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"During the course of investigating ear candling we often encountered the belief that ear candles create a vacuum that draws fluids and wax from the ear canal, which in turn produces beneficial health effects. To investigate this notion, we obtained several ear candles from a local health food store and investigated their properties….. CONCLUSIONS: The ear candle, when burned, produced a brown waxy substance that looks like ear wax. However, since the wax appears whether or not the candle is placed in a human ear, we conclude that the source of the wax is the candle and not the ear. It is possible that the candle produced wax but also extracted solid material from the ear was mixed with the candle wax. However, since the candle remnant of the control candle and the one inserted into a human volunteer weighed exactly the same, we conclude that this did not happen. The human subject reported no feeling of a vacuum which is purported to occur during the burning of the candle. The control candle produced smoke that poured from the bottom of the tapered end, suggesting that positive, not negative pressure was being produced. The subject reported no subjective feelings invoked by the treatment, suggesting that the ear candle was ineffective in a controlled environment." Jeffries, W., et al.