I got a pair of ear canal earphones yesterday, which provoked a somewhat heated and pointless debate with a colleague about what happens to your ear canals if you gain weight, so I’ve brought the question to the one place I think will be able to give me a definitive answer:
When you gain weight, does the diameter of your ear canals go up, down, or remain the same?
Being as how the ear canal is inside your head, surely weight gain would not affect the diameter. There’s nothing but bones and cartilage in there:
Well, there is a little flesh on the outside. Not the kind of place where you’d gain fat though is it?
I was wondering about fat gain on the outside of your face; would that have any impact at all? No squishing of skin, which might stretch or squash the ear canal? I’m not really talking about the innermost depths of the canal, but more the region where earphones might sit.
My own feeling is that it doesn’t make any difference either, but my colleague isn’t quite convinced.
Hmm. From the anatomical sketches I don’t see a large fatty layer there. But you’d better take someone else’s word for it, as IANAD.
I can only speak for my own ears, but I feel nothing but skin and cartilage there. No fat deposits at all, and I’m very heavy, with plenty of fat in my face. I’m also trained as a massage therapist, so I think I have a pretty good idea of what skin feels like vs. fat. So there’s some original research for you.
I think this is semi-related; I apologize if it’s too hijacky.
A year or so ago I was plagued with the sensation that my eustachian tubes were stuck open. Every breath I took roared in my ears, just like when you’re yawning and you can hear your own breathing very loudly.
I finally thought to Google around to see if the 'net could suggest anything. I came up with the description of “patulous eustachian tubes”, or stuck open eustachian tubes. The causes of it were listed as: recent weight loss, caffeine, and exercise.
I had recently lost 40 pounds when I was experiencing this patulosity, and it always came on midmorning, about two hours after I had exercised and drunk my morning espresso.
So the weight factor was a cause of change in the case of eustachian tubes, anyway.
