I know this thread is ridiculously old and moldy, but I have to share my current pain. I’m one of those who can quite/amplify sounds, and I’m sick right now and have pressurized the HELL out of my ears. And it’s KILLING me.
There usually comes this threshold where my ears can’t take any more and pop back down, somewhat close to normal. But I’ve popped my ears “out” a few times now, and it’s been 30 minutes and I feel like I’m about to die! Every 5 or so minutes I get brave and try once again to reach the threshold but it’s not working.
Halfway through that last sentence, my ears finally “deflated.” Actually, once they started to deflate I sucked in to be sure to get them back to at least the “in” (muffled) state. This pain is more annoying than painful, so I’m okay just living with it. I don’t want to press my luck and try to pop them out again and miss “equilibrium.”
Also, my eardrums feel like they’ve been stretched to the point where they can’t find equilibrium even if I nailed it. It’s like they’re misshapen, like a plastic baggie you pressed with your finger but didn’t quite poke through. I’m not worried, though. This has happened to me many times, and they’re always back to normal the next day.
Well, since you reanimated this zombie, I’ll go ahead and put in my ‘two cents’.
Unfortunately, I’m not one of the lucky ones that can equalize the pressure/pop my ears at will, and consequently experience the ‘quiet/loud’ sensation that accompanies doing that. I certainly wish that I could, though.
I can employ the ‘Vasalva’ technique and equalize the pressure, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to become a Divemaster!
The Vasalva is very necessary, to be able to safely scuba dive.
I have assisted teaching scuba classes wherein, one of the students only then found out that they were unable to perform this necessary technique.
Consequently, she was unable to continue the classes/safely scuba dive.
(She was gladly refunded for the cost of the classes, and the Dive shop even refunded her the cost of the equipment needed for the class.)
I have quite pronounced Tinnitus, and doing the Vasalva sometimes helps to diminish the loud ringing that I constantly hear, and make other sounds more easily heard.
Since it’s been reanimated, I’ll add my 2 cents in, as well: I have spent nearly my entire life thinking I was a freak because my ears do this all the time. Good to know it’s not just me.
I had lots of ear problems as child, and also have tinnitus (I’m sure bring a musician who’s into loud music hasn’t helped). When I get a cold, my right ear always “clogs up” for about a week, too.
I can also pop my ears at will. I seem to also have this unique ability to suck air out of my ears and create a vacuum in there as a sort of natural earplug. I can talk and breath normally while they are “plugged,” but I can only hold the vacuum for so long before my ears start to hurt and I need to open the vacuum back up and re-equalize the pressure. Is this odd or unique?
I suck air out of my ears too. Not really a vacuum, of course, but I lower the pressure and trap it that way. It doesn’t hurt unless I really suck hard. I just do enough to get a small deadening effect.
I certainly believe someone can do damage to ear drum and have a friend who ruptured his when he was new to SCUBA diving.
One of the things that was very helpful that my advanced OWD instructor taught us was to exercise our ears days before a dive by clearing very gently.
It really helped me and we also could determine if there was a need to take an OTC decongestant.
One earlier post in this old zombi thread was describing a reverse block. I used to enjoy getting petty reverse blocks while driving up out of the Iron mine pits, but had to drive slowly because even a bump in the road would cause equalization.
The wiki article refers to driving in the mountains as contributing to the pressure imbalance. I never had any issues above say 7,000 ft but when driving along the
coast in Washington state going through a small valley i would feel the pressure build and always try to maintain the pressure through the dip. I am talking about a dip more than a valley where it might only take 30 seconds to drive through.
Before diving I never enjoyed the discomfort traveling down into the Port City of Duluth MN. Today i will try and hold the imbalance all the way down the 4-5 hundred foot decent.
I know it’s a zombie but go ahead and put me down as an ear popper. I don’t move my jaw or anything else that I can detect, I guess I’m moving something in my ear. I can pop them to equalize pressure but I can also “click” them at will all day long. I used to do it to the beat of music when I was younger.
For the first time ever, I just tried sticking my fingers in my ears and clicking (science!). The only thing it did was make the click quieter.
Hello everybody.
Three years after the last reply, I must say I am glad I found this topic.
I’d like to share my story with you:
I’m 22 years old and I have always had many ear infections (I still get them at this age). When I was younger I put the ear tubes and the infections stopped for a while, but soon came back. I went on a flight as a child and it was ok, I chewed a gum and I barely had any discomfort.
