Ear Health Questions Answered by Experts

Learn more about ear health with our expert Ear Health Panel:

• Leah Joiner, Board-certified Hydrotherapist and Certified Holistic Health Coach
• Nancy Byrne, Acupuncturist and certified Yamuna practitioner
• Michelle Farleigh from Wally’s Natural

Whether you want to improve self-care or are just curious about natural health, tune in to learn the benefits of “ear to ear” care. Don’t miss out on this unique opportunity to transform your health by giving your ears the attention they deserve!

Topics covered by the Ear Health Panel:

• The importance of ear care in overall health and wellness
• How to combat the effects of noise pollution
• Practical tips for maintaining good ear hygiene
• Benefits of natural ear oil and cleanser – for kids and adults
• How ear candles help with relaxation and holistic healing

We’ve included a transcription of the video below, including time stamps so you can easily go back and listen again to the topics that interest you the most!

Panelists

Leah Joiner
Board-certified Hydrotherapist, Lymphatic Drainage Specialist and Certified Holistic Health Coach

Nancy Byrne
Acupuncturist
Certified Yamuna practitioner

Michelle Farleigh
Wally’s Natural
Director Sales

What People Are Asking About Ear Wellness

Expert Q&A Segments

Ear Care is Self-Care (:01)

Hi, encourage everybody to keep their cameras on and microphones on as long as there’s no background noise, but thank you for joining us!

Thank you for listening today as our ear experts talk about ear care as self-care. Many of us carve out time to exercise, moisturize our faces, do our hair, meditate….cultivate these simple habits that improve our health and wellness and inner beauty. But we tend to forget about the ears when we’re doing that. So we have Ear Health Day coming up on September 19, and we’re encouraging people to expand their self care routines to not just head to toe, but also ear to ear.

And that’s because we live in a world where our ears are increasingly stimulated by podcasts, and earbuds, and noise pollution. We’re waking up to alarms. We’re going to sleep to white noise. So Ear Health Day is really going to help us bring awareness to this vital body part by inspiring us to see how our ear care is self care, and understand the easy ways to prioritize better ear health.

Today we have a panel of natural health experts to tell us what we’ve been doing wrong and what we can do better to care for our ears using natural ear oils and gentle cleansers that not only nourish our ears, but also contribute to our equilibrium and instill a calming, soothing ritual into our self care routines. And this is for all ages.
Our panel today includes Leah Joiner, Board Certified Lymphatic Drainage Specialist; Nancy Byrne, Acupuncturist; and Michelle Farleigh from Wally’s Natural, experts and the category leader in natural ear care solutions. We hope to inspire stories on ear care so we can start a conversation about ear health and make it a priority.

We’ll cover cleansing, calming, and healthful habits that impact the entire body and our stress levels as ears maintain the body’s equilibrium.

Let’s get started and have our panelists introduce themselves.

Meet the Ear Health Panel (2:10)

Leah Joiner: Hi, my name’s Leach Joiner. I have three areas of expertise, which is Digestive, Lymphatic and Ear Health. I have my own company, Wholistic Wellness, which is located in Los Angeles, California.

Nancy Byrne: Hi, I’m Nancy Byrne, I’m a Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese medicine. I’ve been in the health and wellness industry for 21 years. As an acupuncturist, we might needle ears as part of your treatment, and we often give people something called ear seeds, or as one of my patients call them, acupuncture to-go. I’m really happy to be part of this panel and talk about self-care is health care.

Michelle Farleigh: I’m Michelle Farleigh, the Director of Sales at Wally’s Natural. I’ve been with Wally’s for two years and I am here to be a part of educating people about ear care and how it is important to our daily regime.

Why is ear care important? (03:15)

Moderator: Excellent. Let’s talk about why ear care is so important.

Michelle Farleigh:  Wally’s is really an innovator in ear care. We believe that your care is crucial because it plays a vital role in communication, balance, and overall quality of our lives. We feel that proper ear care helps prevent infections, hearing loss, and other discomforts that can impact our daily functions. So, what we’re really focusing on is helping people understand that by maintaining good ear hygiene, we can reduce the risk of ear-related problems and support long-term auditory health. We want everyone to remember that ear care is not only about addressing problems when they arise, but also about preventing issues and maintaining the health of our ears as an ongoing practice.

How is ear care related to overall health? Does ear health connect to holistic health? (04:10)

Moderator: Excellent. And Leah or Nancy, can you talk about why the ears are so important to our health?

