What did you do to unplug your ears today?

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I took my hand and plugged nose. I blew out my ears while my mouth and nose were closed. Some people call this the Valsalva Manoeuver. You know you've done it when you hear a popping noise in your ear. This technique can help you unclog your ears. However, it's easier said than done. I remember blowing out of my ears back when I was eight years old in 1993 in Oregon. I say that to say I've done it a few times the past 29 years or give or take a few years. So, around 30 years. But I've not always done it in my life.

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I want to be clear that blowing air out of your ears could damage your ears and especially your eardrums. Plus, the art of blowing out of your ears can be difficult to learn how to do. When I try to blow out, I have to blow up and not sideways. It is common to think you have to only blow. But you have to learn how to aim it upwards. You have to aim not just outwards. So, you have to feel it. You have to really concentrate on your ears and on pushing up that direction. Take it a step at a time. You also might be able to move and flex muscles in and around your ears, face, head, mouth, nose, eyes, the inside pipe or tube that connects the ears to the mouth and nose. I don't exactly know which muscles may be where and how many. But I do know it feels like I can move things around to help unclog my ears and to help blow air up into my ears.

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You can try making vibration noises with your vocal box. Sing a little with your mouth or make a buzzing noise. Try to clear your throat but then aim it towards your ears. In other words, try to clear your ears instead of your throat alone. Try using your hand to move your ears in and out of your head a little. Be careful and be as sensitive as you need to be. You may accidentally hurt yourself. You may accidentally cause hearing loss. You may accidentally injure your eardrums. Many things can go wrong. There are many things you can do. There are many things you can try. I wanted to mention these things today. I did these things and now things are louder right now. But what I am talking about here may be dangerous and may be temporary fixes for the symptoms. So, in other words, I'm not talking about getting to the root and heart of the problem. We can talk about that another day. You should investigate the root of the problems you face too and the root is much more important. But at the same time, sometimes you need to temporarily fix your ears.

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The things I mentioned here may help you or they may not be able to help you enough. I've known about blowing out of my ears all of my life. I was watching these NASA videos on the VCR that one time when I was eight. We were probably renting the documentaries or whatever they were from Whiz Bang Video. I imagine we didn't own those tapes but I remember seeing the spaceship launch. As they were blasting off, I was blowing out my ears. I was a little sick with the common cold or whatever it was. I would sometimes get allergies around the beginning of summer each year, like around June, generally speaking. So, I would have a stuffy nose and that would carry over sometimes to my ears. So, all of my life I've ran into these issues. I may not know if I'm allergic to grass, pollen, or what. It could be as simple as catching the common cold which goes around sometimes. I would sometimes get sick a few times a year. But I would generally get better within days.

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But I would often have a running nose, a cough, etc. So, I would also have stuffed up ears. I mean, my hearing problems may have been due to a variety of things and not just due to my ears being clogged up. But I do imagine that a main reason why I would struggle to hear was simply that my ears were clogged. Again, many things can affect how you hear. How you eat. How healthy you might be. How much sound you expose to your ears. Too much loud noise or certain frequencies and vibrations can damage your eardrums. There are so many different things we can talk about. But one of the first things you can do is try to figure out if your ears might be clogged up or not. Well, I'm not going to talk about how you can do that other than you probably know. Like, if you can ever remember being able to hear better, then that means either your ears are clogged up or you're experiencing hearing loss. If you do have hearing loss, then blowing air out of your ears is not really going to help. Well, unless if your ears are also clogged.

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But back to when I was eight years old, I was blowing out of my ears as the spaceships were taking off. Three, two, one, and Joey's ears goes bye bye. Like pow. I was a little sick and I probably had ear infections. I was getting better and I was unclogging my ears. At the time, I was not exactly sure what I was doing or how I was doing it. Off and on, since those days back in 1993, I've sort of blew air out of my ears. And maybe not totally out of my ears.

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But today, I felt like I mastered the skill of blowing out of my ears for the first time ever. Like I sort of did it before a few times in my life but was always scared to do it because I had bad memories of doing it the first time around when I was eight. I might have blown too hard that first time. Perhaps that damaged my ears a little. So, since then, I've been careful.

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But the art of blowing out of your ears takes focus. Today, I am blowing out of my left ear. I have to stick with it to also pop the right ear as well. In the past, I would give up on the right ear which was more clogged up. Today, I'm not going to talk about how to keep ears unclogged. I should write about that next time. There are probably tons of videos and articles and everything on the Internet about that. But I'm not going to look at them right now.

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Instead, I wanted to just focus on the value in knowing I can pop my ears, AKA blow air out of my ears. When I do that, then I begin to hear my own breathing go up into my ears. Some people may not hear their breathing as much either because their ears are clogged or perhaps they're used to the sound. If you spend your entire life hearing it, then you eventually get used to the sound and may not hear it as much later on. I think my ears have been partly clogged most of my life and sometimes very clogged. I don't know if I have hearing loss or other problems relating to my brain, head, ears, etc. But I can say my ears is probably clogged up more often than my nose. And my nose was only clogged up for like one month each year growing up or it kind of happened off and on at certain times. It would kind of come up and get worse for a series of days or longer and then go away for a few months before coming back kind of thing. Many people run into these types of problems. I'm not sure how many people struggle with clogged ears.

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Popping ears takes talent, skills, focus, determination. You have stick with it. You have to learn how to do it lest you break yourself. You have to know what you're doing. Take baby steps. You can put pressure and air on your ears as you blow up and out. You may want to hold the pressure as you breathe out. You can try to breath in from your nose and mouth quickly before blowing more air back up into your ears again and again many times. You can try blowing many times all at once. You can try blowing long and hard. You can try different methods. See what works best. But I generally try to do rapid fire, that is a bunch of blows all at once and I try to come up for more air before doing it again. It's like swimming. You breathe and then you blow out your ears. But then you have to come back up for some air and then blow out your ears again. You have to know your ears to know how much you can handle. When I do it, I may not be blowing actual air out of my ears. But it does feel like I am unclogging the back part my ear, the pipe that connects the mouth and nose to the ears.

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5 Things you can try:

1. Try to blow up and out of your ears. Try to feel the top parts of your ears as you try to push the ears not out but up. You have to focus. Don't press too hard. Remember to breathe every once in a while in between blowing or popping your ears to unclog or unplug them.
2. Try clearing your ears similar to how you would clear your throat.
3. Try sending vibration up and into your ears.
4. Try pulling and pushing and wiggling your ears in and out of your head.
5. Stick a finger or fingers into your ears, like number 4, and move your finger up and down and in and out and different places in order to try to free liquid which might be stuck in your ears.

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Blowing up and out or towards your ears may not be as challenging as wiggling your ears, but it is a thing that can be both dangerous and sometimes even painful. It's a skill that can help you hear. It's just something to consider when you have no other option available.

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But remember these are temporary solutions you can try while looking for more long-term prevention. Key to health is mostly in prevention. What I'm mentioning today is mostly a form of correction.