However, when I was 15, I travelled by plane again and that time it was a nightmare. My ears were in great pain throughout the entire flight and for a week after and they have never been the same ever since. Some months later, I became able to pop my ears on my own (inward and outward). This should make it ok for me to travel by plane, since apparently I can equalize the pressure on my own, but the truth is still get ear aches when I go to a higher place like a moutain or sometimes even driving with the windows open. Because of that, I became really scared of travelling by plane again and I have no courage to get in one because these symptoms lead me to think that I’ll go to a similar nightmare.
I also can’t do the valsalva maneuver (I did it once and maybe I blew too hard but it hurt me).
I know I sound really sensitive about the ears and people dont believe me when I tell them these things, but it’s true and I truly feel pain/discomfort in the situations that I mentioned.
I have already stopped doing things I wanted because of my fear of travelling and I get sad because of that, because I want to travel and visit different countries. At the same time, I just can’t imagine going through the horrible pain again and I even get scared at the possibility of becoming deaf if something goes wrong.
I’d like to know if anyone can relate to these or if anyone has any advice to me.
I’m tired of sounding crazy to other people who don’t even get the “popping”.
Thank you very very much in advance
I’m sorry for your distressing predicament–the psychological, physical, and practical.
First, welcome to SD, specifically the General Questions forum within it.
Just so you know, if the original post (OP) or the drift of the thread gets too medical-advice-y, the all-powerful Mods might zoom in and bounce it to In My Humble Opinion forum.
As you’ve seen, this thread, zombiefied more times than a Hollywood franchise, is basically anecdotal and explanatory.
i been able to do this since i was a teenager … practicing at it, while on plane, allowed me to equalize the pressure over duration of ten minutes … instead of sporadically popping, keeping the canal open that long.
When I was a child, my family often took car trip vacations during the summers. Whenever we would drive through mountains, my mother would periodically announce that her ears had just popped and ask the rest of us if ours had popped, too.
I never knew what she was talking about, since I would initiate a yawn, which unblocked the eustachian tube, which equalized the pressure.
Sometimes, if I blow my nose too strongly, I will “pop” my ears, and have to start a yawn to re-equalize.
I once caught a cold on a business trip. Prodigious congestion led to many ear-popping blows. Eventually, I lost my ability to equalize pressure by starting a yawn, and, eventually, completing the yawn.
Then came air travel back to home. Not only was my head firmly locked by congestion, but now, I was also beset by changing air pressure, especially during the descent. I got to learn what my mother had been talking about all those years ago.
I don’t know aything about eustachian tubes but I caan also do this. However mine seems slightly different. When I hum or make any vocal sound I can adjust my ear pressure of something to make it louder in my head but not in real life. This only works on the vocal noises that I MAKE.
I can also adjust the pressuer in my ears just without moving muscles in my jaw. I have always been able to do this as far as I remember however I did do some scuba diving when I was relatively young and I swam and very often and still do. I like being able to do this but sometimes I can only mess with one ear just on a random day and it drives me insane. I’ve said it to my friends but I’m not sure they believe me.
Wow, I have been looking into Google for a word to describe this, and just now I got lucky to be able to explain what I have been able to do since I have conscience.
I have also this ability, but as I read in the comments, seems like some people have it more developed than others, and also some people just have some variant of the actual ability.
In my case, I can pop my ears at will and keep them popped as long as I want, and I can talk and breath normally, but I can hear everything just like if I were underwater (Or so I feel). However, sometimes, when I send too much pressure to my ears (or just one ear received too much pressure in case I have a clogged one due to a cold), this may result in a horrendous pain, that I don’t dare to pop again until the pain is gone… and I do send air gently afterwards.
This ability was something I developed on my own, because I couldn’t bear my sister’s signing, I just couldn’t stand it. So, as a “defensive mechanisms”, I popped my ears and I “buzz”/“hum”, so I could basically mute everything, and only hear the hum/buzz I was creating.
Oh, forgot to mention, I have no idea which muscles I move, it’s not the jaw nor I have to swallow or anything that can be visible to the exterior, I feel like I move a small something that is inside my ear “holes” (like half-inch inside it) and under the actual “tunnel” of the ear. Also, something no one has mention, but in my case, I can’t pop just one ear, only both at same time.
