Air Travel and Ear Pain

With the summer holiday season fast approaching, more and more of us will be jetting off to far flung destinations around the world. Whilst traveling by plane many of us will experience issues with our ears due to pressure.  In rare cases these problems can lead to severe pain and hearing loss, so it is best to take precautions, before, during and after a flight. 

As an Audiologist, I thought it would be good to explain what happens to our ears when we fly…

It really comes down to air pressure. Normally the air pressure inside the inner ear and the air pressure outside are essentially the same, or at least not different enough to cause any trouble. Even if you were to hike to the top of a tall mountain, the slow speed of your ascent would allow time for the pressure to equalise along the way. A problem only occurs when the change in altitude is so rapid that the pressure inside the inner ear and the air pressure outside don’t have time to equalise, as occurs in air travel. 

When your flight takes off, and begins its ascent, the air pressure inside the inner ear quickly surpasses that of the pressure outside. The eardrum swells outward. Picture a loaf of bread baking, and you get the idea. Conversely if air pressure inside the inner ear rapidly becomes less than the air pressure outside, the tympanic membrane (the eardrum) will be sucked inward, almost like a vacuum effect. What has happened is that the Eustachian tube (which links our ears with our throat) has flattened and needs a bit of extra help from you in order to continue to do its job of bringing air into the inner ear. Whether ascending or descending, that stretching not only causes the eardrum not to vibrate (thus the muffled sounds) but also causes the pain you feel. 

Everyone who has flown in a plane has felt the effects of a change in altitude on ears; a feeling of fullness and popping is commonplace. You need to equalise the pressure by introducing as much air as possible via the Eustachian tube and there are a number of ways to do that. 

The easiest way to equalise the pressure is to swallow. When you swallow, that clicking or popping sound you may hear is actually a tiny bubble of air that has moved from the back of the nose into the middle ear, via the Eustachian tube. The Eustachian tube ensures that the air in the middle ear is constantly being re-supplied. That air is then absorbed into the membranes of the inner ear, and the cycle starts over again. This constant cycle of air ensures that the air pressure on both sides stays equal. When you fly, the trick is to ensure that the Eustachian tubes work overtime and open more frequently to accommodate the change in air pressure. 

Chewing gum or sucking on a hard boiled sweet will help; for infants, whose Eustachian tubes are much narrower than an adult’s, the change in air pressure can be even more excruciating, so a bottle or dummy is recommended to increase swallowing. 

Other ways of equalising the pressure include:

• Avoid sleeping during ascent or descent
• Drink lots of fluids in-flight to stay hydrated
• Yawn
• EarPlanes: Specially designed ear plugs that have a filter to equalise pressure
• Nasal spray: Take only when needed as overuse of nasal sprays can end up causing more congestion

Karen Finch is the Managing Director and lead audiologist at The Hearing Care Centre.
The multi-award winning, family-run company has 20 centres across Suffolk and Norfolk.
For more information visit www.hearingcarecentre.co.uk or call 01473 230330.

Hear better than ever with Siemens binax hearing aids

Siemens is lifting binaural hearing systems to a new level. For the first time, hearing-impaired individuals can now hear better than those with normal hearing in particularly demanding listening situations*.

Despite their enormous computing power, the new Binax instruments are the most energy-efficient in their class.

Binax exchanges audio signals. Each binaural hearing aid can assess the acoustic environment not only on its own side, but also on the other. In the process, four microphones – two in each device – form a virtual eight-microphone network. New calculation methods work much like the human brain in leveraging the fact that voice signals don't reach both ears at the same speed or volume. Based on such differences, wearers can more accurately identify and focus on the sources of sound.

Binaural hearing aids also use this new technology in windy locations ideal for those golfers and outdoor patients. They automatically determine which side is receiving better signals and replicate them for the other device. These latest Siemens binaural hearing aids are capable of transmitting around a thousand times as much data per second as preceding models.

The new peak performance does not come at the expense of battery life and they can run on conventional hearing instrument batteries or, depending on the model, on rechargeable batteries.

Karen's comments: “We have had amazing success with the last Siemens technology platform called Micon and this new level is so exciting. My team and I can't wait to get started and see how this technology performs and improves peoples lives.”

If you would like to be amongst the first trialling these new instruments, please give our customer care team a call and book your appointment - Freephone 0800 096 2637.

FACT: These latest Siemens binaural hearing aids are capable of transmitting around a thousand times as much data per second as preceding models.

*Two clinical studies have shown that binax provides better than normal hearing in certain demanding environments (Northern Colorado University, 2014; Oldenburg Hörzentrum, 2013): Speech Reception Thresholds in cocktail-party situations improved up to 2.9dB for wearers with mild to moderate hearing loss using Carat binax or Pure binax hearing instruments with narrow directionality, compared to people with normal hearing.

'Tinnitus was so loud, he was suprised I couldn't hear it!'

Imagine wearing a pair of headphones which are playing the sound of a whistling kettle.  Imagine wearing those headphones all day, and all night, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Horrific it might sound, but that’s what life was like for one of my Suffolk patients – the victim of a debilitating condition known as tinnitus. The noise in his ears was so loud, he told me he was surprised I couldn’t hear it.

My company The Hearing Care Centre getting involved with Tinnitus Awareness Week this week (3^rd-9^th February 2014), to try and help raise awareness about the condition.

Although around one in ten of the UK population is affected by tinnitus (and that adds up to more than a few thousand in Suffolk alone) it’s extremely difficult to provide medical help because the sound isn’t usually caused by anything physical or biological which can be cured, it comes from within the sufferer themselves.

It appears drugs are no help either:   certainly there is not as yet, conventional or complementary medication that has been shown to ease tinnitus and it is thought that repeatedly trying unsuccessful therapies worsens tinnitus.

It was because he’d not been able to find relief that our man with the whistling kettle turned to The Hearing Care Centre.   Fortunately we know that in a large number of cases, tinnitus sufferers, who are often elderly, also have hearing loss which exacerbates the situation.

We tested his hearing and discovered he did have a significant hearing loss, and fitted him with hearing aids.   I won’t say it was a miracle cure, because it wasn’t, but he told us it had changed his life.  Now everyday sounds he hadn’t been able to hear because of the noises in his ears, were clearly audible, and they in turn, suppressed the aggravation caused by the tinnitus.

I cannot emphasise how much difference identifying the hearing loss made to this man.  At his first follow up appointment he said he had been to a restaurant and heard the conversation clearly– something he hadn’t heard clearly for years.

Unresolved tinnitus is more than just a noise:  it can make communication difficult for the sufferer and the unrelenting sounds can cause stress which in turn makes the condition worse.  It really is like a spiral; the condition causes stress and stress makes the condition worse.

Interestingly, experts believe that even those without significant hearing loss may find hearing aids are helpful. Straining t listen causes increased hearing sensitivity and this can allow tinnitus to emerge or, if present already, to worsen. Correcting even relatively mild hearing loss reduces this central auditory gain and thereby reduces the level of the tinnitus. Hearing aids are said to be useful even if the hearing loss is not at a point that aids would normally be considered.

Tinnitus Awareness Week is organised by the independent charity the British Tinnitus Association which is hoping to reach thousands of people of all ages across the country through its campaign.

For much more information, advice, support, videos or a FREE info pack, please visit www.hearingcarecentre.co.uk/tinnitus