Flooding your ears

[Greg Di]

Another dumb question for me to throw out for you knowledgable people:

When I dive, water doesn't naturally flow into my ears (against the drum) unless I tilt my head back and forth to actually force it in there. Should I or shouldn't I being doing this. If I don't , an air pocket gets created between my eardrum and the water partially entering my ear. Seems like that air pocket is a bad thing and could lead to equalization problems and vertigo.

 

[MikeFerrara]

I just leave it be. It doesn't cause any problem except that it can be a silly feeling in the middle of a dive and you feel cold water fill your ear.

There are even products like pro-ear specifically designed to keep water out of your ear.

 

[rmediver2002]

Another dumb question for me to throw out for you knowledgable people:

When I dive, water doesn't naturally flow into my ears (against the drum) unless I tilt my head back and forth to actually force it in there. Should I or shouldn't I being doing this. If I don't , an air pocket gets created between my eardrum and the water partially entering my ear. Seems like that air pocket is a bad thing and could lead to equalization problems and vertigo.

I am with Mike on this, the fact that the air space is in the outer ear means unless there is some type of blockage to make it an enclosed space no squeeze will occur. As the size of the air space changes it will just draw water further into the ear. Nothing to worry about unless you begin to feel pain. You will not have symptoms of vertigo due to pressure fluxuations of the outer ear space...

One issue you may run into though is getting all the water back out of your outer ear canal after a dive (if it goes in the difficult), may be good insurance to use some type of ear drying / disinfecting rinse after diving.

Jeff Lane

 

[Ber Rabbit]

I agree with Mike and rmediver. Here's a little "head's up" to add to what they said. Sometimes when your ears fill suddenly at depth after having been free of water it temporarily eliminates your hearing. This isn't a problem but the first time it happened to me I couldn't hear myself breathing and it kinda freaked me out. You wouldn't believe how much you rely on your hearing to reassure yourself that you're breathing. I was actually watching for bubbles and telling myself I had to be breathing because the bubbles were there on the exhale. A minute or so later whatever blocked my hearing cleared up and everything was back to normal.
Ber