This Podcast Will Kill You - Ep 215 The Hidden Depths of Earwax

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

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/3WwtIAuSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. A 50-year-old woman presented to her GP following an episode of ear candling. After 15 minutes, the person performing the candling burned herself while attempting to remove the candle and spilled candle wax into the patient's right ear canal. On examination, a piece of candle wax was found in the patient's ear, and she was referred to the local ear, nose, and throat department. Under general anesthetic, a large mass of solidified yellow candle wax was removed from the deep meatus of the ear. The patient had a small perforation in her right tympanic membrane.

Results of a pure tone audiogram showed a mild conductive hearing loss on the right side. At a follow-up appointment one month later, the perforation was still there and the patient's hearing had not improved. An account of why not? to ear candle. I mean, just one example. Just one. That sounds horrific. Yep. I agree. Every single account of ear candling that I read was exactly like this. This particular account comes from an article from 2007 by Rafferty et al published in the Canadian Family Physician that was titled, Ear Candling. Should general practitioners recommend it? The answer was no. No, by the way.

firmly. Wow. That's awful. Yeah. That's awful. It's not great. Hi, I'm Erin Welsh. And I'm Erin Elman Updike. And this is, this podcast will kill you. Today we're talking about earwax. Ear wax. Continuing our bodily fluids. There's so much more that we, I've been like mentally collecting them. There's like saliva would be a great one. Belly button lint. What's in there? I mean, toe jam. Dirt and skin cells? I don't know. It's probably the same thing as toe jam, Erin. Well, we'll do an episode on it, maybe.

Okay, can't wait. We'll have to see if there's enough material there. But I'm just getting it. I'm sorry. Absolutely done. Thank you. I am thrilled for this episode. I can't wait because I have nothing to contribute, but I really want to hear what you have to say.

I'm sure that you want, I mean, I want to know what makes up your, Yeah, I have several pages of notes, but like, I'm here for you. I'm here for you. I love you. I love you. I also love quarantine time. Me too. That's what time it is.

How is that done? Was that nicely done? Really, really good. Good, good, good. What are we drinking this week, Aaron? We're drinking the gold mine. The gold mine. Yeah.

Not all earwax is gold. Some of it is. So many different shades of browns. So many different shades of browns. Rays, blacks, yellowish. Yeah, brown. Did you already say brown? I did, yeah.

Okay, yeah. Lots of shades, though. Lots of shades within mustard. But we are, we're drinking. I mean, we named it a goldmine because the amount of information that you can tell from earwax is more than I ever expected. I didn't know that, Aaron, so I can't. Plus, earwax is a resource, like, not just informationally. Well, there's a lot to cover.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You're going to tell me everything. What's in the gold mine first? I mean, we wanted to make it look gold-ish. You know, it's got pineapple juice, jalapeno simple syrup, and lime club soda. It's refreshing, delicious. This episode will come out summertime, I think.

So it's great in the summer. In the summer. In the northern hemisphere summer. You can find the full recipe on our website, this podcast with kill you.com, and all of our social media channels, which you should be following us if you're not already because we're there posting things like this quarantine recipe. Also, I don't remember what else. Rate review and subscribe.

Thank you to everyone who has left us a review. It really does help other people find this podcast. And we'd like for like, I don't know, everyone to listen to it. Yeah. If you are watching on YouTube, hi. Hi. And we are there that you can subscribe. in a website we have called this podcast.

You can find transcripts. You can find sources from every episode. Merch, Patreon, bookshop.org, bookmobile, bloodmobile, who does the music. There's a lot. There's a lot. And I just, I know we always thank everyone at the end of these episodes, but I was thinking how there are, there's so much out there. Like there are so many podcasts out there.

There's so much media to listen to, to watch, et cetera. and the fact that people choose to engage with ours is really, it's really surreal and wonderful. And so thank you for choosing to spend your time with us. It means the world, truly. It really does. It really does. Like we love getting to make this podcast as like our jobs. Yeah.

And sharing everything that we learn with you. And I still can't believe that anyone listens. Truly. Same. Every time someone's like, oh, I listen, I'm like, really? Really? You've heard of this podcast? What?

Why? Do you listen? Thank you. Thank you. We appreciate it. We do. But enough, enough of all that. It's time for earwax.

Earwax. Let's get into it right after this break. Earwax. That's how I started. Good. I like it. All caps. So we all know what it is.

It's the junk in our ears. The official medical term for earwax is serumen. Junk is, you know, I'm going to take issue with that. Oh, I can't wait for you to take issue with that. So serumin is this waxy substance that our ear makes. Our ear makes this in order to stay lubricated, to clean and protect our ear canal. And really, it functions a lot like the mucus in our nose, except it's kind of also completely different. So let's get into it, shall we?