Leah Joiner: I’d love to jump in and just say that I do ear education every single day. I have people who find me who are looking for my service of ear coning. I don’t widely advertise for it, and yet I do it every single day–so there’s a resurgence of what is tried and true. Our ancient modalities are coming through into now our urban living. People are starting to understand that self-care is limited and we’re moving into a sense of wellness. So how do we deal with the function of the body? And how does everything work? And, education is power. So, as I’m working with them and helping them understand even what the ear ears do, and how they function, and how the lymphatic system and the glymphatic system, which is how the brain cleanses, works holistically in our body, is really revelatory to a lot of people. It’s one by one, forwarding that conversation about our five senses and our body. Our olfactory, our nose, our smell is the most primal. Then our sight and our ears are really giving the body a sense of where our nervous system needs to be. We’re either in a sympathetic stress response or a parasympathetic stress response in the body. And what’s cool about the ears is actually we can directly touch the nerve to put us in a parasympathetic state. Through ear care, we can start to understand how to take care of these beautiful little organs. The topic has never been more relevant than it is now, because we do have so much noise pollution and auditory devices that we’re using so hearing loss and vertigo, dizziness, all the vestibular system, all of these issues are really coming to a forefront. So, there’s those of us that really just want to bring the ancient modalities back into a current conversation.

Moderator: Thank you. And, Nancy, why do you feel the ears are important to health?

Nancy Byrne: For Chinese medicine, the ear is an external manifestation of the kidneys. They’re kidney-shaped. My mother is actually a nurse practitioner and did a lot of research. She was a pediatric Nurse Practitioner and when I was in school many years ago, I mentioned that to her—that the kidneys and the ears are related. She said that’s fascinating, because the kidneys and the ears develop at the same time in utero. So, marrying what Leah said and what Michelle said, ear care is vitally important because it’s not just about the ear, it’s about the entire system.

Both medicines, modern medicine and East Asian medicine see the ear as a map of the body. So you might get points from an acupuncturist during your treatment to just enhance your treatment. There’s points for hip pain there’s points for calming the nervous system. There’s points for pretty much everything. And both medicines also sometimes use the ear for diagnosis. Things might show up on your ear. You know, the body tells a story. Lines might show up in certain areas that show a disposition towards heart disease. Or, a line might show up along the back pain part that shows this is exactly where the point is for someone’s back pain. So the ear is pretty phenomenal. Then we also use it as self care. You might get something called ear seeds which I mentioned. I have them on today and could do a little show and tell later. You might be given facial Gua Sha, draining from the ear down to the lymph. I often tell people to massage and unfold their ears, to calm their nervous system, because, as Leah mentioned, the vagus nerve, the mind-body nerve, can be accessed through the ear. So, the ear is vitally important.

Are earbuds bad for your ears? (8:33)

Moderator: Excellent. Well, I think when we think of ears we think of earbuds. I think most people use earbuds. I’ve just learned that they are on the back-to-school supply lists that are mandatory for children in school. So there’s a whole generation of people that are using earbuds daily. What are the main consequences of the increase in earbuds use and overall noise in general that we’re dealing with. Who wants to start there?

Leah Joiner: I would love to jump in on this because I do have a personal opinion about not really using earbuds. I don’t think they’re necessarily healthy. I know that’s just a personal opinion I have, but I look at everything from an ancient point of view. Is there something that… our ears have never had something in them directly giving sound waves into the brain before on a consistent basis. If we look at the World Health Organization and their statistics on hearing loss based on these audio devices, it’s 30% higher these days than it was 20 years ago. There are 1.1 billion teenagers at risk for hearing loss because the audio devices go up to 115 decibels. A chainsaw is 100 decibels. So, they put out a safety listening guidance tool which is 60-60, so it’s listening to your volume at 60% and only for 60 minutes. So, that’s kind of the guideline. How I kind of think of that is if you have earbuds in, and if somebody else can hear you or hear what you’re listening to, then you’ve got them up too high. Just as a reminder of how the ears work…this is an instrument. It takes sound waves through the funnels, see the folds all through here, and puts them into the middle ear, which is where your eardrum is and then there’s a membrane that covers that. And then deep in the inner ear you have, they’re kind of like blades of grass; they’re called hair cells. They receive those sound waves and make those into vibrations that then feed the brain to do something, so either fight or flight, or movement, or moving the blood into certain organs, or whatever the sound is. So we’ve got major sounds that might put your body into that fight or flight, but we also have very soothing sounds that’s going to down-regulate your nervous system. Everything is always telling your body what it needs to pay attention to. Those little blades of grass, as I mentioned, the hair cells, you’re only born with about 16,000 of those. As the sound vibrations come in, they bend and they create this messaging system. If you’re listening to high decibels, or you go to a rock concert, or you’re just doing this ear damage constantly, cilia, another name for hair cells, they bend, and they don’t regenerate, and that’s when we have hearing loss. Hearing loss is only really detected when 30-50 % of those have died off. So we really need to pay attention to something in our ear that’s accosting the brain and hearing all the time.

