Don’t stick a ‘candle’ in your ear to remove excess wax

Sometimes I am amazed by the curious things people do and believe.

Ear candling or ‘coning’ involves sticking the bottom of a rolled-up wax-coated cloth cone in your ear (while lying on your side) and then lighting the other open top end – as is shown above. Over at Amazon you can buy a 2017 book by Vikki Kinsella titled Hopi Ear Candling: a complete home study course. The section describing how candles work says:

“The candle is inserted in the ear canal – always the narrow end first – and then the top of the candle is lit. The candle burns, sending smoke into the ear canal and this pushes out the air. The warmth will help the wax to soften and loosen any debris that is within the ear. The smoke can fill the ear and will help mucus and any other debris sitting within the sinus passages. The debris is dissolved and then can be drawn up through the ear by the pressure that has been created when the candle begins to burn. There is a small portion of the candle that does not burn and some of the debris will collect in this section.”

At the American Academy of Audiology web site on June 22, 2010 there was an Opinion Editorial  by Jackie Clark, Douglas L. Beck, and Walter Kutz titled Ear Candles and Candling: ineffective and dangerous. It discussed how the following four claims for ear candling are false:

1] Interconnections in the head allow the candles to drain the entire system through the ear.

2] Oxygen drawn through the candle will create a vacuum.

3] When a vacuum is created, it will pull residue out from the ear canal.

4] The method is safe, noninvasive, and effective. 

That editorial referred to a 1996 magazine article by D. R. Seely, S. M. Quigley, and A. W. Langman in Laryngoscope titled Ear Candles – Efficacy and Safety, which you can download here. They surveyed otolaryngologists and found the complications shown above in a chart.  

  

On February 18, 2010 the U.S. Food & Drug Administration had a consumer update titled Don’t get burned: stay away from ear candles. Health Canada also discussed Ear candling and advised:

“However, this old home remedy has no proven medical benefits and can cause serious injuries.”

Ear candling also just was thoroughly debunked by Edzard Ernst on page 165 of his 2019 book Alternative Medicine: a critical assessment of 150 modalities, which you can read at Google Books.

There is a 13-minute YouTube video by Clifford R. Olson from August 31, 2018 titled Do ear candles work to remove earwax? His answer is no. What got me started on this topic is another 15-minute YouTube video from Jonathan Jarry on September 3, 2019 titled Video – the strange case of the illegal ear candle.

The very last word on ear candles comes from a May 17, 1993 Seattle Times article by humor columnist Dave Barry titled I’m all fired up over a cure for ear wax. Dave said that if something went wrong, then the newspaper would use this headline:

MAN KILLED IN EAR BLAZE

Deserved to Die, Authorities Say