It's just ear boogers. It's ear boogers. Yeah. More or less. But different. So it is a protective barrier the same way that our nose mucus is. It is a little bit acidic. And so in being a little bit acidic, it keeps our ear canal acidic, which helps to inhibit the growth of bacteria and fungi, which would really love to be able to grow in our ear canal. There was a 1994 paper, which I didn't read this paper, but I read a paper that quoted this paper that called the ear canal, quote, the greenhouse of the human body, end quote, because of how much fungi would love to grow in our ear canal. And I was like, wouldn't we have a lot of moist, dark places? I was like, yeah, there's, there's got to be, I can think of many greenhouses. Me too. Populate throughout our bodies.

But anyways, someone back the ear canal. The belly button being one of them potentially. I mean every mucous membrane, really. Every mucus membrane. Anyways, just like in our nose, in our ears, we have these glands just underneath the skin that are what produced the oily substance that ends up getting mixed with shed skin cells and debris that all together become our earwax. There's two types of glands. There are sebaceous glands, and we have sebaceous glands all over our body. Right. And sebaceous glands produce a substance called sebum, which is like this sort of oily type of substance. And then we also have in our ears these modified apocrine glands. And our apocrine glands are basically like our sweat glands are a type of aprican gland as well. And these glands produce a variety of substances, including

lipids, so like fats, wax esters, alcohols, something called squaline, which is a kind of fatty substance and cholesterol. And all of these get together, the secretions from our apricon glands and the secretions from our sebum glands and mix with our dead skin cells, which I find very fascinating because the cells in our ear, like our skin cells shed all the time, right? Like rub your hand against your skin and the top layer is sloughing off. Okay, do it. It's sloughed. I've sloughed the top layer. That's happening in our ears as well. And it moves from the inside of our ear towards the outside of our ear.

Like, the cells do this shedding thing in a particular way. There's a paper from 1964 that, like, tracked the way that our ear canal sheds its own skin. How is it doing? Hairs? No. So here's what's so fascinating. It's not little hairs or little cilia. A big part of what moves the skin and all of the debris within it is our jaw movements.

So when we are talking and chewing, it helps to move the ear wax and these skin cells along the ear canal itself. And this is all our, technically our outer ear, which is our ear has three parts, inner, middle, and outer. And this is all the outer parts. So from the tympanic membrane out towards the outside world. Cool. Okay. I have very cool. I have a few questions. Give it to me. Where are these glands located? Are they located throughout our ear canal, just in our inner ear? Okay. So yeah, there's throughout our ear canal. This is all outer ear canal. This is all outer ear. All outer ear. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Oh yeah. Yeah. It feels like it's inner because it's inside of like the oracle or the pinnow, which is like the visible part of your ear. The little hole. Yeah. But it's, yeah, it's a canal that's like usually like an inch or so long. It can be a little bit windy. So it sometimes feels long. longer when you're looking in it.

But okay. How much do we produce? And here's the other question. I don't have an answer. Wait. I don't have an answer to that question. And it bothers me so much that I didn't see that anywhere. Do you have an answer?

I don't have an answer. I mean, I had a hard time finding. I was trying to find the origin of these glands, the like seruminous glands and like, when did they evolve and blah, blah, blah. And I mean, maybe my search terms weren't great, but I couldn't find anything. Okay. So then the other question is, does the amount that we produce, what affects it? And I was just thinking of like, if you're grinding your teeth at night, and that's an eight solid hours of just jaw movement. Are you producing more earwax? Are you moving more earwax? Is there an impact on earwax? That's an excellent question. I have literally no idea. I have no idea, but that's such an interesting question. So we do.

do our ear, the glands in our ears, the seruminous glands, so the sebum glands and the apricrine glands, they reduce in number as we get older. And so that's one thing that's going to affect how much earwax we make. So the older that you get, the less, the drier your earwax tends to be because you have less of these glands. Why? Don't ask me. I don't know. Except that like, I mean, your skin gets drier in general as you get older, right? So you're just losing sebum producing glands everywhere. I don't, I don't actually know. Why do they fall off? Yeah. Why do they fall?

They fall off or they just kind of like dry up, you know? I mean, I get you. I don't mean physically fall off. Okay, what about ear hair? Ear hair. Ear hair also increases in number as we get older. And so the older people might have quite a lot of hair in their ears, especially males. And that can actually block the earwax from coming all the way out so it can contribute to serumin

impaction, which I'll talk a little bit more about in a minute. Why do we get more ear hair when we get older? older. I don't have it. I don't have anything. It's where we get hair everywhere when you get older, right? Okay. We need to do body hair as an episode. Listen, I'm down. So there's two main types of earwax. It's usually split. There's wet earwax and there's dry earwax. And I think you're going to talk a little bit more about this distinction, Aaron. But it's genetically determined, which I think is so interesting. Very interesting. Except that obviously it does also, like I said, get drier as we age. But the drier flakier earwax, which some people have, is usually lighter in color, and it tends to be more

common in people of Asian and Native American descent. And then the sticky dark earwax, which is what I have, same. Very sticky wax. It's more common in people of African and European descent. And apparently, the dry, flaky earwax is like a recessive trait. Correct. You're going to tell me more about that. That's all I got about earwax. There's not. I tried to find if there was like a big literature about like who's more likely to get earwax impaction or something like that. And there isn't a strong association between types of earwax. Like you can get too much of it whether you have the dry flaky stuff or the wet sticky

stuff. Okay. That's interesting. Okay. Yeah. And so under typical or ideal conditions, our outer ear is kind of like a self-cleaning oven. Okay.

