So THAT'S Why Your Ears Look Bigger As You Get Older
HuffPost
“Truthfully, I hope I live long enough that I can say, ‘Wow, these big ol’ ears are really showing my age.’”
Aging is a battle with gravity, and gravity always wins. While many body parts become droopier with each passing year, there’s one that often seems to get bigger with time — our ears. Will it make you feel any better if we tell you they’re not really growing, but just, um, “elongating” themselves? Yeah, we didn’t think so.
We looked into the scientific reasons for this more-or-less-universal human phenomenon. Dr. Nina Shapiro is a pediatric ear, nose and throat specialist at Los Angeles’ Westside Head and Neck, and a professor emerita at UCLA. She explains it this way: “Just as the other facial tissues, such as cheeks and jowls, tend to stretch, so do the ear structures.”