,
Speaker 1: sometimes things get stuck in there, and particularly when you're
Speaker 1: talking about Toddler's intentionally stuck in there. Yeah, thankfully I
Speaker 1: have not experienced that firsthand yet, but I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it was more about the nose. Oh yeah, I'm experiencing
Speaker 1: the nose big time. But yeah, that is good times,
Speaker 1: by the way, Yeah, so far, it's just finger up
Speaker 1: there most of the day. But they the yeah, the
Speaker 1: the the ear canal and are sticking of things into it.
Speaker 1: One of the stories that always comes to mind when
Speaker 1: I think about Q tips going in the ear or
Speaker 1: bugs going into the ear, which if you haven't experienced that,
Speaker 1: it can be pretty horrific because a bugets in there
Speaker 1: and starts flapping its wings. It's incredibly loud. Um. John
Speaker 1: Hanning speak one of the gentlemen who discovered the source
Speaker 1: of the Nile, along with the Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton.
Speaker 1: He was left temporarily temporarily deaf uh after a beetle
Speaker 1: crawled into his ear and he tried to remove it
Speaker 1: with a knife. That this is an eighteen fifty six
Speaker 1: during an Eastern African expedition to find the African Great Lakes.
Speaker 1: So I always think about that one whenever I because
Speaker 1: there was a rather horrific portrayal of it in the
Speaker 1: movie The Mountains of the Moon, which was about speaking Burton, well,
Speaker 1: thank you, because this is high roach season in Georgia
Speaker 1: where we live, and they're they're scattering themselves all over
Speaker 1: the place, all over the floors and there after your canals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a nice safe refuge for them, right,
Speaker 1: I mean until we have to stab them with something
Speaker 1: and and and deafen ourselves. Or if you're going to
Speaker 1: actually do the correct thing, uh, use some sort of
Speaker 1: like alcohol or oil or some sort of water. Don't
Speaker 1: go to the doctor, or go to the doctor, but
Speaker 1: don't go don't grab a knife and start stabbing at
Speaker 1: the beetle in your head. No, don't try to recreate
Speaker 1: the eight Yeah, alright, So what exactly is ear wax?
Speaker 1: This is kind of fascinating. It's a It's actually a
Speaker 1: kind of sweat called saruman and apricrene. Sweat glands add
Speaker 1: protein and fats to sweat, okay, And this is a
Speaker 1: kind of modified form of these sweat glands found in
Speaker 1: the ear canal, and its output is ear wax. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is oil and protein, but about half of
Speaker 1: it is dead skin cells. Essentially. You can think of
Speaker 1: it this way. This is what I'm thinking about it. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Ear wax is a river of dead skin cells flowing
Speaker 1: out of your ear. Because if you did not have
Speaker 1: that outward flow, what would happen? You would just have
Speaker 1: a build up of dead skin cells in your ear. Right,
Speaker 1: It's true, and that's good that you say it that that way.
Speaker 1: It is a flow. In fact, the cells inside the
Speaker 1: ear canal are unique in the human body. They migrate
Speaker 1: and according to Professor Shakil said, at London's Royal National
Speaker 1: there was an ear hospital. You could put an ink
Speaker 1: dot on the ear drum and then watch it move
Speaker 1: over a few weeks and it would be carried out
Speaker 1: by the movement of these cells, so that this is
Speaker 1: very intentional. This flow of amber ear wax lava stuff
Speaker 1: is dying in there. We have to get it out.
Speaker 1: We have to get it out of the air canal.
Speaker 1: And so it follows the river of your life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the normal sort of movement of the jaw also
Speaker 1: helps it along. And you know, eating and talking that
Speaker 1: assists with the with the movement. But let's talk about
Speaker 1: the more interesting aspects of it, which are the protective qualities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. It's uh, you know, certainly it's moving the
Speaker 1: dead skin cells. It's help, but it's it's helping to
Speaker 1: keep the canal clean overall. It's uh, it's preventing it
Speaker 1: from itching. Yeah, and it's lubricating it in that way
Speaker 1: so then it doesn't itch. And then it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a fly catcher for dirt and bacteria, which is
Speaker 1: so cool because we again this stuff is maligned, right,
Speaker 1: we get Q tips. Uh, we try to get it
Speaker 1: out of our ear. We're like, oh, it's disgusting, but
Speaker 1: in fact it is protecting us. And between one thousand
Speaker 1: to two thousand glands produce anti microbial peptides. It also
Speaker 1: contains lie de zyme and antibacterial enzyme capable of destroying
Speaker 1: bacterial cell walls. So it's not just ushering stuff out
Speaker 1: and catching stuff, but it's also kind of washing it
Speaker 1: at certain moments and making sure that bacteria does not
Speaker 1: live in your body. Yeah, because this is just another
Speaker 1: open doorway into the head, and therefore it, I mean,
Speaker 1: it makes sense that it should have certain protections in place. Indeed,
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna take a quick break, and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we're gonna have a little more about
Speaker 1: the science of ear wax, what our ear wax can
Speaker 1: tell us about ourselves and others. Hey, we're back, um
Speaker 1: talking about ear wax. Here's a little to that that
Speaker 1: I wasn't aware of until I was looking around for
Speaker 1: odd bits on ear wax, and I found out that
Speaker 1: in medieval times, ear wax was actually used as a
Speaker 1: pigment component in the illumination of manuscripts, which instantly made
Speaker 1: me think of the various uh fictions where you'll encounter
Speaker 1: and and of course also occasionally real life examples of
Speaker 1: say a book that's bound in human skin or a
Speaker 1: book that's written in human blood, but I've never seen
Speaker 1: a horror movie or horror story where there's some sort
Speaker 1: of mysterious volume that's written in human ear wax. So
Speaker 1: is it the preservative qualities of the fats in it?