So it makes this wax and then it pushes it out in order. to keep our ear canals free of debris and bacteria and getting rid of all of these skin cells once they're dead and done, all right? The biggest complication that we see is when this mechanism, for one reason or another, doesn't go as planned, and so our earwax builds up and gets stuck inside of our ear canals. And this is called serumin impaction. Why might that happen? Let me tell you, there's so many different reasons.

It's probably the biggest earwax complaint, certainly that you see in primary care or things like that. There's lots of other things that you can get stuck in your ear canal. Bugs and Legos and other small toys, very common. I feel like you have an ear invasion phobia. Do I remember that? I do. I love that you remember that and said it on a podcast for the world. I do.

It's because of the wrath of con. Okay. Okay. in the wrath of con they put a little like alien guy in this is like the original star trek movie um they put a little alien like mind control guy and then in animorphs that's also how they control or something is that what they're called wow yeah something like that did you know they're making a series aaron i do know that i am very excited about it so excited about it and i'm also nervous because like those books were very dark i know so we'll see how it goes so we'll see what

happens. But anyways, so yes, I do have a phobia of like mind control creatures being put into my ear. Oh, specifically. I just figured it was like any bug. I mean, yeah, I don't like the idea of any, but I've taken some cockroaches out of ears and it's not like a pleasant experience for the person who has the cockroach in their ear. Sorry. I regret going down this rabbit. Well, it's not great. Okay. But anyways. earwax much more common to get stuck in your ears than other things. And the biggest issue that can happen from this is that if the earwax completely obscures your tympanic membrane, which is the thing that separates your outer ear from your middle ear, and this is like the membrane that allows us to hear, then not only can this be very uncomfortable, it can create the sensation of fullness, it can be very itchy, but it also can cause hearing loss, right? If you completely block the thing that we use to hear, you can have substantially diminished hearing.

And it can really exacerbate tinnitus or that ringing in your ear tinnitus, some people call it. I have that. Yep. It also could set you up for an ear infection because you're obviously blocking a tube, which anytime you do that can set you up for an infection. So this can happen for a few different reasons. Number one, if you just have very tight or very like snaky shaped ear canals, then, then you might be more prone to getting those blocked. So we might see this in small children who have smaller ear canals, they might be more likely to get earwax build up,

or if for whatever reason, developmentally, you have a different shape of ear canal. Or if you just happen to be a person who makes a lot of earwax, and I don't have any statistics on who you are compared to anyone else. Yeah. So the biggest modifiable risk factors are using things like cotton swabs that you stick in your ear. As in don't use them because using them will lead to, impaction. Yeah. Not only can they push the earwax further in, which can lead to impaction. They

also can create little micro-abbrations in your ear canal, which can put you at risk for infection. Also, hearing aids or all of the earbuds that we use now, they just shove stuff down into your ear. Yeah. And then, like we talked about as we get older, our earwax gets drier, which can make it sometimes more likely to get stuck, but also the hairs that we see in the outer, like the very outer part can just prevent all that earwax gets drier. wax from leaving. So we actually see, even though your ear canals are larger when you're older, we see more impaction in older adults than we do in younger adults or children. Wow. Yeah. How do you manage impaction removal? How do you manage? You're not supposed to use cotton swabs.

Don't use cotton swabs. This is not a medical advice podcast, but please don't. Yeah. If it's impacted, like if you have true serumint impaction in your ear, then usually you're going to need a little bit of help to get it out, though not always. So in the office, we might use something that's like a spray bottle with a special hose nozzle on the end of it that we can stick just far enough but not too far into your ear canal and spray warm, like lukewarm water, sometimes with hydrogen peroxide because the bubbles can help. And you just spray, spray, spray, spray until you can dislodge that thing. it's really, really satisfying, like, so satisfying. I'm sure videos exist on the internet. Oh, yes, definitely. Sometimes we might use like a curret or something,

or there's like little vacuum aspirators that like the E&T specialists might have to really suck it out depending on how it's in there. Or at home, there's actually a lot of things that people can do that are safe to not only help to soften up something that might be stuck, but also just help get rid of earwax if you feel like you have too much of it. Though, again, your ears are a self-cleaning oven that's going to do it all on their own without your help.

