posted
It sounds obvious but not a year ago I was at a party (for a mom's group) and there were half a dozen women all buzzing about these amazing ear candles and how they cleaned out their kids' ears and helped with ear infections. I'm guessing the look of abject horror on my face is part of the reason why I didn't make any friends at that gathering...
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by DDDaysh: but I've never known how it works.
Because they don't. Work, that is.
These dangerous idiocies have been all the rage for several years among the new-agey folks. Why it has taken this long for the FDA to speak out against them is beyond me.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: Why it has taken this long for the FDA to speak out against them is beyond me.
Same reason why it takes them so long to speak out or do their job when it comes to homeopathic/naturopathic snake oil: the regulatory body is hampered by conflicting interests.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I just saw homeopathic baby medicine in the pharmacy the other day, and it about made me want to scream at the pharmacy manager for having that crap in their store. Some parent is going to give their baby a placebo, and wonder why they don't get better.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
Not all natural remedies are bad. I swear by Chamomile tea for colds and headaches. Maybe it works or maybe it's a placebo effect, but it's not hurting anything.
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Christine: Not all natural remedies are bad. I swear by Chamomile tea for colds and headaches. Maybe it works or maybe it's a placebo effect, but it's not hurting anything.
How much of getting over a headache is just relaxing and focusing on something else though?
My remedy for never having a stuffy nose is pressing your tongue to the top of your mouth then pressing between your eyebrows over and over in the shower.
I found the pressing thing on stumbleupon, but combined with a shower it can clear you out for a whole day.
Posts: 549 | Registered: Feb 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Christine: Not all natural remedies are bad.
Homeopathy IS NOT THE SAME as "natural remedies", which are a mixed bag.
Homeopathy, like these ear candles, has NO evidence of effectiveness, nor any reasonable mechanism by which it might work. Some natural remedies (and IIRC, chamomile might be one of them) have evidence of effectiveness and/or reasonable mechanisms.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
The fire at the top of the cone creates a vacuum in the cone, pulling out excess ear wax. One girl I knew could use up almost two cones on each ear, she would have to do this every couple of months for obvious reasons whereas I tryed it and barely put a dent in one cone for both ears. Hell, the things even cleared a case of vertigo when something had lodged in her ear canal and the medicine from the doctor wasnt helping.
As far as it being dangerous, take a paper plate and make a hole in the middle and put tin foil on top of that and stick the cone straight through. The person needs to be laying on their side, as the fire burns down the cone use scissors to cut off burnt sections to control the burn. The vacuum is not strong enough to damage anything in your head, and if the bottom of the cone is about two inches deep in wax assume that the vacuum isnt getting through.
Besides, we all use q-tips to clean our ears and it even says on the package not to.
Posts: 2302 | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by AchillesHeel: The fire at the top of the cone creates a vacuum in the cone, pulling out excess ear wax.
Nope. This has been disproven several different ways. If I provide some links, will you follow them, or would it be a waste of time?
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Christine: Not all natural remedies are bad.
ALL homeopathic remedies, however, are necessarily bad. They have an infinitely low chance of actually having any effect on you, and this is circumstantially good, because any effect they would have on you were they not to be diluted beyond any effect possible would be to poison you or create side effects through the application vector.
Homeopathy is bad. Homeopathy is 100% bad. There is no redeeming feature to it.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by AchillesHeel: Besides, we all use q-tips to clean our ears and it even says on the package not to.
Speak for yourself! My father got a very serious ear infection from doing this and I never ever put q-tips in my ears.
Besides, even if another stupid practice is more commonplace, it doesn't make a less commonplace stupid practice any less stupid.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by AchillesHeel: The fire at the top of the cone creates a vacuum in the cone, pulling out excess ear wax.
Nope. This has been disproven several different ways. If I provide some links, will you follow them, or would it be a waste of time?
Which ever way it works, I have seen it pull excessive earwax out of someones ear. Why is anyone getting up in arms over this anyway? its just an earcone. No one here is saying something crazy like you should have your dog lick your wounds instead of cleaning the wound and dressing it.
Posts: 2302 | Registered: Aug 2008
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posted
If it's vacuum they're after, couldn't they find a safer way to do it, (perhaps something like this?)
Posts: 692 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:Originally posted by AchillesHeel: The fire at the top of the cone creates a vacuum in the cone, pulling out excess ear wax.
Nope. This has been disproven several different ways. If I provide some links, will you follow them, or would it be a waste of time?
Which ever way it works, I have seen it pull excessive earwax out of someones ear. Why is anyone getting up in arms over this anyway? its just an earcone. No one here is saying something crazy like you should have your dog lick your wounds instead of cleaning the wound and dressing it.
Did you follow the link? People are injuring their kids with these things.
A doctor can dig out excessive ear wax for you if it's a problem you can't solve with an over the counter FDA-approved ear wax treatment remedy.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by AchillesHeel: Which ever way it works, I have seen it pull excessive earwax out of someones ear.