Remember that most people are exercising with these earbuds in. And think about your shampoo and your conditioner, and your hair products and all this stuff going into the ear canal. Then you’ve got sweat on top of that. It’s going to be kind of like a challenging environment in there. So we’re really trying to elicit more care about the ears because modern day living is really pretty damaging to them.

How can we use earbuds in a way that is healthier for our ears? What is the healthy way to use earbuds? (12:28)

Moderator: I think that the next question that I have is, so what do we do about that? One option, is to not to use earbuds or not to use them when you’re sweating. But then we do. So what, what do we do? What are some solutions to dealing with that?

Leah: I would personally say go back to the corded ear phones. And, pay attention, too, if your ears are feeling exhausted, or feeling irritated or red. Take a break. The ears need rest just like when people say if they’ve been using their eyes…if they’ve been reading and their eyes are tired. Your ears get tired. We need to remember that there is ear care that we can do to nourish and take care of this organ so that we can do those things–we can go to rock shows and listen to music and all those wonderful things. But if we’re doing that without the care, it’s really detrimental to our holistic health.

How do you care for your ears if you use earbuds for long periods of time? How do you treat ear irritation from earbuds? (13:31)

Moderator: Michelle, do you have any suggestions on things that you can use to do better care for your ears.

Michelle Farleigh: Absolutely. I’ll share a personal story. I have two teenagers and an elementary student. My teenagers use their earbuds all the time. My 19-year-old sleeps in them, and he has recently been having chafing in his ears. He comes downstairs and he complains that his ear hurts and when I look, he has red chafing where all the cells are irritated. So I work at Wally’s Natural and I have Wally’s Organic Ear Oil available and I say go upstairs. Go put some ear oil in your ear. Within a couple hours, his ears are better, and so we do have a product that will help nourish, help moisturize. It really helps support those healthier ears, specifically for those individuals that are using earbuds often. I tell him just as Leah was saying, you need to take a break. Let’s try lowering the volume on these or, use your noise-canceling headphones, instead of your earbuds. Just trying to help promote that awareness to my kids, because I really believe that safe listening habits are important for your ear health.

What is the best way to clean your ears? (14:42)

Moderator: And what about cleaning the ears? Leah talked about keeping the earbuds clean, but how do you keep your ears clean?

Michelle Farleigh: Well, it’s important to note that ears are self-cleaning to a certain extent. I know a lot of individuals use cotton swabs, which can really impact the wax if you have a lot of ear wax in your ears. Wally’s does have a very innovative product. It’s a product made by mothers. My kids all use it. It is targeted for younger children because we’re trying to get children to learn how to have that preventative routine and to clean their ears. It’s called Fearless Naturals Kidz Ear Scrub and it comes in a bottle that has a scrubber. You just put the solution on the scrubber and you can clean your ears very gently. Then, you just rinse with water and you can reuse the scrubber. My nine-year-old actually uses it quite often in the shower and loves to have his “squeaky clean ears” as he says.  It’s really important to keep the outer part of your ear clean and inside your ears.  That product specifically will help with any excess dirt, any excess oil, and any excess wax. It’s just really important to make sure you’re keeping your ears clean.

How does ear oil help ears? (16:04)

Moderator: We do have a question from the audience. How often do you use ear oil, or should you use ear oil?

Michelle Farleigh: The ear oil is really as needed. We have a lot of consumers who use it as a preventative measure, but they also use it when they’re having issues with their ears. The bottle itself says instructions is one to three drops up to twice a day but it really is at your preference. It’s really a matter of what you’re using it for. Some people have really itchy ears, so they’re constantly itching their ears, or you have allergy season. People sometimes get swimmers’ ears from swimming or diving. I have a lot of frequent flyers that are using it. There’s really just a wide range or wide variety of reasons why people use it. It’s really up to your preference. I do have individuals who use it daily.

