5 Cockroach Burrows into Ear in Search of a Snack
Can a Cockroach Get Stuck in Your Ear? | How Common Is It? | SELF
Cockroaches will feast on all sorts of odd things—earwax being no exception. The secretion is full of keratin, fatty acids, and dead skin cells, making it a choice snack for a famished little insect. So take care because while you sleep, a cockroach might just end up climbing into your ear and looking for something to munch on.
That is exactly what happened to one man in Tallahassee, Florida. Back in 2018, Blake Collins shared a cockroach-infested flat with his husband. The 25-year-old told reporters they had critters in the mattress, in the sheets, even crawling across light fixtures.
But little could have prepared Mr. Collins for one of the roaches to burrow inside his ear. He described the experience as “like someone was shoving a Q-tip all the way inside my head, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.”
Luckily, doctors were able to kill the roach with lidocaine anesthetic. They also removed the egg sac that it had somehow managed to lay inside Mr. Collins’s ear. As he explained, “I heard it die in my head.” The unlucky Florida resident told reporters that as the insect died, he felt it “go super, superfast kicking and trying to dig its way out.”
4 The Tinnitus Treatment That Zaps Your Tongue
Did Researchers just Cure Tinnitus? | Lenore by Neuroma
Tinnitus can be an incredibly difficult condition to treat. The ear-ringing affects around 10% to 15% of the population, often caused by overexposure to loud sounds, ear injuries, and, of course, earwax blockages.
In 2020, a company in Ireland unveiled a new form of treatment that they say can reverse tinnitus for up to a year. Neuroma Devices came up with a device called Lenore that buzzes the mouth to tune out the ceaseless din. During this outlandish procedure, the patient listens to music via Bluetooth headphones while a mouthpiece gently zaps the trigeminal nerve in the tongue. Lenore uses a technique known as bimodal neuromodulation treatment. Essentially, the mild shocks distract the brain, retraining it to mute the tinnitus ringing.
As strange as the treatment may sound, trial data is surprisingly positive. In a trial of 326 people, 86% found their symptoms reduced after 12 weeks of treatment. A year down the line, two-thirds were still feeling the benefits.
3 A New Form of Drug Testing
How long are different drugs detectable in your system – urine testing, hair testing, etc.
Is earwax the key to a new form of drug testing? Researchers in Brazil reckon the secretion could provide a more accurate tool in forensic analysis.
Forensic analysts usually test for drugs using blood and urine samples. But some substances have short half-lives, meaning they vanish from the bloodstream too quickly to show up in analysis. Scientists argue that because certain drugs like alcohol, cocaine, and amphetamines are often found in higher concentrations in earwax, perhaps now is the time to rethink the forensic approach to drug testing.
To test the theory, the South American scientists tested 17 people, all of whom used antiepileptic and antipsychotic drugs. Many of the drugs tested showed up in high amounts in the earwax samples. The researchers even detected phenytoin in one subject who hadn’t touched the drug for two months.
2 Device for Measuring Hormone Levels
Here’s What Your Earwax Says About Your Health
We’ve already explained how scientists are using earwax to monitor whale stress levels, but the same is true of humans too. Researchers from University College London created a device that speedily measures how much pressure someone is feeling by testing their earwax for cortisol.
The scientists explained how monitoring hormone levels can help make medical diagnoses. For example, the condition Cushing’s syndrome is caused by an overproduction of cortisol, whereas Addison’s disease comes from the body making too little. Excess cortisol can also be an indicator of depression.
“Cortisol sampling is notoriously difficult, as levels of the hormone can fluctuate, so a sample might not be an accurate reflection of a person’s chronic cortisol levels. Moreover, sampling methods themselves can induce stress and influence the results,” said Dr. Andres Herane Vives, who led the study. “But cortisol levels in earwax appear to be more stable, and with our new device, it’s easy to take a sample and get it tested quickly, cheaply, and effectively.”
1 Jewelry Made of Earwax and Hair
Amanda Cotton is by no means a conventional artist. The British designer has made works using maggots and placenta, but one piece, in particular, stands out for this list: her earwax necklace.
Yes, the artwork really is what it says on the tin. For eight months, Ms. Cotton collected her own earwax and turned it into a slightly stomach-churning pendant. She linked the compressed secretions with a chain of plaited hair. The surreal jewelry was first unveiled in 2012 at a graduate show in Brighton.
According to Ms. Cotton, she chose earwax because it reminds her of amber. She says of the piece, “It’s [sic] aesthetically pleasing manner questions onlookers on their approach to this incredible material.”
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