What does earwax do for your ear?

Moment Of Um

Brains On Universe

Kids & Family, Education For Kids

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2024

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Have you ever noticed the thin layer of sticky, oily stuff inside your ears? It’s called earwax! It’s definitely not the kind of wax you use to make candles or crayons, so what do our ears need it for? We asked pediatrician Dr. Anjuli Gans to help us find the answer.

Got a question that you want us to hear? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact, and we’ll wax poetic about the answer.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the brain behind brains on, this is the moment of um. Moment of Umm comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Anna G.
0:19.2	Ugh.
0:20.2	Ugh. Man, I am in need of some serious inspiration.
0:27.0	My buddy Sandin and I have been challenging each other to write poems about weird topics.
0:32.0	It's super fun. Our first round went pretty well. I
0:35.3	wrote a sonnet about salamanders, and Sandin went all out with an ode to orangutans.
0:41.5	Round two was food-themed. I did a limerick about lasagna and
0:45.5	Sandin wrote a deeply emotional haiku about hot sauce. But this time my topic is
0:51.6	earwax. I mean at least wax isn't hard to rhyme. I could use
0:56.2	snacks stacks facts hacks quacks you get the idea but I don't know anything about ear wax except that it's sticky and it's in my ears.
1:07.0	Like, what is it for?
1:09.0	And you know what? We got the same question from listener Gabriel.
1:13.3	Hi, I'm Gabriel from Austinin, New York.
1:17.2	My question is, what does your rights do for our ears?
1:21.6	This is like one of the most common questions. do for our ears.
1:27.0	This is like one of the most common questions I get every single day. My name is Angela Gans.
1:29.0	I'm an attending pediatrician at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
1:34.0	So earwax protects our ears in amazing ways.
1:37.0	It actually forms a physical barrier against dust, bacteria, and other germs.
1:43.0	It protects our ears physically from water
1:46.4	that may irritate the ear canal.
1:48.6	And it's actually itself got antibacterial properties
	...

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