Is yours dry, or goopy? Is it tan and flaky, or brown and sticky? Humans only have
two types of earwax, and you're stuck with yours for life. What kind do you have?
Rice-bran earwax is dry, flaky, and grey-tan in colour. Honey earwax is gooey, gluey,
and brown. For those of us with honey earwax, there's smelly news. Scientists have
just linked wet and goopy earwax to wild and smelly body odour.
Body odour is produced by bacteria. They chow down on your sweat, and produce some
really foul-smelling waste. That's right; body odour is caused by bacteria poo.
Your sweat doesn't smell at all!
Most of the thousands of sweat glands in your body produce clear salty sweat that
bacteria don't like to eat. However, the sweat glands under your armpits produce
a thick and milky sweat that bacteria just love to munch. These glands are called
apocrine glands
, and unless you wash pretty regularly, any place with apocrine glands can soon
begin to stink.
Another place you'll find apocrine glands is in your ears. The apocrine glands in
your ears help to produce earwax. But what is earwax exactly? Well, for a start
it's not even wax. It's made up of dead skin, sweat, oil, and stuff called
ceruman
that oozes from your apocrine glands. Scientists have discovered that people whose
apocrine glands produce honey earwax also seem to produce extra-smelly sweat. We
can use these links between your earwax and your armpits to find new ways to fight
body odour.
But hang on. If apocrine glands attract bacteria and bad smells, why you don't your
ears smell bad? Luckily, your earwax is acidic, and bacteria don't like to grow
in acidic places. This may mean you can use earwax instead of deodorant...
First published in ScienceMax.
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