20 most worthless pieces of junk: #11 -- Ear candles

My wife is adventurous and curious, so when she first learned of ear candling she wasted no time in trying it out. We still laugh today about the evening that she and some of her friends spent, heads resting on their sides on our kitchen counter, with lit candles in their ears.

Ear candling is an old-timey process that supposedly cleans out one's ear canal. It works this way: a hollow tapered candle about the diameter of a child's pencil is lit on the wide end. The narrow end is then lowered into the ear canal. In theory, the updraft from the flame creates a partial vacuum within the candle, drawing all of the ear gunk from the ear canal into the candle's hollow center.