China’s peculiar ear-cleaning custom | Hacker News Reader

China’s peculiar ear-cleaning custom

bbc.com

22 pointsMiriamWeiner25 comments

The article mentions that dry earwax is found in Asians, in comparison to the sticky form in Westerners. It does not mention the fascinating detail that this difference is determined by a single gene, which also influences underarm odor. http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mythearwax.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABCC11

And thus obeys good old Mendelian inheritance rules perfectly!

Because of this gene more than 95% of Chinese have very little body odor. Consequently, Chinese regard those with heavy body odor as ill, and name the illness 狐臭 ("fox stink" by transliteration). Those with heavy body odor are shamed by their peers. Few of Chinese know that almost everyone outside China, Korea and Japan shares this "illness", and deals with it daily with deodorants.

There are business implications too -- I remember an article years ago about Unilever or some similar company's ambitions to enter a virtually untapped Chinese deodorant market. I just tried to find what happened, and it seems that didn't work out: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/business/china-consumers-...

I wonder what other factors can contribute to the matter. Korean guy here. I swear that a decade ago, I would not get significantly stinky as I got sweaty. These days, I am totally stinky after a basketball game. My feet are so stinky after a day in shoes. My armpits are crazy stinky after a day of work, they totally were not this stinky a few years ago.

Yes, I do not have conclusive data on the matter. It's all anecdotal and non-scientific. But I swear it's true. I swear it.

How old are you? I heard (I am not sure) that the dominant allele of this gene (the stinky one) only shows its effect after teenage years.

Just hit 36. So... a decade ago, I was 26?

Well, my hypothesis is wrong then.

up till now, reading about the dry vs wet earwax, I had always understood the smell to be determined by the type of bacteria feeding on urea in the sweat. The urea contains chemical energy, but is expelled nonetheless by the human body to get rid of the nitrogen. I also clearly remember knowing about this mechanism and reading on practically all the deodorant bottles (perhaps 5 years ago) brand or no brand that it contained perfume, other things and ... urea! so basically pretty smell that evaporates over time, while feeding the stinking bacteria so you'd spray again.

Then I noticed urea dissappearing from the deodorant bottles.

According to this theory the smell of sweat is really determined by the breakdown products the bacteria release, so that would imply killing the current colony and applying an odorless colony.

Perhaps people with smelly sweat are just alternating faster between colonies by having periods of working out, and periods of not working out which causes the occasional good colony to die and get replaced with a smelly one? Perhaps people who smell less have a more regular colony feeding pattern?

Underarm odor is largely determined by bacterial breakdown products of fatty acids, steroids, and other aliphatics into odorous compounds such as smaller-chain acids. Urea plays no role that I know of. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochemistry_of_body_odor

I could perfectly be wrong about the odour being a breakdown product of the urea itself, but I thought the urea was a major energy source for the bacteria... is that still correct or are the other species you mention more energetic or available?

I think urea will be in sweat mainly in the case of damaged kidneys, not under normal conditions. Not sure about that though.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12817713/

Is there some sort of Western habit that you acquired? Maybe you changed your diet, the fabric of your shirts and socks, or your soap/shampoo habits.

I live in China and used to love getting this done. It makes my ears feel fantastic. But due to the worry of damage to the ears and so on, my wife desires me to not do this anymore. So I don't. But I really miss it. So my wife helps me out now and then to take earwax out, maybe twice a month. She never goes in very deep, out of concern for my ears. But every now and then, she'll see a really huge piece just sticking out and is able to grab it with some specialty tweezers designed for ear use (she bought them off taobao). It's not the same, but it's almost as nice. She sometimes takes out pieces that are 1.5 square centimetres. Something is wrong with me.

>>“There is no medical system in the world that would advocate sticking foreign objects into the ear canal. People do it because they think it feels good.”

And for good reason - we should not clean our ears, unless they are impacted with cerumen (wax).

Our ears need the protective lining the wax provides and excessive removal only causes the body to create more.

https://www.audiologyonline.com/articles/issues-in-cerumen-m...

> People do it because they think it feels good.

What's the difference between "thinking it feels good" and it "feeling good"?

Many people have reported quasi-sexual pleasure while playing with a q-tip inside their ear canal.

This sounds like an improvement over q tips since they would actually be removing the wax and not accidentally shoving it further in.

It's also done by someone with enough training to (hopefully) reduce the chance of messing your ear up.

Training is great, but they can't feel when it hurts. Only the person with the ear can do that.

Nowadays doctors in general strongly advise against using q-tips inside the ear canal, as does the actual packaging (at least of some brands): http://www.greathillsent.com/images/qtips.jpg

The treatment I've seen for out of the ordinary earwax accumulation was warm water sprayed using a bulb syringe.

Even a normal American doctor will use a tweezers if the wax is bad enough.

For ordinary wax, you can use hydrogen peroxide or carbamide peroxide. This is far more effective than water.

Yep. Can be hard to find in drugstores, where they might be called 'aspirators' or 'bulb syringes'. Made of plastic (used to be rubber). Might be in baby section. Use water near body temp (or you might get dizzy). -Squeeze gently-.

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi.ebayimg.co...

Same tool is a good substitute for use to irrigate the nose with neti pot solutions. A doctor once whispered to me 'big pharma doesn't want you to know about them'.

I bought one of those stainless steel ear cleaning tools from AliExpress a few years ago (<$1), and I have to admit that it works amazing. It requires some practice but it's so much more hygienic and effective than our Western tradition of stuffing everything back in with q-tips.

As kids, my mom would do this to us. She'd use a hairpin. It is oddly satisfying.

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