Ear Candling

A while back some friends and I were talking about ear candling. For those of you who do not know what it is...

Ear candling, also called ear coning or thermal-auricular therapy, is an alternative medicine practice claimed to assist the natural clearing of earwax from a person's ear by lighting one end of a hollow candle and placing the other end in the ear canal.

After going to the doctor last month and finding out that I had an ear infection I was curious. I had no pain from my ear infection and never noticed a difference even after all my antibiotics were taken. Did I really have an infection or was the doctor seeing lots of blockage? I knew I always had trouble hearing (It runs in the family, right Dad...Hahaha.) and I often have ringing and popping noises in my ears. Well after talking about what ear candling does I figured I'd give it a try. Maybe all I needed is to clean out all the wax and build up.

Last weekend when Corey and I helped my mom move she came across an extra set of ear candles. She gave them to me to try and knowing I needed help in doing this I called her over today to help me. I prepared myself by watching a 'how to' video on the Internet...maybe not such a good idea. I thought I was going to loose my lunch after looking at the debris that comes out of the ears.

But I thought I'd still give it a try. We went outside to do this. It was a good thing that the weather was nice outside...the flame from the candle lets off LOTS of smoke. My mom and I sat out on the front step and laughed at the people walking by wondering what the hell we were doing.

I started on my right ear...that one has been the worst. After the 12" candle burned for a little over ten minutes, my mom distinguished the flame and we looked inside. Ewwww! I almost lost it. My mom wanted to see how much build-up actually came out of my ears so she cut open the hollow candle and measured about 4 inches of waxy crap! Ewwww, again!

Next we burned a candle in my left ear and more waxy crap came out on the side. It's absolutely gross. But, I do feel that I can hear a lot better now. I'll give it a couple of days and see if there's any changes.

It is a disgusting procedure but well worth it.