Speaker 1: I guess that might be part of it. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's not a whole lot of color to it. I mean,
Speaker 1: we would well discuss We definitely would be talking about
Speaker 1: western ear wax here, so we'll be talking about, oh,
Speaker 1: you know that that that waxy yellow tint, but uh,
Speaker 1: or and it's gonna get a little darker in age,
Speaker 1: so I could see it possibly playing into into coloration
Speaker 1: as well. Or maybe you're just setting there in the
Speaker 1: scriptorium all day, Uh, you're eliminating manuscripts, and occasionally your
Speaker 1: brush is going to go into the ear canal. You know,
Speaker 1: it's gonna go out, it's gonna go in the notes,
Speaker 1: it's gonna go a lot of places, and it's gonna
Speaker 1: make its way into the final version of the manuscript,
Speaker 1: and then you have your oprah aha moment. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, So that's kind of the perfect segue into
Speaker 1: what we're about to talk about. And you had already
Speaker 1: mentioned that western ear wax is far different than someone
Speaker 1: from say East Asia. Yes, And this was borne out
Speaker 1: by scientists at the Monell Institute, and they were inspired
Speaker 1: to see if ethnic groups have different ear wax odors
Speaker 1: after they learned that the same gene controls both the
Speaker 1: person's underarm odor and the type of ear wax that
Speaker 1: they make, so that's the place they will come from.
Speaker 1: Does the ear wax smell differently? They measure the concentration
Speaker 1: of twelve volatile organic compounds found in ear wax in
Speaker 1: groups of East Asian and white men, and what they
Speaker 1: found is that if you are East Asian or Native American,
Speaker 1: it's likely to be dry and white, kind of flaky,
Speaker 1: and but if you would describe yourself as white or black,
Speaker 1: your ear wax would probably be yellow and sticky and smelling. Yea.
Speaker 1: My wife and I actually rando a little this. We
Speaker 1: brought our child in to see the pediatrician because he
Speaker 1: is is racially Han Chinese and the we are Uh Caucasian,
Speaker 1: and he initially had a certain amount of of wax
Speaker 1: build up in his ears that had to be taken
Speaker 1: care of. But the pediatrician had some difficulties figuring exactly
Speaker 1: what was going on because I don't think she was
Speaker 1: as exposed as much to to this this East Asian
Speaker 1: variant of ear wax, which is again flaki or dryer.
Speaker 1: And and therefore, if you're if you look going into
Speaker 1: an ear and you're expecting to see Western ear wax,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be a little thrown for a curve of
Speaker 1: the material itself has a has a different a different consistency.
Speaker 1: See Okay, And that's that's one of those things that
Speaker 1: you just don't know until you get in the ear canal. Right,
Speaker 1: so did she smell it? I don't think she smelled it.
Speaker 1: I haven't smelled it either, you know, But but it
Speaker 1: would but would apparently have less of an odor, as
Speaker 1: would as would his sweat, which I'm all for anything
Speaker 1: to keep this child less stinky right on. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: considering again that this is a variant of the apocrine
Speaker 1: sweat gland, and we know the apprine sweat gland producing
Speaker 1: some really funky stuff. So it's not too crazy that
Speaker 1: your ear wax might smell. But you're probably still wondering, like,
Speaker 1: why are there scientists sniffing ear wax? Why do they
Speaker 1: think that's so important? Well, it turns out that they
Speaker 1: also that the Institute Monel Institute studies a rare genetic
Speaker 1: disorder called maple syrup urine disease ease, which can be
Speaker 1: easily diagnosed through the scent of ear wax compounds and
Speaker 1: swabbing someone's ears is much simpler and cheaper than doing
Speaker 1: genetic testing. And when I when we talk about this
Speaker 1: maple syrup urine disease really literally your your sweat and
Speaker 1: your ear wax smells like maple syrup because it's a
Speaker 1: metabolism disorder and it's passed down through families and which
Speaker 1: the body can't break down certain parts of proteins. And
Speaker 1: it might seem like, oh, that's lovely if you just
Speaker 1: smell like maple syrup all the time, but in fact
Speaker 1: it's it's a it can be really dangerous that disease.
