Ear candling, also known as thermo auricular therapy, is an alternative medicine procedure which is supposed to remove earwax, as well as to improve the overall wellbeing of the patient. The procedure comprises lighting a hollow candle and place it with the other end, which is sharper, in the ear canal. As the ear candle burns, it supposedly produces a negative pressure, thus sucking earwax and residues from the ear canal into the cone of the candle. In order to protect the subject from getting burnt by hot wax or other candle debris, a protection disk made of thick paper or aluminum is placed around the bottom part of the candle. The candle itself is made of a cotton cloth soaked in wax or in paraffin, then hardened in the shape of a cone.

Is Ear Candling Just A New Age Fad?

The health benefits claims of ear candles are hilarious and too good to be true. Such benefits include purifying the mind, stabilizing emotions, releasing blocked energy, curing Meniere’s syndrome, reducing stress, opening and aligning the chackras and many others. It’s hard to resist such a treatment, which can clear your mind and your sinuses in the same time, therefore many people tried it, some of them claiming they’ve got satisfactory results. However, tests done by various researchers or simple users showed that candling has no effect whatsoever, neither upon the general wellbeing and on the mind abilities, nor on the wax buildup inside the ear canal. The residues inside a used ear candle were actually debris from the candle itself and not earwax. Other tests revealed that the negative pressure created by heating the air inside the cone was not enough to attract the wax from the ear canal, and that if it were, then the eardrum would have been ruptured in the process. Moreover, there are otolaryngologists that testified to have been seeing many patients with melted wax adherences to the eardrum, which needed surgery to get removed. There were also cases of patients who got wax from the candle dripping inside their ear, therefore putting them in danger to lose hearing in that ear. A survey published in 1996 in Laryngoscope showed no cerumen removal from the external ear canal. Another survey in which 122 otolaryngologists were interviewed, revealed 21 ear injuries caused by ear candles use, out of which one was a perforated eardrum. (Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8849790?dopt=Abstract)

The initial idea that using ear candles can have so man health benefits came from the wrong belief that the ear canal is connected to structures inside the head and to the brain itself. This is not correct, as any anatomy textbook can prove it, so these assumptions of holistic healing may a well be false. Despite all these facts that prove ear candling as ineffective, it’s still an industry of multi million dollars per year.

Although FDA prohibited imports of ear candles from several Canadian manufacturers, such products can still be found on the US market. There are countries in which ear candles are available in pharmacies, as over the counter medication, sometimes being even recommended by pharmacists themselves to patients that ask for a earwax accumulations removal remedy. Ear candling can have catastrophic side effects. There are cases in which people set their homes on fire because of dropping the candle on the carpet. The flame becomes quite large by the end of the procedure, so there’s an increased risk of getting severe burns on the face and on the scalp.

Initially, ear candles manufacturers claimed this treatment was a traditional Hopi healing practice. However, the Hopi tribe never had any connection to this procedure, therefore their spokespersons asked that this name not to be used anymore in marketing ear candles.

What Is Chiropractic

Chiropractic is a branch of the alternative medicine that deals with disorders of the nervous system and musculoskeletal system. Its name originates from the Greek "chiros", which means "hand" and "praktikos", which stands for "action". Specialists who practice it are called chiropractors or chiropractic physicians. Most chiropractors use a method of manipulating the spinal bones which is known as "chiropractic adjustment". This is a general term, as there are multiple schools of chiropractic techniques. However, the basic principle is the same: chiropractic adepts believe that disorders in the spinal cord affect various other regions and organs in the body, via the nervous system. By applying pressure on the spinal cord bones, subluxations are corrected, the proper joint alignment is restored, thus enabling the healing process. This is similar to the holistic medicine approach.

Like other alternative medicine therapies, chiropractic treatment is often accompanied by advice regarding healthy lifestyle and nutrition. Although the American Medical Association considered it an "unscientific cult", chiropractic managed to gain more and more acceptance from the masses, therefore it is now an established medical discipline in many countries such as US and Canada. Detailed studies are yet to be conducted, as none of the ones done so far are relevant.

http://www.ballymenachiropracticclinic.co.uk/whatischiropractic.htm (vertebral subluxation image credit)

Conditions Treated by Doctors of Chiropractic

Here are a few of the conditions that may benefit from chiropractic therapy:

• Chronic neck pain
• Tennis elbow pain
• Carpal tunnel syndrome
• Low back pain conditions
• Leg pain caused by herniated discs
• Ankle pains
• Chronic knee pain
• Chronic arthritis
• Shoulder pains
• Chronic headache
• Indigestion
• Mood swings
• Allergies
• Sleep troubles

Generally speaking the success rate of this procedure is somewhere between 50% and 80%, the success being measured only by the patient’s level of satisfaction. It seems that the lowest levels have been recorded in case of conditions that generate low back pains.

Chiropractic Schools

The length of the studies and the other conditions for practicing this discipline depend on the country. For example, in USA, chiropractic doctors have to follow five years of full time specialty education before being allowed to practice. Usually, board examinations are required for getting a license. Moreover, in some states, chiropractors are required to follow continuing education courses and gain credits each year. Their services might or might not be covered by health insurance, so patients who seek this type of treatment should first discuss with their insurance company, to see if it’s covered by their health insurance policy.

There are no general requirements for chiropractic schools admission, therefore those who want to apply will need to contact each school individually to determine if they comply or not with specific requirements.

Chiropractic Business

Maybe more than 70% of all chiropractic doctors in the US are in individual business practice. Big hospitals or health institutions don’t usually employ such specialists, but they probably will in the future, as the demand increases for alternative therapies. Nonetheless, freshly graduated doctors of chiropractic are probably seeking to open a private office, to hire staff, to buy a special medical billing software for tracking their earnings and their patients evolution, so they’d better be good at business management. However, things are not that complicated, especially if we take into consideration that there are software applications developed specifically for chriopractic offices, therefore making the doctor's task of tracking the medical activity much easier.