Blowing snot into your ears?

[iamasmith]

Yup, sounds something like a "patulous Eustachian tube", which means that the tube is abnormally open. usually this is in the context of damage to the tube (such as by radiation), but I have heard of people being able to consciously open their tubes completely, leading to symptoms like this. Hearing your own voice loudly in this situation is called autophony, and some people hear the noise of airflow through their upper airway when the tube is wide open...

Mike

Sounds spot on, I had forgotten that my voice or humming also sounded like a booming noise to me whilst I did it (you forget these quirks sometimes when you have had such a thing all your life).

As a side note, I had terrible ear pain diving down to the bottom of the (2m) pool as a kid and never thought I would ever be able to Scuba dive (thinking it was my weird ears causing it) and it was only when I was visiting a doctor for some tests many years later that they did an air pressure test on my ears and I discussed my strange ability and they said it was fine to dive.... man all those years wasted :S.

Thanks,

-Andy

 

[doctormike]

...many years later that they did an air pressure test on my ears and I discussed my strange ability and they said it was fine to dive.... man all those years wasted :S.

Only one thing to do - Dive, dive, dive...! Make up for it now...

 

[Rob9000]

Slightly OT but, I have an anomaly (which I have been assured isn't anything to worry about) where I can hold Eustachian tubes open at will and I can hear rushing sounds coming from my ears when I breath whilst doing it. Sound a bit weird but it is something that I have always been able to do.

The really annoying thing is that for some darn reason I can only do it in one ear when I have the reg in my mouth so I can't rely on that for equalisation all the time :S.

Just thought I would mention it in case anyone knows what this is called (since the docs here are talking about it).

Regards,

-Andy

I can do this too. A momentary act of this is how I equalize. I always wondered why there was so much talk of nose pinching and such to equalize....it seemed so easy to do without using the hands.

 

[doctormike]

I can do this too. A momentary act of this is how I equalize. I always wondered why there was so much talk of nose pinching and such to equalize....it seemed so easy to do without using the hands.

Yup, another one of the lucky few with such a gift..!