Speaker 1: It can cause bring damage, coma and cognitive disabilities. So
Speaker 1: all of this makes sense right that that ear wax
Speaker 1: would provide some insight into what's going on genetically, because
Speaker 1: again it's composed of dead skin cells. It's a uh,
Speaker 1: it contains the output of of of the two thousand
Speaker 1: different glands working at once, So it's not just some
Speaker 1: stupid byproduct of a human body. It's a very very
Speaker 1: telling by product of the human body. Yeah, And the
Speaker 1: hope is that by examining this ear wax we can
Speaker 1: begin to tell more and more about someone's health and wellness. Um.
Speaker 1: But because we're talking about these again portable time capsules
Speaker 1: telling us something about the body. And there's nothing more
Speaker 1: indicative of this ability than whales and their gigantic ear
Speaker 1: plugs of ear wax. Yeah, and it really is like
Speaker 1: an ear plug composed of their own ear wax that
Speaker 1: they accumulate throughout their entire life. Uh. And they eventually
Speaker 1: reach a size of in length. Yeah, they're huge and
Speaker 1: unlike humans, you know, which we shed our ear wax
Speaker 1: and our our dead skin cells. Um, these filter feeding
Speaker 1: whales do retain it your entire lives. And so what
Speaker 1: happens is that it's recording life events similarly to the
Speaker 1: rings of a tree. And in fact, they used to
Speaker 1: They've known for a while that this is a good
Speaker 1: way to tell how old a whale was. Just see
Speaker 1: how how big the ear plug is. But you can
Speaker 1: tell been more exactly because the wax is laid down
Speaker 1: in light and dark bands, with each band correlating roughly
Speaker 1: to a six month period, so all of that can
Speaker 1: be examined and you can figure out what's going on.
Speaker 1: Sasha Usenko and environmental scientists at Baylor University in Waco,
Speaker 1: Texas extracted an ear plug from a blue whale. It
Speaker 1: was killed in a collision with a ship off the
Speaker 1: coast of Santa Barbara and California. And that plug of
Speaker 1: ear wax was a nice, big, healthy, twenty four point
Speaker 1: five centimeters long. But they found is that this twelve
Speaker 1: year old male had come into contact with sixteen different
Speaker 1: pollutants like pesticides and flame retardants. Wow. So you can
Speaker 1: look at this thing, which is again like a like
Speaker 1: a core sample of the different segmentary layers in this
Speaker 1: in this creature's life, it's a timeline, a waxy timeline
Speaker 1: of its life. You can see where has it come
Speaker 1: into contact with pollutants. You can see where as it
Speaker 1: had a lot of stress. Where can you see the
Speaker 1: stress hormones in the wax sample. Yeah, you can even
Speaker 1: see the testosterone and surge indicating when it was maturing.
Speaker 1: And then as you say, yeah, these cortisol levels going
Speaker 1: up doubling in some cases. In fact, one of the
Speaker 1: biggest peaks in stress hormone cortisol that they saw was
Speaker 1: right after the whale had reached sexual maturity about ten
Speaker 1: years old, suggesting that there was stress from sexual competition.
Speaker 1: You can even see the amount of pollutants and hormones
Speaker 1: transferred to the whale from its mother while it was
Speaker 1: while it was inside her, and apparently the majority of
Speaker 1: those contaminants of those um those bits of chemical pollutants
Speaker 1: were transferred during that time. So this is of course
Speaker 1: all very useful information in studying the blue whale and
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how we can keep the population
Speaker 1: of blue whales from shrinking even further. It's already far
Speaker 1: smaller than it needs to be. Yeah, And even the
Speaker 1: effects of pollution, because although flame retardant has been banned
Speaker 1: for fifty years, it's apparently still out there particles of
Speaker 1: in the ocean. So we've talked about this before, the
Speaker 1: ocean being this great, big, unexplored area for us. We
Speaker 1: don't have a great understanding of the breadth and depth
Speaker 1: of it and how our environment impacts it. And this
Speaker 1: is just one other indication of of how stuff that
Speaker 1: we just use on a regular basis really has a
Speaker 1: long term impact indeed, I mean that the shadow cast
Speaker 1: by any of these these these pollutants is far greater
Speaker 1: than we typically realize. Indeed. All right, but back to
Speaker 1: the ear wax and humans, I think we should probably
Speaker 1: end this podcast by saying, obviously, don't pick up that
Speaker 1: Q tip as much as you want to and jam
Speaker 1: it into your ear canal, and please please do not
Speaker 1: get an ear cone and engage in what's called ear candling,
Speaker 1: which we've talked about at length. Have you have You've
Speaker 1: done it before, I've done it before, and there's you know,
Speaker 1: you know there's something wrong when you have your head
Speaker 1: tipped over and you have something on fire in your ear.