But over-the-counter remedies might be even just putting water or like saline drops in the ear, which can help to soften up dry earwax. Hydrogen peroxide or there's similar drops that are made of carbamide peroxide. That's like DeBrox brand drops in the pharmacies here. Those basically just help to soften and the bubbles can kind of help to loosen up some of that wax so that. it can come out on their own. Some people might use mineral oil, which is totally safe to use. But in general, the goal is just to keep that ear wax soft enough that your ear can do its job of getting it out on its own. Ear candling is a thing. I want to mention real quick,

because you heard about it in our first-hand account. It's a thing. The claim apparently on how it works is that it creates a negative pressure in your ear canal to draw out the wax. I did not. know that was the claim. Apparently that's the claim. It also apparently is supposedly this negative pressure also helps to treat other non-ear wax-related things like allergic rhinitis or like sinus pressure in general. So notwithstanding the fact that you can legitimately just be setting yourself on fire, as you heard in our firsthand account, you can also end up with wax that is not the ear

variety, the candle variety that gets stuck in your ear. Right. Which can potentially cause really serious damage to the tympanic members. brain. And not only is there no evidence in the literature that it works, there is actually at least one study that shows that it does not work and actually creates deposits of candle wax, even if you don't have like visible candle wax. Like in our firsthand account, it was obviously like a big deal. Chunks got stuck. But even in this other study, there was just like deposits of like debris from the smoke and the wax in the ear.

without removing any wax whatsoever. So you're just starting. Adding gunk to your ear canal. Adding gunk to your ear without removing any actual earwax whatsoever. Also, no negative pressure was created. In this study, they used like a fake ear canal and they put an ear candle in it and they measured the pressure. No negative pressure differential created. And they found all of this like just stuff that was deposited in the ears without getting any earwax out.

So it seems like there's no, there's. there seem to be no clear benefits whatsoever. No benefits whatsoever. Just a long list of cons and potentially severe outcomes. Severe outcomes. Okay. And that is Erin Earwax. Beautiful.

Thank you. Beautiful. Thank you so much. I think it's my shortest episode ever. Please tell me everything I want to know from you. God, there is so much. It's going to be great. Okay.

I can't wait. one of the true absolute joys of doing this podcast is discovering that there's like a whole world of study out there about a topic that on the surface seems pretty mundane. Earwax. Earwax. Earwax didn't immediately strike me as a topic of fascination despite being like, we should do earwax next and pushing to do it. Classic. I was like, okay, I knew that it was probably important for ear health and that you shouldn't use. cotton swabs to remove wax from your ears, but that was basically the limit of my knowledge.

As it turns out, earwax is, like our quarantini suggests, a true gold mine of information. I came across papers discussing earwax in the context of human migration, art history, forensic analysis, and anthropogenic change. What? I am now. I'm a convert. I'm a believer. I love it.

And I think hopefully by the end of this history section, you might be too. Or at least you'll have a couple pieces of trivia to impress your friends with at the next party. I can't wait. No, I love that. Earwax has been a subject of at least minor medical interest for millennia, mostly in the context of its removal or what it signifies for total body health. So, for instance, Hippocrity is apparently viewed sweet earwax as an unfavorable. symptom, while bitter earwax meant that you were in good health. So people were out here just tasting earwax.

That is what I wrote. I was like, I don't, I can't think of any other way that you can judge bitter versus sweet besides your taste buds. And so, yeah, Hippocrates is out there going, taste your patient's earwax. I mean, they tasted a lot of urine, et cetera, so it shouldn't surprise. It shouldn't surprise, but it did surprise. And my capacity for surprise is. still present.

Still there. That's good. I think that's a good thing. It's good. You know, there's wonder left in this world. Exactly. And of course, the typical recipes of unlikely ingredients for removal, things like milk, cinnamon, mure, almond oil, saffron, these were described to cure earache or remove earwax.

I saw almond oil listed still today, so that one's interesting. Yeah, it is interesting. Not olive oil. But not olive oil. Why? I don't know. No? Don't know.

That's what I read. As far back as the second century Celsius, who's a Greek philosopher and physician, suggested using water to flush out foreign bodies and potentially earwax impactions. So we're ahead of his time. Then the suggestion, his suggestion, to use, quote, the saliva of a hungry man, end quote, to treat a larval infestation in the ear. Which is like. So many questions there.

So many questions. The saliva of a hungry man. Yep. Where does one get this? How hungry do they have to be? Right. How much saliva? Does it all have to come from the same man?

Or can it be from multiple hungry men? Well, it says a hungry man, not saliva of hungry men. Okay. And what larva are infesting your ear? I mean, you described cockroaches. Yeah, but... Okay. I don't know.