Moderator: We’ve hit a nerve here. Can hair care products damage your ears and create issues? Now we’re all thinking about the things that fall into our ears!

What about excessive ear wax? Is it bad to have no ear wax? (17:10)

Leah Joiner: Again, it’s what it would be natural to the human body. So anything from the outside coming into the ears that is not organic and not something that you can eat is going into the body. Your ear canal has natural ear wax in it, just like any mucosal passage in your body. It is a protective way to protect the eardrum essentially. So we want a little bit of earwax in there. The goal here is not to not have earwax. It’s a very important natural thing as, as Michelle said, it’s self-cleaning. But what happens when these things come into the ears whether it’s a wax or a silicone or sweat, your ear is going to produce more wax. It also does when there’s noise pollution as well. So that’s what we’re really talking about is how do we nurture and break down the wax. The oil that Michelle is referencing is such a beautiful oil. It’s ancient.It has garlic and tea tree, and mullein, and the base is olive oil. They’re all organic products that you’re gonna be putting in. That’s gonna be breaking down that excess wax so that it can be drained through the lymphatic system and out through the body. That’s how we’re gonna get through some of these things that are just again part of our natural normalization of how we’re living these days. But we need to also do the care that it takes to also be living in the real world. So you know it’s up to everybody. People that eat a lot of dairy are gonna produce more earwax because it can be very irritating as Michelle said. There can be candida issues and things like that in the ears, and they’re gonna produce more wax, and that has to get addressed.

How do noise pollution and earbuds affect our ears? How do you prevent noise pollution from affecting your ears? (19:09)

Moderator: Okay I saw faces light up in here on that dairy thing. Do you have any thoughts on the increase in earbud use and noise pollution, and what we can do about it?

Nancy Byrne:  I think you hit the nail on the head. It’s great to know that this is a problem, but we’re all using them and we’re all almost addicted to them, especially to our phone. So, Leah, I appreciate all that information. I think the first step is awareness. So maybe now with all the great tips we just go, maybe you’ll remember…oh, maybe I shouldn’t be wearing earbuds all day. There’s a similar thing…I practice facial Gua Sha. My teacher said the number one cause of wrinkles is this…your head is down on your phone. So I catch myself all day putting my head down. We all do that, but now I’m aware more aware, I put my phone down, give my neck a rest. So give your ears a rest. We just got so many great tips. Also what it brought to mind for me is reconnecting to nature. If you always have your earbuds then it’s really nice for the nervous system to go walk in the grass and listen and hear the birds sing and things like that. That’s one really nice thing because again, we said the ear is connected to the vagus nerve, which is the calming nerve. It’s a great way to calm down, so that would be one way. Replace it with something else. Take your earbuds out, listen to the nature sounds. Or, what’s really becoming popular now which is also great for mental health and calming the nervous system are sound baths. Use the ear and the whole body feels the vibration of sound baths. So I think when we’re trying to remove something that we’re really reliant on, replacing it with a healthier option is a great idea.

Moderator: We do have a request…everyone who RSVP’d on time to this meeting will receive free samples.

How do you use ear oil? How long do you keep ear oil in your ear? (21:16)

Moderator: Michelle, I don’t want to put you on the spot but could you demonstrate how you put the drops of the oil in your ears?

Michelle Farleigh: How lucky are you that I have samples right here on my desk?  I know I have my [camera] blur on, but you want to make sure you shake it up really well. Very vigorous. It is all organic ingredients, and so as Leah was explaining, we have an olive oil base but it has garlic, mullein, lavender, echinacea–so because it is all organic, it will tend to have some sediment that settles in the bottom. So you want to make sure you shake it up really well. And then you’re going to take 1-3 drops and just put place in your ear. I’m actually, do it right now. And then I like to kind of press it to let it absorb. Now, if you’re going to go straight to bed, I do recommend putting a cotton ball inside your ear so you don’t get oil that comes out onto your pillow. But I use this in the daytime. My son has allergies to everything that grows, so we put ear oil in his ears. He actually has a cold and went to school today and made sure he had his ear oil in before he went to school. It will absorb throughout the day and it will do what it needs to do…which is just help… it has anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial anti-fungal–all these phenomenal ingredients that each have healing properties on their own, put together into one bottle. So we really call this our liquid gold. I can actually feel it soothing my ear right now. I love this product.

