Posted by Bob on October 13, 1998 at 14:17:03:
I'm not a doctor. I'm a programmer. As a programmer (and thus debugger), I am used to seeing symptom/solution patterns. The reason I think this is important is that all of the symptoms I have personally, almost all of the symptoms that have been reported in these WONDERFUL web sites, AND most of the solutions are giving me a VERY strong suspicion that nobody is looking where the "bug" is.
Let's review:
1. Most suffer on one side. Personally, mine's on the left. it starts between the throat and just behind the eyeball.
2. my ear pops throughout the attack - at the peak of pain, i sometimes hear the "pzzzz" pop that is normally associated with sinus (nose) is actually ear AND sinus.
3. the ear and the sinus are connected through the throat - I think - i need to look into the eustacheon (sp?) tubes and their function/problems/cures.
4. solution 1 i've read here: pressing carotid artery (under chin) ... this also presses ear tube.
5. solution 2 i've read here: drinking lots of water. drinking anything opens ear tubes. that's why you give a baby a bottle on an airplane. pops their ears without them knowing how.
6. solution 3 i've used (found elsewhere): yawn. yawn again and again and again. every time the ear pops. this can abort or at least reduce an attack - and i believe the end of an
attack is always preceeded by some form of ear popping - at least my ear (AND nose) clog during the attack and are cleared afterwards.
7. I see people going to neurologists, eye doctors, brain doctors, psychologists, but NO ear doctor has been heard from. and no permanent cause/solution is known. coincidence?
8. everyone says to stop smoking as if this is the cause. yet the statistics from these very sites indicate that as many (if not more) non-smokers suffer these blasted things as smokers,
including many testimonials from those who quit and still suffer. if this is the solution, where are the testimonials from the ex-smokers whose headaches have stopped? And what about
those poor poor children who suffer already - without ever having taken a puff? While this is probably popular with the anti-smoking crowd and is politically correct in the 1990s,
it's speculative, addresses the symptom, and is not researched (although it DOES provide doctors with yet another reason NOT to help a poor sufferring smoker!). That said, smoking
dries the throat and the sucking activity causes a closure in the throat. it strikes me that drying, possibly closing and/or otherwise affecting the connection between the ears and
the throat (as a side effect of smoking) may be more to the cause.
I have been trying to not just drink water/milk/soda/coffee (hot, cold does not seem to matter) with a mind to "washing" or "splashing" my throat/ear connection. to do this, it's necessary to
almost yawn and swallow at the same time. No, it's not swallowing, it's just letting the liquid roll down the throat (in my cast, on the left side of my throat) until i gag and have to swallow. (causes
me to swallow some air and i burp alot ... :) ...) but it feels like i'm watering dry pavement sometimes. When i do this, I recognize that my normal swallow is NOT washing this area of my throat. Also,
my ear pops open and that almost eliminates the "shadow" (the "next" headache you always feel between bouts of a cluster). The problem is, i have to keep doing it - since the ear clogs almost immediately
after a few minutes. Finally, my left ear "rings" 3 or 4 times a day (and not the right one).
I believe almost all the home "treatments" directly or indirectly work to the ears (applying heat to the face, applying ice to the head, applying pressure to pressure points around the ear) and i think
if/when we finally come to the cause of this terrible malady - it will be found in the ear. We need to have more analysis from auditory specialists i believe.
-bob