I apologize for that haunting thought, but I... I read it, so now you have to read it. Thank you. Just like the booger taste thing last week. Over the centuries, physicians became more interested in earwax in the context of ear health and hearing overall. It was recognized by the late 1700s that earwax held several important functions, including preventing dirt and insects from injuring the eardrum. They seemed particularly preoccupied by insects. Quote,

Yellow humor purged by the ears, defendeth them against fleas, little flies, and other small worms and beasts that might otherwise enter within them. End quote. So it's not just me who has a, like, fear of creepy crawlies in my ears. No, I think that's a reasonable thing to fear. Thank you. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry if I imply that it wasn't.

I also fear the yerk. I appreciate that. And so you described how your wax, you're producing it continuously. It's just going out of your ears continuously. And this continuous production was shown by a professor who carried out a very simple experiment. I think this was in the 1700s. Just by wiping his ears with a piece of black velvet 100 times an hour. And no matter how many times he wiped, there was always a little bit of wax on the cloth.

I just loved that imagery. That's amazing. Physicians also noted several cases where someone's hearing improved or worsened depending on earwax compaction or removal. And so in this way, earwax kind of helped to turn hearing into a more fluid dynamic state, where it could be permanent or temporary, it could change over the course of your life, and it could be partial or complete. Earwax related deafness was apparently not uncommon or other issues related to earwax compaction. So the 17th century scientist Robert Hook described his. months-long experience with tinnitus or tinnitus and impaired hearing that was ultimately found to be caused in part by a hard, compacted stone of earwax, which was not a rare occurrence.

All sorts of remedies were employed in attempts to remove earwax, like applying heat, plugging the ear with perfumed wool or cotton to try to stimulate the flow, liquid injections with various ingredients. Hook used warmed honey that he wriggled in his ear. Okay. Yeah. I feel like that would attract bugs. Yeah.

Honey? Yeah. It sounds real sticky. It sounds sticky. Yeah. The logic, but he used it warmed. And that, no, I'm not saying that that's any better. I'm just saying that that logic of warming something, that heat to help remove earwax, that held support in the lab, actually, is where it was found to be supported.

In the late 1700s, a chemist who had become interested in the topic, he had a friend with prodigion. ear wax production. I think it was the same guy who did the black velvet earwax experiment. And he supplied the chemist with heaps of earwax. And he discovered that it hardened over time. It melted with heat and it dissolved in water. Makes sense. So yeah. Do you know what's also interesting about warm things in your ear versus cold? This is like a separate topic entirely. But if you if you put cold water in your ear, like if you used cold water to try and judge out your earwax instead of warm water, it would make you super dizzy. It would give you really, really wild vertigo because it does a weird thing that messes

with your inner ear. What? Cold water versus warm water. Why? I don't. It's a different episode. New next week. Next, not next week.

Not next week. Next week we're doing cholesterol. Spoilers. Oh. But when all else fails, any of your honey, whatever. situations fail. There's always physical removal. Yeah. Ear spoons or ear scoops were popular devices. And what was appealing about these tools was that you could just own one yourself and you didn't have to seek out a doctor. If you're like, hey, I, you know, can you clean my ear out?

No, you didn't have to do that. Ear scoops have been around for millennia, as evidenced by historical writings and archaeological finds. But similar to the way, there are just so many parallels between earwax and boogers. So with boogers, you know, as I talked about handkerchiefs and they became status symbols and they transcended their role as just a snot rag. A market of decorative grooming tools grew and there are examples of these really intricately and ornately carved earpicks and ear scoops. Really? Yeah. Beautiful ear scoops. There's one, there's a paper. You can see an image of this. There was one that was found at Jamestown, the English. colony established in what is now Virginia in 1607 and in like the first iteration of that town,

they found in archaeological digs a combination toothpick and ear scoop. It's shaped like a dolphin. And so the toothpick part comes out of its little mouth and then there's an ear scoop coming out of its tail. What? And then it has a little loop on its back. And so you could wear it as a necklace. What? And carry it around with you. A little ear scoop. Who knew? Who knew? Who knew? I definitely did not know that. I did not. And also, I was like, dolphin, why a dolphin?

Yeah. And apparently sea creatures were featured heavily in jewelry and decorative items at the time because maritime supremacy was blossoming in England. Oh, that's so interesting. That's very, that's very interesting. Because there was another ear scoop found somewhere in England that was similar. And they were like, we think it's a dolphin. It might be a fish.

It's some sort of marine organism. Marine creature. Yeah. Wow. But these ear scoop tools also signify that earwax was not solely relegated to the realm of medicine. Everyone was individually concerned with it. It was just a routine part of life to clean out your ears. And those who could afford to do so often had their ears cleaned out by a barber who used special tools to scoop out any crud.

