Mind your own earwax
Regular readers of The Varsity Science section will know that earwax is of two kinds. There is the dry kind-greyish, dry, and flaky-and the wet: yellowish, waxy, and moist. Dry earwax is common among East Asians and Aboriginals; Caucasians and Africans have the wet form. Japanese scientists have recently pinpointed the gene responsible for this-a gene they believe also plays a role in sweating.
They report that the change of a single genetic letter of that gene determines whether you have one or the other. Dry earwax arose in northern Asia (nearly all Koreans and northern Chinese have it), possibly the by-product of an adaptation to the cold. It is established that East Asians generally sweat less and produce less body odour than other folk. And since earwax is a mixture of oily secretions from your sebaceous glands, and less oily ones from your sweat glands, the Japanese researchers say that the ancestors of East Asians developed lessened sweating in response to the cold, acquiring dry earwax in the process.
-Mike Ghenu
Source: The New York Times
