Your earwax tells a lot about you, including why you may stink

[boingboing]

Originally published at: Your earwax tells a lot about you, including why you may stink - Boing Boing

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[llamaspit]

Eeeeewwww!

[anon87143080]

@boingboing

Sticky yellow-brown earwax is found mostly in folks of Caucasian or African descent, while people of East Asian decent have lighter, flakier earwax

It all tastes the same to me.

[Ceschuby]

[ashe]

This is similar to oral and rectal thermometers. The only difference is the taste.

[anon3894935]

Apologies if TMI, but my wax used to be dry and flaky but seems to be gradually transforming into the other kind. Though I don’t have much in the way of actual wax any more, more like… ear grease, that makes my earbuds glisten and has to be cleaned off with a tissue every so often. That was never the case until a few years ago. I have no idea what to make of any of this.

[bcsizemo]

While I only vaguely believe the idea that ear wax traps germs and what not (much like nose hair), my 6 year old had horrible earwax. I have two different otoscopes so I know what the inside of the ear looks like. I always liked to call out the pediatrician when we would go in for an “ear ache” and they would give us some mumbo jumbo about how the ear drum looked. Usually I’d just say, I’m surprised you can even get a clear view of it with all his ear wax while giving them solid eye contact.

Ultimately I purchased a rechargeable ear irrigation / wax removal squirt gun thing. I did learn from one of the pediatricians that a few drops of mineral oil once a day for about a week will really loosen up hardened ear wax. After a couple of weeks I finally got his ears clean enough to see the ear drum easily. He says they feel much better too. (as a side note, I’ve tried Debrox drops several times on him and each time it lead to an ear infection.)

[doozer]

@boingboing

Sticky yellow-brown earwax is found mostly in folks of Caucasian or African descent, while people of East Asian decent have lighter, flakier earwax.

I got both so what does that mean!?

The flakey stuff is weird especially when I can feel it fall down within the ear canal blurred for tmi

Eta: I’m mainly 50:50 mexican irish but have some native american (mexico/california), scottish, and possibly pacific islander (found a bunch of people on the big island who looked like my dad there).

I get asked all the time what I “am”
in europe they think I’m chinese or Spanish and here in the us they think I’m Filipino, Japanese or Mexican

[smulder]

[DasKleineTeilchen]

@anon3894935

That was never the case until a few years ago

Im not certain if youre being ironic or not, but since when you are using earbuds? and how often?

[FGD135]

Which one is better to make candles?

[anon36081309]

Depends on whether it’s for light or scent (eeww)

[anon3894935]

I use earbuds for extended periods at work three times a week (say, 5 hours) and shorter periods of an hour or two on some other days. I only started doing so maybe four years ago, and they only started getting oily and gross within the past year. Before then they’d actually have tiny flakes from the dry kind of earwax that’d I’d have to knock out of them after use. Thinking about it further, I wonder if this could somehow be a medication side effect, as I’ve started taking a couple things around that time. I’m pretty sure no medications would list “may reverse your earwax type” as a side effect even if it happened to be true.

[DasKleineTeilchen]

@anon3894935

I only started doing so maybe four years ago, and they only started getting oily and gross within the past year

I say its the earbuds. no airconvection/flow for hours has to lead to something. and it could take some time to change the “biodome” of your ears. maybe try to carefully dry them after wearing the buds with a hairdryer (slow flow, warm but not hot and with an arms lenght to the ears) and see what that does. helped me when I had “wet” ear-infection.