I recently flew Lufthansa from Abuja to frankfurt but my journey was spoilt by the terrible presurre-like pain I felt in my ear towards the end if the trip. I’m now scarred of air travel as a result. Has anyone else had a similar experience? How can one possibly prevent such, cope with it when it occurs or recover quickly from it afterwards?
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It’s caused by the change in air-pressure. Chew gum to stimulate your swallowing reflex; that will mitigate the muzziness.
The best advice I know is to take otc decongestant pills a day or two ahead and to drink extra water on the flight. I’ve had good results the last several times, and prior to that the pain was excruciating!!
The pain is caused by the sudden change in pressure as the plane begins its descent for landing. Some people experiance worse pain than others due to having smaller ear canals.
People use special ear plugs or chew gum if it is a problem for them. I usually try to yawn and make my ears „pop.” You can also hold your nose, close your mouth and try to blow air through your nose, forcing your sinuses to equalize the pressure inside of them.
Usually people who have excessive pain in their ears as a result of flying also have the same pain if they attempt underwater diving more than a few feet below the water’s surface, so you may want to avoid that as well.
The ear is an enclosed system, which is why ear infections are not as common as the common cold. This enclosed system is in equilibrium with the atmospheric pressure because there are tiny openings to the ear that allow it to adjust the outside air pressure. This adjustment is very slow and since you really don’t change elevations very rapidly on the ground, there’s no problem. Airplanes on the other hand can climb very fast and the air pressure drops dramatically (Air pressure lowers with elevation because the column of air pressing down towards the earth decreases). The air is so thin at 33,000 feet (average altitude for jets) that you’ll die of hypoxia in less that 15 seconds. But the pilot adjusts the cabin pressure to around 8,000-10,000 feet or more so people can stay alive. The more the cabin is pressurized the more the pressure will feel like ground-level. The reason the pilot doesn’t pressurize the cabin to sea-level is because it burns a lot of gas. The more similar the cabin and atmospheric pressures outside the airplane are, the less work (and less fuel) the airplane has expend in maintaining pressure. If you ever have the privilege to fly in a private jet ask the pilot to pressurize the cabin to sea-level and then you’ll not have the earache. You’ll probably end up paying a lot more for the flight ’cause keeping sea-level pressure up at 33,000 feet burns MAJOR fuel.
Looks like you weren’t blessed with good compensating mechanisms in your ear (unlike me haha, I’ve never had earaches while flying). Chewing gum helps a lot of people. You will have to chew gum during ascend and descend to allow your inner ear to adjust to the cabin pressure. Once the pressures are equal, you can spit out the gum. But look at the bright side, some people have such bad pressure problems with their ears during flight it makes them vomit during take-offs. They usually don’t feel as sick during landings because the ear is a lot better in letting air inside than evacuating (remember, air always moves from high pressure to low pressure. If you opened the emergency door or broke an airplane window at 33,000 feet you’ll get sucked right out). There’s so much to say about air pressure in airplanes I can go on and on. If you need to know more, let me know.