Leaving the Land of Woo

Tags: candles | Hopi ear candles

You can now buy an impressive range of candles, not for providing light, but for putting in your ears.

This bizarre therapy involves inserting the candle in the ear (wick end out...) and lighting it.  So the theory goes, this will draw out toxins from your body.  It seems to have escaped the sellers of this remarkable invention that nothing can be drawn out by this process, and in any case there are no toxin accumulating in your ears.  Ear wax is not a toxin. In fact, it provides an important function of cleaning and protecting the skin of the ear canal, also providing some protection against bacteria and fungi.  But hey, that's biology and these guys are only interested in a sale.  For that, they need a bizarre theory.  Er, let's see.  Here's one, courtesy of Hopi Ear Candles:

The way in which the Biosun ear candles work to remove ear wax or mucus in the sinuses is through the sound frequency vibration. The sound of the flame creates a vibration that travels through the ear candle penetrating the eardrum which in turn vibrates the inner ear bones at such a frequency it is like an inner ear massage. This then pushes further into the eustachian tubes and the sinuses helping to push out any blocked pressure.

Tags: crystals | healing crystals

Crystals are very big business and a major magnet for Woo merchants.  So are magnets by the way, but this is about crystals.  This selection of quotes comes from the site:

HolisticShop.co.uk.

Crystals of course have a resonant frequency, as in fact does every object, literally every object, including tables and chairs. But from having a piece of quartz in a watch to act as a timer, our author (who admits to a BSc in Biological Sciences) has a much grander theory, in fact so grand that modern physics would be revolutionised if it were true...