And this is referenced in plays. So there's a play, I believe, from the 1700s where a soldier worries that the king has had his ears picked too much. And so he has no protection from flies, from earwigs, and from flattery. So he's like, anyone has the ear of the king with his ears cleaned of earwax. Oh, my God. That's so funny. Is that hilarious? And there are occasionally hints at the recognition that earwax hold some value, like the situation that I just described, where it's like, well, no, we need some earwax there. Mostly it was considered a waste product or junk, as you put it.

Junk. So sorry for calling it that. I accept. I accept your apology. And so for instance, in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, Agamemnon is described as not having, quote, so much brain as earwax. Devastating. Devastating. Devastating. Yeah. Put that in your back pocket for it. Yeah, right. In reality, however, earwax held far more uses than I would have guessed. So, for instance, in the American frugal housewife, which was written by Lydia Child in 1832, holds earwax in quite high regard. What? Quote, nothing is better than earwax to prevent the painful effects resulting from a wound by a nail, skewer, etc.

It should be put on as soon as possible. Those who are troubled with cracked lips have found this remedy successful when others have failed. It is one of those sorts of cures which are very likely to be laughed at. But I know of it's having produced very beneficial results. So she's using it as Vaseline. Using it as chapstick, yeah. Taking out the earwax, put it on your cuts. Literally, I have like an aquifer stick that I do that with, not earwax.

Okay. Yep. Uh-huh. Yeah. Ear wax on your lips. I don't know if I'm going to try that one. I don't, I mean, you can. I could.

I could. I certainly entitled to. Got enough earwax, that's for sure. I feel like I'm a super producer as well. Me too. I've always felt that way. Same. What are you going to do about it?

It's just, it's life. It's life. You know, we probably make a very typical amount of earwax, Aaron. We probably do. We probably do. We're probably not special in any way. No. No.

We'll see. I mean, maybe somebody will do a paper and we'll revisit the topic and discover our specialness. Okay, so I didn't see it mentioned in the American Fugal Housewife, but the author may have also been familiar with the common practice of using earwax while stitching and sewing. It's really great at keeping the ends of cut thread from unraveling. I could see that, actually. Yeah.

And so, in fact, there are some bodkins, which are these, like, large, blunted needles with a big eye to hold ribbon. It's kind of like a tapestry needle you'd use to sew it to. weave in ends, but like bigger. Yeah. Some of these have ear scoops on the end of them. So that you can scoop and then use it for your, that is so interesting. Right?

Oh, wow. Earwax was also favored by many artists who used it to help bind pigment to the paper or other surfaces they were working on. So I asked you to find a paper for me because I couldn't find it. And this is what was inside that paper. Okay, I didn't read it. Okay, okay, good. Spoilers.

Yeah. So, you know, illuminated manuscripts, those beautiful books with intricate colorful decorations or illustrations around the side, and they were like all hand drawn and everything. The Book of Kells is a famous one if you want to look up like a really exceptionally beautiful example. But apparently, many illustrators of these manuscripts were regular users of earwax to prevent bubbles from forming in their metallic paint mixtures. What? And so the author of a paper that I read about this actually tried it out himself. He made a couple of bronze pigment egg white mixtures. One that had earwax added to it and one without. You mix them together. Of course, egg white's going to create bubbles. And he was like, yeah, there were fewer bubbles in the earwax one.

And then he used it to like paint, I think UCSF. It was the example. He must have been, that must have been where he was. Yeah. But one that, so he compared the one that had earwax and the one that didn't. And you can kind of see that the one with earwax is smoother and the color seems more consistent. So any artists who are out there listening who have been struggling blending ear or egg whites into paints, try a dab of earwax. Let us know.

Let us know how it goes. They probably use like artificial things now that are just, that have waxes in them or whatever. Yeah, you might not need earwax for that purpose. Did that guy use his own earwax or someone else's? I believe he used his own. Interesting. I wonder if it depends. Like, is it got to be wet earwax or is dry earwax okay?

Right. Which type? I mean, so that's a great question. I think he, I think, I mean, he said he had wet earwax. Okay. But I don't know if he experimented. That could be another paper. That'll be another paper.

Another paper. Someone's, someone got a master's thesis at the very least on it. But yeah. earwax. It's a more powerful resource than I expected, rich, rich not just in the application of the stuff itself, but also what it can tell us about ourselves. So, Erin, you mentioned that there are basically two types of earwax in humans, dry and wet, and there might be some that fall in between, but for the most part, the distinction seems to be pretty clear. Yeah. Like pretty night and day. And it's strongly associated with ancestry, like you mentioned. So people with East Asian ancestry tend to have dry earwax, those of European and African ancestry have wet earwax,

and those who have Southern Asian, Pacific Islands, Central Asian, Native North American, and Inuit have intermediate proportions of wet and dry. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. And this observation first started to garner attention around the mid-20th century, and researchers made note of a couple of things. It was also associated with armpit odor. So those who have wet earwax have much more odiferous pits. We have stinkier armpits. We have stinky pits. Agreed. And it seemed to follow a pretty straightforward pattern of inheritance. And just how straightforward was determined in 2006. And this is when researchers published the results that the difference between dry and wet earwax was down to one letter change in one gene

of our DNA. One single nucleotide polymorphism. That's so weird. Yes. Just one nucleotide changes earwax composition and has strong associations with armpit odor. And the drier earwax is, well, and that makes sense because it's all apricrine gland secretions, right? Which is like what your armpit odor is why that is there and your earwax. Your earwax. And it follows this dominant recessive mandelian inheritance, which is the thing that you learn about in school. Right. It's like, well, everything follows this. Basic genetics.

