Have you ever noticed a thin hair growing on the side of your ear canal? Well, science says that this kind of hair, that dollhouse garden of black strands inside your ear is a common signpost of heart attacks.
How this idea occurred is really a mystery to some health experts, but Dr. Sanders T. Frank and his team of researchers published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1973, claiming that a diagonal earlobe crease, then they call it “Frank’s Sign,” was a possible predictor of coronary artery disease.
CAD is a problem where it builds up waxy plaque deposits inside the arteries, a condition called atherosclerosis usually caused too much ESPN exposure. And because many are asking about this clairvoyant ear-heart link, some physicians partnered with dermatologists to search for the answers. A group of physicians from New York published a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1984 claiming a strong association between ear canal hair and coronary artery disease.
They have studied 43 men and 20 women, 90% who participated the study had both a diagonal earlobe crease and ear canal hair experienced cardiac failure.
Physicians including Boston University Medical School Dr. Richard F. Wagner suspected that long-term exposure to androgen, the father of testosterone and the king of male hormones, caused clots in the arteries due to overproduction of red blood cells.
After 5 years, an article appeared in the Indian Heart of Journal in 1989, which the researchers published their conclusions from a study, where there are 215 Indian patients participated and correlations between earlobe crease, ear hair, and coronary artery disease.
“A significant difference was also observed between men with and without CAD in the presence of ear-canal hair with age-matched group,” written by the authors of the abstract report.
In June 2006 edition of the American Journal of Forensic Medical Pathology, Edston E. Published his study with regards to this link. Edston studies 520 autopsies and measured BMI, spleen Weight, ear hair, earlobe crease, baldness, thickness of abdominal fat and other characteristics. And after those crunching numbers, “It was found that ELC (earlobe crease) was strongly correlated with CAD in both men and women (P < 0.0001) but with sudden cardiac death (SCD) only in men (P < 0.04).” The younger the patient, the higher was the positive predictive value. ”
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