What if I told you to stick a flaming candle in your ear. I promise, its a thing. People use ear candles to clean there ears. But does ear candling really work? Find out what happened when I tried it.

What is ear candling?

 Ear candling is an alternate medicine practice, which involves inserting a hollow candle into your ear and lighting it. The flame creates a vacuum, which is said to draw out wax and impurities from your ear into the middle of the candle. Ingenious and scary in equal measure.

What are the benefits of ear candling?

Apart from clearing wax and debris from the ear canal, the ear candling cohort promise a range of other benefits, including:

•  easing earache, headache, sinus pressure and allergies,
• relieving pressure behind the ear drum,
• sharpening your senses, including vision, hearing and taste, and
• encouraging relaxation and internal healing.

How does it work?

Lay on your side, with the ear candle in the opening your ear and light the opposite end.  To prevent accidents, I recommend getting a trusty assistant to help you with this part. You then hold the candle in place until there is about 10cm left, at which point call on your trusty assistant to remove the candle and put it out using a glass of water. The whole process takes about 10 minutes. Surprisingly you don’t feel any heat in your ear, but there is a constant crackling noise while the candle was burning.

When you done you can unwrap the candle and see all the debri left inside..ewww!

Is it expensive?

I purchased a 4 pack of ear candles from a health food shop for $34.95. There were cheaper candles, but being a bit a cautious Clara, I opted for the ones with a safety filter, stop ring and protective disk…a girl can’t be to careful!

Does ear candling really work?

Boo! The consensus on the interwebs is that ear candling does not remove earwax, and can actually be dangerous. A range of injuries have been reported as a result of ear candling, including temporary loss of hearing, burns, ear canal blockages, and even a perforated ear drum. You can read more about the risks of ear candling here.

Just to make sure those pesky scientists didn’t get it wrong, I burnt an ear candle sans ear and you guessed it… I got exactly the same result. So what was that gunk left  inside the candle? Well scientific studies suggest its just ash from the wick and candle wax – totes duped. Man I hate that!

Is it a keeper?

While I didn’t suffer any ill effects from ear candling, given the science I won’t be making this part of my ongoing health and wellness regime. If you do want to try ear candling, make sure you read up on the risks and consider consulting a natural health expert.