Word: waxing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Lieberman, of course, isn't the first candidate to wax religious. George W. Bush called Jesus his favorite philosopher, and Gore said he often makes decisions by asking, "What would Jesus do?" Both parties are parsing the same polls, which show a country troubled by a sense of moral breakdown. Gore adviser Elaine Kamarck has vowed, "The Democratic Party is going to take back God this time." A Gore strategist notes that while Northeasterners may be more straitlaced and tight-lipped on matters of faith, Lieberman's holy spirit is touching people in all the right places: "Blacks...
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...
Turns out there's a reason our ear canals are so inaccessible: to protect the delicate eardrum. And ear wax is good. Ears, like some ovens, are self-cleaning. The wax traps dust and dirt and contains antimicrobial agents to protect against infection. People who really like the idea of using a candle to get clean should hop on to that other trend and light one while having a bath...