Ears hurting when planes land.

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i used to hold my nose and blow but now i find gulping more effective and less painful.

i used to and occassionally get really bad ear pains mainly on landing...its also very plane dependant.
when im on an a380 i dont have to do anything at all, but older planes and 747s etc defaintly give me ear discomfort.
 
I always use ear plug (from Boots) stick them in before the doors are sealed and take them out once they're opened the other end. Without them I suffer from start to finish, with them I have no problems at all.
 
when I was a kid I had a perforated ear drum (from birth) and the pain was really bad taking off and landing. On a trip to australia (my first time on the plane, including about 10 flights all told) I mastered the art of unpopping my ears and found that what worked best for me was making myself burp, I think it was more the motions involved than the actual burping that did the trick.
Since having it patched I've not suffered at all, but if my ears do pop jutting my jaw out and yawning fixes it 9/10 times now.
 
yeah i get this bad too. it tends to be a lot worse with slower and more graduated decents into East Midlands and Luton for some reason, i didn't have a problem when I flew to the US from Heathrow. I don't always manage to clear the pressure either so sometimes walk off the plane effectively deaf. Chewing gum, drinking stuff - anything that makes you swallow more regularly, then hold your nose as you swallow, that eases it sometimes. otherwise the divers thing.
 
Fenris said:
This. Most important thing is to do it over time, don't wait until your ready to roll around in pain as that will only lead to more pain and the chance of over pressurisation.

If you don't feel like doing that, just suck on something or yawn a lot.



Are you a doctor? I've been scuba diving for 8 years and I've never heard anyone mention experiencing any medically adverse effects from the Valsalva Maneuver (yeah, it's a maneuver) besides the tiny risk of over pressurisation mentioned above, hell it's used globally by divers to relieve inner ear pressure, if it was dangerous I imagine someone would have passed around a memo, unless it's due to the differences between high/low and low/high pressure equalisation.
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Having spoken to divers working at the DDRC (diving diseases research centre) in Plymouth, they recommend using the valsalva manoeuvre as infrequently as possible and use other methods of equalising pressure in the middle ear.

These people dive regularly and work with hundreds of patients in hyperbaric chambers, including divers suffering from the bends. They've had to stop seasoned divers and regular patients doing it so often because it can cause ear damage.

I guess the bigger risk here is perforating your ear drums whilst doing it (but you'll need to do it pretty hard and deserve to be deaf if you don't realise it's hurting for a reason), but frequent use of the valsalva can lead to infection too.
 
Last time I flew it was really painful when landing, just wouldn't clear. It actually only cleared in the airport, some 30mins after landing, suddenly made this screechy sound as I guess the fluid shifted :(
 
Suffer from the same thing, can tell you when a plane is descending before it comes over the tannoy. Had a set of ear plugs that were quite highly priced but seemed to do the trick nicely. Not sure what they were called though
 
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