Speaker 1: You know that that shouldn't be going on. And the
Speaker 1: flame on these things climbs pretty high. It's it's not
Speaker 1: really I mean, it's to be honest, the sensation is
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. You know. I won't I won't say
Speaker 1: that I hated having my ear candled, but but it's
Speaker 1: it also felt very dangerous, like we're going to catch
Speaker 1: the health and fire at any given moment doing this
Speaker 1: and ultimately doesn't really do any good. In fact, they
Speaker 1: can have it can it can actually harm you. The
Speaker 1: FDA warrants. They not only can ear candles lead to
Speaker 1: obviously burns, they can also block the ear canal or
Speaker 1: perforate the ear drums. So there's really no reason to
Speaker 1: do it, and you want to explain that in your situation, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I decided to candle my ear whole and they're like,
Speaker 1: all right, go getting that line. I just got your candled. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the Q tip, of course, that's still a cautionary thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, the package says don't stick it in your ear,
Speaker 1: which leads to the question, what are they want? What
Speaker 1: are we supposed to be using them for? I always
Speaker 1: think just the outside of the ear, just a little
Speaker 1: maze around the actual ear canal. Sure, okay, that's valid.
Speaker 1: That's a good place to use it. You know, I've
Speaker 1: I've heard of individuals who have traveled to other countries.
Speaker 1: I think this particular friend of a friend that went
Speaker 1: to Eastern Europe and they went to the store. They
Speaker 1: were staying there for a nextended period of time no
Speaker 1: Q tips, So he was like, what am I gonna do?
Speaker 1: How I'm gonna clean my ears? So he ended up
Speaker 1: just getting pieces of tissue and then you know, twisting
Speaker 1: it up and then trying to clean his ears that way.
Speaker 1: That doing that, he ended up getting tissue caught in
Speaker 1: his ear, stuck in his ear canal, and then had
Speaker 1: to go to the doctor for that. So that raises
Speaker 1: the question, Well, if we live in a world without
Speaker 1: Q tips, then when we still stick things in our
Speaker 1: ears and we'd still have to go to the emergency room,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I feel like the e er there
Speaker 1: was would probably be like another American tried to d
Speaker 1: I O y a Q tip. That's my Eastern European.
Speaker 1: That's good, that's good. I was buying it. Um. And
Speaker 1: if you need a little something else to encourage you
Speaker 1: not to go digging around with a Q tip, I
Speaker 1: recommend using out the scene in the most recent season
Speaker 1: I think it is of Girls, Oh Yeah, where she
Speaker 1: she ends up going a little too deep with a
Speaker 1: cute tip and then has to do the other ear
Speaker 1: to cancel it out. Well, she has obsessive compulsive disorder,
Speaker 1: which is why she's jamming it into her ear in
Speaker 1: the first place. Um. But like a lot a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of that show is painful to watch,
Speaker 1: but that scene in particular was was painful on a
Speaker 1: very physical level, because you're just going don't do that
Speaker 1: to your ears? Yeah. Yeah, And if you really need
Speaker 1: to do that, you feel like you've got at your
Speaker 1: wife poem, you gotta go see the doctor. Right. And
Speaker 1: in fact, there is a great little video that I
Speaker 1: sent you and I said, green geting awful, which shows
Speaker 1: a professional extraction of a giant chunk of ear wax.
Speaker 1: And it looks like when they're taking it out, looks
Speaker 1: like a croissant that's been stuped into someone's ear. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine? I can imagine. I can picture it because
Speaker 1: you made me watch the video. Are are we going
Speaker 1: to turn that video into a science on the Web episode?
Speaker 1: I think so? All right, we must be down look
Speaker 1: forward to that everyone in the meantime. Uh And certainly
Speaker 1: if you want to go ahead and see if that
Speaker 1: video has published yet, and it may have, who knows
Speaker 1: what the timeline isn't the sort of thing, UH, go
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is
Speaker 1: where you will find all the podcast episodes. That's where
Speaker 1: you'll find links out to our very social media account
Speaker 1: to find our blog posts of videos, everything you could
Speaker 1: want to know about Julie and myself and uh you
Speaker 1: know we'd like to hear from you on this ear
Speaker 1: wax situation. Yeah, it's a safe place you can send
Speaker 1: us your thoughts on it. You can let us know
Speaker 1: what the consistency and the smell is if you happen
Speaker 1: to know that any odd ear wax stories were gained
Speaker 1: for them, and you could do that by sending an
Speaker 1: email to blow the mind at how step works dot
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