Earvangelism

Your inner ear has its own oestrogen receptors. I know, absolutely crazy. They help explain why men generally lose hearing earlier and more severely than women. This year, researchers identified one of the genes behind that protection. The expected result: males would suffer more, since they have less estrogen to begin with. The ACTUAL result: females came out significantly worse. In humans, the same gene is linked to hearing status only in women, but only after menopause.

The takeaway: women's ears age and respond to certain genes than men's!

Almost every organ in your body is built by one type of embryonic tissue. Your middle ear is the exception: built from all three, plus a fourth crew of cells that travelled in from your developing brain to form your smallest bone. That shared construction history makes your ear old friends with your heart, face, and kidneys, which is why certain syndromes cluster ear anomalies with heart and kidney anomalies in the same patients. This begs the question: what other connections haven't we found yet that the ear could reveal?

How could looking at someone's earlobe tell you more about their heart than a conversation ever could? The answer emerging from research is... a crease. In this episode, I break down Frank's sign: the diagonal fold in the earlobe first documented in 1973 and now statistically linked to coronary artery disease, present in 64% of cardiovascular deaths versus 36% of others, and up to 8x more common in critically blocked arteries. Turns out your ear's been reporting on your heart this whole time.

You will never look at an ear the same way again. Including your own.

Why does the same dose of a hearing-damaging drug destroy one person's hearing and leave another's intact? The answer emerging from research is... the gut. In this episode, I break down the gut-mito-ear axis: the newly proposed framework connecting your microbiome, your blood-labyrinth barrier, and the vulnerability of your cochlea. It turns out the gut-brain axis has a sibling nobody's been paying attention to until now!

A sound lands in your body before you've understood what it was. A creak in the night. A two-note film score. A tone of voice that tells you something is wrong before the sentence is finished.

That sequence: feel first, think second is your auditory system doing something extraordinary.

Your ears have two routes to the brain. One goes to the conscious, reasoning mind. The other goes straight to your emotional alarm system, arriving before language, before logic, before you've identified what you just heard.

In this episode, we're talking about the low road: why sound reaches your feelings before your brain catches up, and what it means that your ears are briefing your emotional system constantly, without you knowing it.

Vertigo usually originates in our ears. But what happens when the original balance problem has resolved and you still don't feel steady?

In this episode of Earvangelism, I explore Persistent Postural-Perceptual Dizziness (PPPD), a fascinating condition that sits at the intersection of the vestibular system, vision, and the brain.

Discover how the brain can remain stuck in "protection mode" after a genuine balance disturbance, why anxiety and dizziness often reinforce one another, and how recovery involves more than just the inner ear.

A fascinating reminder that our senses and emotions are far more connected than we often realize.

Why does birdsong make us feel peaceful while a bear's roar sends a chill down our spine?

In this episode of Earvangelism, we explore the hidden patterns our brains learn from sound. Without ever studying acoustics, we instinctively associate high-pitched sounds with small, safe things and low-pitched sounds with larger, potentially threatening ones.

From birds and bears to violins, double basses, and even the soundtrack of Jaws, discover how pitch shapes our emotions, influences our expectations, and subtly changes the way we experience the world.

You may never hear birdsong quite the same way again!

Why do drunk people stagger, or feel like the room is spinning? The answer may surprise you: your ears.

In this episode of Earvangelism, Priscilla Leigh explores how alcohol affects the inner ear’s balance system, disturbs your eye movements, and tricks your brain into thinking you’re moving when you’re not.

A fascinating look at the hidden sensory system keeping you upright... until alcohol interferes with it.

Most people think only of hearing when it comes to the ear. But hidden inside your inner ear is another sensory system entirely. It's one that stabilises your vision, keeps text from blurring while you move, and helps your brain understand where your body is in space.

In this episode, we explore the vestibular system and one of its most astonishing functions: the vestibulo-ocular reflex: the reason your eyes stay stable even while your head moves.

When this system isn’t functioning properly, it affects everything about everything.

We spend years learning to read, write, and speak. Nobody intentionally teaches us how to listen.

In this episode, we get into what effective listening actually involves, why your brain wanders when someone is talking, what the Reticular Activating System has to do with it, and four practical things you can do to genuinely hear more of what's in front of you.