But if you, so if you have two copies of the G version, which is the wet earwax version, or 1G and 1A, wet earwax. But if you have two copies of the A version, that's the nucleotide substitution. Okay. Then you have dry earwax. And you're less stinky. And you're less stinky. And so for context, I feel like eye color is often taught as a simple mandelian trait.

It involves at least 16 genes. Not more? Yeah. Yeah. But this is very interesting. And I didn't go down this rabbit hole. But in addition to being associated with earwax type and armpit odor, this same letter swap might be associated with the amount of colostrum produced. With people with dry earwax producing less colostrum.

Fascinating. Yeah. Also, apricon glands. Exactly. So like what? Yeah. Yeah. How interesting.

So does earwax type matter? Or was it just like a random mutation that spread? And it seems like it might actually matter, although it's unclear why. So some researchers suggest that it could be because of the cold. As humans migrated out of Africa and spread across Eurasia, cold temperatures would have had, would have been a strong selection pressure. Okay. And so the dry earwax phenotype emerged around 45,000 years ago in north or east Asia,

where it was colder. and it's thought that maybe the reduced sweating could have been an advantage or the reduced stinking could have. I don't. Yeah. I don't know. But in any case, like, what these researchers have proposed is that because it's so widespread, it seems like there is some positive selection. It seems like it was like this is selected for it, not just like it happened to spread in a population. Right.

Not just random because it's too prevalent for that. Yeah. Right. That's the idea. How interesting. Okay. So earwax can tell us about human migration. It can be used as a lip balm.

It's great if you're illustrating a medieval illuminated manuscript. And it can be analyzed to tell us about the individual that produced it. So there's some interest, and I don't know how much interest, in the forensic applications of earwax analysis, things like tobacco exposure, cortisol levels, etc., stuff like that. In your earwax. And so there's more. I mean, because your earwax is also like it's being exposed, just like your nose is, right? To the outside world. Yes, you're getting other junk stuck in your, that's why I say junk, Aaron.

Defending myself. Debris. You didn't know about chapstick and earwags. I have no idea. Now that you know, you won't make that same mistake. Won't I? But that's just the uses of human earwax. Oh, no.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Because humans are not the only producers of this glorious stuff. Suruminous glands, the glands that produce earwax are widespread among mammals. Dogs, raccoons, pigs, goats, foxes, cats, whales. Whales. Whales. Do whales even have ears?

Oh, yeah. Okay. There are some fascinating papers on whale cetacean hearing that I really enjoyed. Okay. Yeah. Okay, whales. So this is now, we've arrived at the last and my personal favorite chapter in the Earwax story. Me too.

All cetaceans, whales, dolphins, porpoises evolved from a land-dwelling carnivorous, cat-like creature that began its aquatic journey around 50 million years ago. Okay. Going from land to water is a heck of a transition. And so many different aspects of anatomy and physiology had to change to allow for that to happen, like hearing, which in land dwellers is done using air-adapted ears. When whales evolved, those ears and their hearing more generally adapted to an aquatic environment, but the canals and the wax that they produced did not simply disappear. Instead, baleen whales keep. producing ear wax that accumulates over their entire life rather than getting continuously expelled like ours. What? Yeah. What does that do? Okay. Over time, these waxy layers form an earplug that is centimeters long, like 25 centimeters and one adult male blue whale. A long whale earplug. You can look up pictures of these. I will. Yes. Okay. But that's not even the coolest part. Like, it just keeps getting cooler.

It just, okay. What is amazing about these layers is that they're distinct. About two formed every year, so they're predictable in their deposition. Stop it. And their color corresponds to times of, like, feeding or migration. People have used these earplugs to estimate the age of whales, like tree rings. Tree rings. Ice cores.

They've used this for a while. But what they're doing now is even cooler than that. researchers are using these earplugs to detect layer-specific levels of hormones, contaminants, and other compounds. And so you end up getting a more detailed picture of what a whale's entire life was like. What? Is this where you thought this would go? No. I know.

