Word: waxed
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Candling, sometimes called coning, is today's, ahem, hottest natural treatment to remove wax from ears and, according to its proponents, relieve everything from migraines to sinusitis and postnasal drip while "promoting a healthy atmosphere," as one ad puts it. Massage therapists, beauty-salon operators and herbalists all offer the treatment. Women go to the candler for an afternoon--the average candling takes about an hour--of relaxation. And parents, when they're not candling each other with $5 kits from a health-food store, are doing it to their kids to stave off ear infections. "It's a relaxing...
...practice is universally admired. "I'm open to a lot of complementary therapies, but I'm not at all impressed with this one," says Benjamin Asher, chairman of the committee on alternative medicine for the American Academy of Otolaryngology--Head and Neck Surgery. Aside from an earful of candle wax, candling could lead to infection, burns to the ear canal or eardrum--or burning hair. The FDA considers ear candles hazardous to health...
Another problem: there's no proof candling works. A small study a few years ago in the journal Laryngoscope showed that a lighted candle could never create enough suction to draw out wax. The "ear debris" left in the candle's hollows, assumed by aficionados to be proof--however icky--that candling is doing its stuff, is nothing more than melted wax from the candle itself. As for those ear mites, "Dogs and cats have ear mites," says Asher. "I've never seen a human with...
...WAX NOSTALGIC: Remember that cute guy who always seemed too shy to ask you out back in high school? Or that friend you lost touch with when you went off to college? Highschoolalumni.com lists more than 22,000 public and private high schools and lets you add your name and contact information to the list. It will even send you an e-mail notice if someone from your class (or any graduation-date range you designate) signs up. I was amazed to see that my California school, which had a senior class of just 93 students, was listed...
...important too to remember the restrictions on servicemen's correspondence. Whereas in the Civil War soldiers could wax poetic in detailed epistles about the topography around battlefields, the long rock gullies of the Maryland countryside or the paltry food rations at Vicksburg, 20th century U.S. troops were censored from describing their surroundings for fear of tipping off the enemy to military movements. As a result their letters home are far more personal, more expressive of the gripping fears and hopeful longings of young men with no illusions left. Each one of these introspective letters sounds the distant and disturbing echo...