What is ear scrub and how do you use ear scrub? (23:09)

Moderator: While we’re at it, do you have the scrub that you can show people?

Michelle Farleigh: I took it out of the box and I dropped my scrubby behind my desk but here is the scrub. It does have a little scrubber. It’s a purple scrub, like a little makeup sponge that you would dab your makeup or your foundation on with, that’s what it is. Put the solution onto the little scrubby and you’ll get it wet, just have a little bit of suds. And you’re just going to scrub the inside of your ear. It’s very gentle. It’s not invasive, it’s very safe. It will not hurt your eardrums. You’ll just use the scrubby, and you’ll just scrub like this, and then splash some water in there, and it will come out. And then what you do is you rinse the scrubber and then you hang it to dry until the next time you use it.

Moderator: A question, is it something that you should do every day, like brushing your teeth? Or  is it occasional?

Michelle Farleigh: It is a daily cleanser, however your body knows best, and you want to make sure that you are watching your body cues. If you’re an individual that produces a lot of ear wax, as Nancy was saying with the dairy…I’ve seen children and some of the reviews where they have children that have earwax that’s literally coming out of their ears. For that I would maybe recommend on a daily basis. My 9-year-old uses it often. Maybe not daily, but maybe every other day. But it’s a gentle cleanser and you can use it daily.

Is having a lot of earwax bad for you? How much ear wax is too much? (24:40)

Moderator:  Is having a lot of earwax a bad thing, a cause for concern?

Leah Joiner: Is having a lot of earwax a concern? It depends on why you’re making earwax. There should be just…you really shouldn’t be seeing a lot of the earwax coming out. If you’re feeling tingling, buzzing, muffled sounds, you’ve got a lot of earwax building up over the eardrum. So with someone like that, as far as lymphatic drainage, as Nancy was saying…our drains for the lymph for the ear are here. So if I were working with that person that had too much earwax I’m gonna start by opening this. Now, you want to go to a professional with this, but I’m just gonna give you some tips right now, just so you’re aware of how to maximize the oil. Then, you can also go to the actual drain of the ear, a little spot right under the ear lobe and at the jawbone. It’s actually very sensitive and you can just do some points here. You’re just bringing it down. I also have the ear oil as well, and I just wanted to mention on top of what Michelle said is, after I do the ear oil, the middle ear is stimulated through the parotid gland here in the lymph system. So you can actually just kind of gently press. Lymph work is very gentle because lymph is just underneath the skin. So, as Michelle was saying, kind of massaging it, but actually there literally is a gland there that’s gonna help that oil just make its way down to get that earwax out. With somebody who’s overproducing it, we want to look at why that is. We want to look at their diet. We also want to look at movement to see if there’s any kind of stagnation. [Look at] hearing. Working with these products can help that person stop the overproduction of earwax.

Why don’t we talk about ear care and ear health more? (26:50)

Moderator: We do have a question, where are these products available? Why have I never heard of this? Why do you all think that the ears have been neglected? I know Wally’s is celebrating 32 years in natural ear care products, so Michelle if you want to talk about that, why do you think that, and where is the product available?

Michelle Farleigh: Yes, I am happy to say that I am helping support Wally’s in their venture to educate individuals on better ear care. I just think that ear care has just really truly been neglected. I think that’s just due to the lack of awareness about its importance. People think that health issues can often be painless or subtle at first. We may not realize the gradual damage that may be occurring with our ears. They’re often overlooked until a problem arises. Then, you’re rushing to the store or rushing to the doctor to find a way. And so, I think it’s just a lack of emphasis on preventative care for your ears. Wally’s has done a really good job with word of mouth over the last 30 years. It started out with the owners having ear issues with one of their sons, and they wanted to put ear tubes in his ears. And they were not comfortable with that 35 years ago. And so one of the owners went to a natural food store and found an ear candle and started ear candling, or as I would say, ear coning, their son for six months. And those issues dissipated. They felt so strongly about the product that they decided to make ear candles. So what they’re doing is taking that century-old concept and putting a natural spin on it. We are currently where America shops. We are at Walmart, we’re at CVS, Target, a lot of the natural stores, Sprouts, Whole Foods. We have a lot of locations throughout the country as well as internationally.

