subject: My Ears Keep Popping When I Blow My Nose - Tinnitus and the Middle Ear [print this page] My Ears Keep Popping When I Blow My Nose - Tinnitus and the Middle Ear
My Ears Keep Popping When I Blow My Nose
This article assumes that you already know something about tinnitus, at least that it is ear ringing or some other unwanted ear noise that has no external stimulus or source of sound, and that you would like to know something about how our hearing works to get a better understanding of tinnitus, what causes it, and what can be done to stop ringing ears. The focus of this article is the middle ear and tinnitus. Two other articles deal with tinnitus and the outer ear and the inner ear, and they may be found under my author name. Having said that, let's get right to the middle ear.
The middle ear begins right where the outer ear ends, with the tympanic membrane. The eardrum is the dividing membrane separating the outer and middle ear. The outside of the eardrum is part of the outer ear, while the inside of the eardrum is part of the middle ear.
As sound waves travel through the outer ear the energy quickly hits what we commonly call the ear drum. This tiny membrane, the tympanic membrane, is constantly responding to air pressure fluctuations in the atmosphere around us. Every sound wave that travels through the ear canal, striking the eardrum, sets a reaction in motion, with purely mechanical motion. My Ears Keep Popping When I Blow My Nose
The eardrum, a taut and rigid piece of semi-transparent skin, moves back and forth to the pressure of the sound waves, vibrating with the energy according to pitch and volume and distance. The membrane vibrates quickly in reaction to a high-pitch sound, and vibrates more slowly for a low-pitch sound. The energy of a loud sound will impress the eardrum more deeply, while the softest detectable sound of a healthy young adult moves the membrane only about 1 millionth of an inch. Truly a marvel.
The eardrum is the starting point of transforming sound waves into information for the brain to process. Most of the time we're bombarded with multiple competing sounds. Imagine sitting in a restaurant conversing with your friend. The eardrum helps you to focus and concentrate on what your friend is saying, while putting all of the other sounds of the restaurant in the background.
Up to a certain point, the eardrum will also protect you from loud and harmful sounds. The tympanic muscle will actually contract in reaction to a very loud sound, and not vibrate in the normal way. Thereby it reduces the amount of energy that will reach the brain, protecting you. Of course, that doesn't relieve us of our own responsibility to protect our ears from excessively loud sound. My Ears Keep Popping When I Blow My Nose