I know. I was so excited when I was reading these papers. So for instance, there was a male blue whale that was killed in a boat collision and was found to be around 12 years old based on the ear plug. His testosterone spiked enormously a couple years prior, which is when he reached sexual maturity. Oh my gosh. And his cortisol increased over his lifetime. And most of the contaminants that he was exposed to occurred in the first six months of his life, which suggested transfer through just. and lactation, which is really depressing.

Wow. Yeah. Okay. And that's just one whale. One whale, one earplug. One earplug. And as it turns out, people have been collecting and preserving whale earplugs for decades. That shouldn't surprise me.

I know. Shout out to natural history museums, to collections. Like, we can learn so much. It's been unbelievable. And so that same research group who did the study on this single male blue whale looked at cortisol levels in 20 preserved whale earplugs collected from 1870 to 2016. Wow. And they found that cortisol was, which is associated with stress.

Yeah. It's one of our stress hormones. One of our stress hormones. Yeah. It's also essential for life functioning. It is essential for life. Right. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. And what they found was that cortisol was pretty closely tied to whaling counts, as in years where more whales were hunted. were more stressful for whales. So the higher the whaling count, the higher and above whales killed, the higher the cortisol level. Wow. And the whale earplugs they collected.

The exception is World War II when whaling counts were low, but stress was high, no doubt, due to the war also being, yeah, explosions and submarines and all that. Right. And this relationship was especially pronounced in the years following 1972 when the Marine Mammal Protection Act was passed, just a big drop in cortisol. levels. Oh, wow. And that drop remained fairly low until you get to the past few decades, where cortisol increases again in certain years. Why abnormally warm sea surface temperatures in those years? I knew it was going to be global warming. Yeah. Yep. And you, the relationship between

this is just like it is, it's very grim, right? Like this research is so grim, but, it is vital. Yeah. These earplugs are able to show us something that has been kind of hard to measure in certain populations or in certain situations, especially, I mean, cetaceans are incredibly difficult to study, long term as well. And so these earplugs being able to show us the non-lethal human impact on organisms is incredibly important. Right. And tells us so much. Yes.

Like, oh, wow. Yeah. So will we do anything with that information? That remains to be seen. But that is all that I have on earwax. Wow, Erin. I have not thought about whale ears. Okay, there are some papers.

And there is a researcher. I watched a video of hers on, I think it was like an old PBS video or something like that. And she was so engaging and wonderful. And I really liked her. There was one of the papers I will shout out at the end as soon as I find the name of it. I love it. Their ears are just like flat, just like holes, right? They're small, but then they use a lot of like jaw fat or something like that that absorbed.

And I didn't, yeah, I should have spent more time learning about ear or whale hearing overall. That's okay. This wasn't an episode about hearing. I didn't talk about hearing at all. Yeah. How interesting, though. Yeah. I want to know so much more. People can learn more.

People can learn more. I have a bunch of sources all over the place, but I'm going to shout out a few here. If you want to learn more about hearing in whales overall, there's Darlene Kettin is the researcher that I was thinking of, and there's a paper from 1997 that I liked called Structure and Function in Whale ears. And then if you want to check out that paper on the whale cortisol levels over time, there's a paper by Trumbull at all from 2018 called Baleen Whale Cautosol Levels Reveal a physiological response to 20th century whaling. And then a couple more. So there's that paper about wet versus dry earwax and how it's just one snip. And that's by Ohashi at all from 2011. and then earwax and art history by Patrakis from 2000 called Earmarks of Art History,

Saruman and medieval art. And a lot more. I also have a number of papers, but the two that were cited in every other paper ever that I read were one from 1997 by Rosa and Bala Chonda. That was called Physiology, Pathophysiology, and Anthropology slash Epidemiology. of human ear canal secretions from the Journal of the American Academy of Audiology, and then one from 1964 by Alberti called epithelial migration on the tympanic membrane. It was actually really interesting.

I don't read a lot of papers from the 60s, but I always get a take out of it when I get to. I love reading papers from the 60s sometimes. Yeah, it's just, they're so different in vibes. They're so different. They're so different. Yeah. And then I have a bunch of papers on like impact. is serumen and serumin impaction and how we deal with it. And then a few as well on the ear

candling business. You can find all of these sources on our website. This podcast will kill you. com under the episodes tab. You certainly can. A big thank you to Bloodmobile for providing the music for this episode and all of our episodes. Thank you. Thank you to Leanna and Tom and Mark and Pete and Jessica and everyone. Christina. There's like so many people to thank. At exactly right network. Thank you all for making this possible. Yes. Thank you also to anyone who, you know, watches this podcast, listens to this podcast. We appreciate it. Like we said, you have a lot of different ways you can spend your time and we really appreciate you spending that time with us. It means everything. It really truly does. So thank you. And a special thank you to our patrons for your support over on Patreon. It really does mean, like we're not good, I think, at using words to explain how much it means to us. But it really. really means a lot. It does. It does. Until next time, wash your hands. You filthy animals.