How do ear oil and ear candles help you? Does ear candling work? (28:54)

Moderator: We’ve talked a lot about how to keep the ears clean, thanks to somebody bringing that up. But how do we keep the ears nurtured? We’ve been talking about self care and the ears are also calming, so how do we use these products or these techniques to nurture ourselves?

Michelle Farleigh: The ear oil specifically is formulated to support healthier ears. The ear oil is tested by dermatologists as well as we just had it tested by pediatricians. It’s really to help maintain those healthier ears and to soothe sensitivity. With our ear candles, our ear candles are to help promote rest and relaxation. They are a wellness tool. There was a study done in 2005 by a doctor in Germany who actually did a study on some patients who had sleep disturbances and anxiety disturbances. And before he ear candled, he did a brain EEG on them and the brain map actually showed pronounced color changes from before and after candling. So that really does support the stand that ear candling helps with rest and relaxation because these individuals were in a more relaxed state. And so we like to inform people that these ear candles, they help with de-stressing. They help you decompress at the end of the day. They really are for rest and relaxation. We ask that you do it with a partner so that you can really enjoy. It’s very beneficial. That’s why Leah provides these services, so that you can really close your eyes and just really relax and reap the benefits from the experience. I think to answer your question is ways that we can nurture our ears are to, as we mentioned, you know, stay away from loud noises, not putting anything in your ear, maintaining your overall health, stay hydrated, eat a balanced diet, exercise regularly, manage your stress, and then to help promote healthier circulation, which I think Nancy can help with talking a little more about that.

Nancy Byrne: Oh sure. I remember years ago when I was just starting acupuncture school, I met a massage therapist and I didn’t understand, but it worked, so I didn’t care. She said, if you’re ever stressed, just pull down on your ears. So, I’ll take my earrings out, but I often give this to patients. You pull down on your lobes. And now you’ll see, we have all this technology which, you know, too much of it can be harmful, as we talked about, but with technology and with all the social media, there’s so much education now and so much sharing. Like, ear candling and coning is making a comeback. But you’ll see more and more that you’re aware of this, that there are different practitioners who will say, unfold the ear because this is where we access the vagus nerve. You can do little circles in the bone behind your ear. In Chinese medicine this spot, the bone behind your ear, is for a calm sleep. It’s actually an insomnia point, but I believe that’s because we’re accessing the vagus nerve, which calms your system. And then there’s all sorts of things you can do, like facial cupping. So again, after you add the Wally’s oil in your ear, like Leah was saying, you can drain down this side. So you can put a facial oil or a natural avocado oil, tap it on your skin. Then you squeeze the cup and drain down. If you’re into Gua Sha, you can also do it with your Gua Sha tool just to aid in the draining. Or, like was mentioned earlier, too much dairy can cause excess ear wax. We see that in Chinese medicine, too. Dairy is what we call phlegm-producing, which can show up anywhere in the body. It can show up. Ears will be one of the signs. Excess ear wax. But phlegm is an umbrella term. It can be congestion. It can be phlegm-ness in the mind, like when you’re feeling foggy-headed. So these are all your body signs, your body saying, you know what, we need to have a little more balance So maybe you eat less dairy or take a break from dairy and see how your body responds. And then when you eat it again if you all of a sudden get a ton of ear wax, or other signs that I mentioned, it might be your body telling you that you have a food allergy. So, the body is pretty remarkable, in that it’s always giving us signs, and it doesn’t take much to feel better.

Let’s talk about vertigo. What is vertigo? What are the causes of vertigo? What is a treatment for vertigo? (33:48)

Moderator: We have two vertigo-related questions. One is can it help vertigo? Or should you avoid it if you have vertigo? So can anybody address vertigo?

Nancy Byrne: I’ve seen that quite a bit in my practice and it can mean different things. Sometimes it comes up after a virus or cold. So you just have to help the body removing the virus or the cold. Some of the lymph draining techniques we talked about, and as Leah said, see a professional–that can be one of the things. There’s also an idea in Chinese medicine that it’s too much energy coming up, so you might also ground yourself, like put your feet in the grass, warm your feet. But there are different, everyone’s an individual so there’s different reasons for vertigo. But like anything, the sooner you address it, the better.