You've seen what you thought was excessive earwax being pulled out of someone's ear. Which is not the same as it actually pulling wax out of an ear. If it didn't look like it worked I'm sure people wouldn't have bought into it.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
This reminds me of ads I used to get in the mail for a local salon that would put your feet in a bath that was supposed to draw all the toxins out of your body. They had a picture showing feet going into a little tub full of clear water, and another picture showing blackened water. It was meant to show all the nastiness that had been drawn out of the body via the feet.
I haven't seen that lately. I always wondered whether they put some agent in the water that oxidizes or reacts with something on your skin and turns black gradually, or whether they actively pump in some kind of dye or dirt while you're sitting there.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I did have to have a doctor remove some excessive earwax from my ear once. I would never do it at home!
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by AchillesHeel: . Why is anyone getting up in arms over this anyway? its just an earcone. No one here is saying something crazy like you should have your dog lick your wounds instead of cleaning the wound and dressing it.
Again, achillesheel, comparing it against another stupid practice doesn't make it any less stupid.
People are 'up in arms' about the practice because it is both ineffective and dangerous.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by DSH: If it's vacuum they're after, couldn't they find a safer way to do it, (perhaps something like this?)
Well, in this case it's a good thing that the candles don't actually produce any vacuum, because the amount of vacuum it would take to actually remove earwax would literally rupture the eardrum.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by AchillesHeel: ... Why is anyone getting up in arms over this anyway? its just an earcone ...
There is also the 'think of the children' angle in the FDA release. It is one kind of wacky to put fire near your ear on purpose, it is an even worse kind of wacky to do this to children before they can form their own ideas about self-preservation.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Christine: I did have to have a doctor remove some excessive earwax from my ear once. I would never do it at home!
Me too. It involved using a curette and it was unpleasant, but I'd much rather have a qualified, insured professional handling the curette than try to deal with it myself.
I learned that day that I have the Arnold ear cough reflex! (Darndest thing...poking about in the ear canal makes it feel like there's something prodding my epiglottis.)
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
This is what a doctor's office will typically use to apply a high-pressure stream of warmed, diluted, hydrogen peroxide to loosen and expel ear wax build-up.
You can replicate the experience yourself with a bulb syringe, albeit with a bit more mess. Probably best done in the shower.
Over-the-counter options are mineral oil and ear drops that will loosen the wax and allow it to run out on it's own, but that typically is most effective when applied regularly as a prophylactic measure. If you've got a huge amount of build up the ear drops would probably take several applications to clear things out.
I can't imagine any plausible mechanism for removal of ear wax by means of lighting a tube of paper or fabric on fire and sticking it in your ear. There is no way that a vacuum of any sort not likely to cause severe damage would do the job.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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quote:Originally posted by AchillesHeel: The fire at the top of the cone creates a vacuum in the cone, pulling out excess ear wax.
Nope. This has been disproven several different ways. If I provide some links, will you follow them, or would it be a waste of time?
Which ever way it works, I have seen it pull excessive earwax out of someones ear. Why is anyone getting up in arms over this anyway? its just an earcone.
So that was a "don't bother, I don't want to know the truth" in response to the links option?
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Well, knix all of that. I just did some investigating of my own and the only thing I cant explain is why I never had build-up after using them myself while my girlfriend had plenty of "earwax" at the bottom. The major risks seem to when you either are forcing the cone into a childs head or are unsafe with burning/melting things. But the build-up at the bottom being nothing more than the very beeswax that you have melted and not earwax sounds like a much more reasonable argument as to why no one should use them.
I still dont get why after using one cone on both ears there was no build up at all when I used it, and lets assume that I would notice hot wax filling my ear.
quote:And if you'd would Rivka connect me to something showing an inherent risk aside from violently jabbing something into ones head or not protecting oneself from the burnt discards of the cone I would appreciate it.
Rivka was pretty clear that the links she was referring to would show that the product was ineffective, not that it was extraordinarily dangerous. (though there have been injuries and even a death associated with their use)
In the little bit of reading I've done on this, it looks like when an actual analysis has been done that the the "wax" that is found in the candle after use has turned out to be residue from the burning candle and that similar residue accumulates in a candle burned while not stuck in someone's ear.
This is like the "detox foot pads" that are sold on infomercials and in drug stores that turn black after use, supposedly because they are absorbing "toxins" through the bottoms of your feet. But the same pads will turn black if you just dampen them with water.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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posted
I don't know what is worse: People that actually thought this stuff worked, or the fact that the FSA had to spend money researching it.
Kind of sad.. Almost as sad as the $3 million from the stimulus bill passed last year to study surgery in space. Although I will admit that if I needed surgery I would be seeing if I could volunteer as a test subject!
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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quote:Which ever way it works, I have seen it pull excessive earwax out of someones ear.
Have you tried burning one without putting it in someone's ear? It'll pull "earwax" out of thin air.
Note: welders routinely use earplugs so that hot sparks can't enter their ears and perforate their eardrums. No way I'm putting one of those things in my ear, even for a joke.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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