Leah Joiner: And just from a holistic standpoint, vertigo can be related to the vestibular system. The vestibular system is also in the inner ear, and remember that your sinuses, they are here and here, and connecting to the eustachian tubes of your ears. So if you’ve got ear issues, you might even have sinus congestion that’s showing up in your ears.  Right, because we’ve talked about drainage being so important, but we also have to look at where the source of the issue is actually coming from. So the vestibular system is so important because that’s our equilibrium, that’s our horizon line. We have water in our inner ears that keep us upright, so vertigo is an imbalance in the vestibular system. And what’s interesting about the vestibular system is when you’re a child, you have all of this health because everything is moving, and as we get a little bit older, that can begin to dry up and you can begin to get vertigo issues. And that’s why, when you’re older and you ride a roller coaster, the vestibular system isn’t happy about that. But, when you were a kid, it was totally fine. So that’s how it kind of works. So with vertigo in particular you really want to be going to an ENT and looking and seeing what’s going on in the inner ear and seeing if there’s pressure-related or altitude-related things that are going on that is affecting that water level in the inner ear.

What is the role of ears in relaxation and stress management? How does ear coning work? (36:12)

Moderator: I think we’re all learning so much on the subject of vertigo. I don’t want this to end. What else are we not aware that ears are connected to? What else can ears impact? We talked about kidneys, we talked about allergies, what else?  

Leah Joiner: I mean at the very, very basic, they are a sensory organ, they are our fight or flight mechanism. But as Nancy was saying, let’s relate it back to ear coning for a second. One of the things that I do with my clients is before they come in with a session, I give all the information upfront because I know when they leave, they’re gonna be floating away. They leave in such a parasympathetic, down-regulated system. Now here’s the truth, we’re all in sympathetic every single day. We’re on the go we’re doing stuff. And you can’t heal in a sympathetic response, it just doesn’t work. So you have to move your body into a parasympathetic rest, digest and heal state. So when you’re sleeping, the brain is actually creating this drainage and as I mentioned the glymphatic system because all of this is lymph tissue. So the ears are really, really important because they are open to the outside world. And if we’re not taking care of them then we’re gonna start to have issues, such as I was mentioning, about these statistics that’s coming up about hearing. The modern way of living is actually impacting these organs. So there are practitioners like myself and Wally’s that are really just trying to forward this awareness around ear health because we don’t want it to get worse. So we really want to figure out what we can do. The ear coning, when I use it on people, that rhythmic, beautiful, deep, grounding sound that happens when the cones burn, I can see my clients, like, when your body shifts, like when you’re going to sleep, and you’re moving out of that sympathetic state, and you kind of have that jolt, that’s when you move into parasympathetic. And all of my clients do that when I do ear coning on them. A lot of them fall asleep. But these are very stressed-out people, because who isn’t? But I can really help them move into that place, and it’s such a passion of mine to help all of us be in that place of healing. It just takes a physical device sometimes to kind of get there and ear coning is the way to do it for me, for my clients, because they get the benefit of the ear cones and the ear care and the education, but they are really able to have that drainage, and then the sounds are really beautiful for the brain to listen to.

What are ear candles? (39:02)

Moderator: For those of us who don’t know what we’re talking about, do we have an ear candle that we can show?

Leah Joiner: I do. These are my favorite ones. These are beeswax because they’re the most authentic. The actual ear coning word is thermal auricular therapy. Ear coning has been done for centuries. How I learned about it was in 1997 when I got into holistic. I only knew Wally’s ear cones. I started to really look at Egyptian culture, and they used to use ear coning because they had a lot of mites in their ears and vectors and things that they would use ear coning for. So when I first had this done, I was just super interested in, like, all of these cultures that have used ear coning. Most recently, I read an article about the Hopi Indians like across the board, Ayurvedic, Chinese, holistic, homeopathic, naturopathic, functional medicine–has been doing this therapy for millennia. So, what we’re really trying to forward here is just the awareness of bringing these kinds of modalities back into play. But I love the beeswax ones because, just like the Egyptians would have taken a rod, wrapped it in muslin and then dipped it in beeswax to make the cone. These have lavender with it which is really lovely when it burns you can smell that. It’s just a great therapy for my clients to have in their day, so they can deal with something that is stressful and move them into a place that they can heal.

Ear Health Awareness: How to improve ear health (40:46)

Moderator: Thank you, that was great. We have, as I mentioned before, Ear Health Awareness Day is coming up on September 19. We’re trying to start a conversation about your health, does anybody have any suggestions on how we can celebrate this day and raise awareness.

Nancy Byrne: I would do your ear massage. You can get something called Ear Seeds. There’s a company called EarSeeds.com. I have them on. These are actually little stickers. I have them on. Here, you can barely see them. They’re made to look like piercings.  So you can you can get some from Seeds.com or go to your acupuncturist and get them. Ear seeds are called ear seeds because traditionally a little round seed was used just because it puts acupressure on the area. But now because ear health is becoming, you know, we’re coming back to our roots, ear health is becoming prominent. This is one of the companies that let’s you wear them and have fun. It looks like piercings and you can wear ear seeds and celebrate that way. We often put them on our patients when they’re done with acupuncture and I’ve had patients come back and say those are life-changing. They really just help them relax or help them sleep or help with pain.  So any of those things. There are so many great tips. I learned a few things today. I think there are a lot of ways to celebrate the ear.

Leah Joiner: Well, I love ear care. I love that you guys are doing this for all of us to bring that awareness back. It’s the ancient modalities in modern day living, so I’m all about it. If you are trying to stimulate your parasympathetic state, you can actually trace your finger from the top of the ridge. Go down to the second ridge that actually touches the nerve itself, and just in semicircles. And you want to do this, you can do it on either ear. I would say to do it at one at a time, until you start yawning. Actually, I was doing this this morning, so I was a little nervous, and I was like, I kept yawning, I was like, oh no, that’s not good.

But if you are kind of going through a stressful situation and just kind of like, you know, on either ear. They totally feel very different because your ears are tight. They can really relate to the nervous system. So you’re gonna feel one is looser than the other. And as Nancy said, you’re always kind of like pulling the ear at a diagonal to the back. You can you can kind of like just be manipulating that so that you can create that earwax to get that draining out. Don’t be afraid to kind of like get in there and start manipulating and get in touch with your ears. Get in touch with the feeling of what that is like and what it’s stimulating when you just touch points on the ear.

And of course, ear coning, right. Get with a practitioner that you trust. Interview somebody before you work with them. Ask what their philosophy is. Ask how they do the process. Try it, right? Or you can get a sample this lovely ear oil and just use it to massage and to really nourish your ears. And just to be aware of these beautiful little instruments that we have on our face that don’t get enough love. Give them some love.

Can I do ear candling at home? Let’s talk about how to ear candle at home. (44:08)

Moderator: I can see there are already questions, can I do ear candling at home? Can I make mistakes with ear seeds? So let’s explain to people that there are things they can do, like you just said, Leah. You can experiment with your own ears. This is all safe stuff that people can do on their own.

Michelle Farleigh: Yes, and that’s the goal – to provide people with the wellness tools to be able to do in the comfort of their own home. Which is why we recommend if you’re going to ear candle, to do it with a partner. Or, as Leah was explaining, you can find a professional that provides the service for you. The ear oil, you can take that at home and then your scrub as well.

To answer your question on what about celebrating your Health Day. Just want to take a minute because I think that it’s a really exciting moment for Wally’s to have an Ear Health Day. We are trying to focus on educational events and outreach programs. We really want to try to help raise awareness about the importance of ear care. So we’re sharing information on social media. We’re trying to distribute pamphlets, and we’re really working and encouraging conversation about ear health, because it’s an opportunity to share accurate information and to promote ear health as well as safe listening habits. There is ear fatigue, as we are mentioning earlier, you know our ears are always working, our ears are always, always working, from the time we wake up to alarm clocks going off to the time we go to sleep with a white noise. And so we are really encouraging people to take care of their ears and to raise awareness for our ear care.

Ear care for kids (45:58)

Moderator: I know Wally’s has two products for children, and you’re also going to be providing some free products and free public service information so that we can start children out caring for their ears earlier and starting out with healthy habits.

Michelle Farleigh: Yes, you have the kids’ ear scrub, which is to help for preventative purposes. This empowers them to clean the ears on their own. We also are bringing on children’s ear oil, it should be out next year, which is pediatrician tested. And we’re working actually on an outreach program right now to provide elementary school students ear care kits, which would include these products as well as a pamphlet on how to take care of your ears. And so we just really feel it’s important to start with the littles. And then, as well as adults, to take care of our ears as well.

Moderator: Thank you, everybody. Do we have any more questions from the audience here today? I think there were a lot of questions. So thank you for all your input and your questions. Michelle, Nancy, and Leah are all available for interviews. We will also have a recording of this event and put together a recap for all of you. We hope that you help us share this important story. Thank you.

Ear Health Panel: Thanks for having us.