Middle Ear Squeeze - Again!

[Ice9]

Had to call off the final 3 dives of my AOW class because of a middle-ear squeeze I had yesterday. I know from experience that this will clear up after a week or two, but its very frustrating. Gotta wait till this clears up before I can dive again..

The problem is, I'm not controlling my descent well enough - going down faster than I can equalize. I may have a little too much weight on, which I'll investigate next dive, ut man this is irritating.

Any tips out there for helping control descent, making it slower?

 

[1amphibian]

Try and dump a smaller amount of air from the BC when you start the descent. Or once you start, add a little back, I have had to do that so that I didn't drop like a rock while my g/f makes her nice steady descents.

Chris

 

[Halthron]

Are you going down in a vertical position or horizontal? I find it's easier to control my decent if I'm horizontal.

 

[Ice9]

Are you going down in a vertical position or horizontal? I find it's easier to control my decent if I'm horizontal.

Typically I'm feet-first. I'll give horizontal a try too. I think I could stand to drop 4 lbs from my weights too....

 

[boulderjohn]

If you are dropping that fast, then you probably are overweighted but you should still be able to control your descent if you are overweighted.

Don't dump all the air out of your BCD at the surface--just enough to start sinking. Once you begin to sink, you will continue to sink--no need to dump any more air. Keep your feet under you and kick gently to maintain your level. Never drop to a level where you feel pain--if you do, go up until you feel OK. Wait at that level until you have equalized. Then drop slowly again, equalizing the whole way down. Add air to the BCD as necessary.

 

[cleung]

You could also focus on continuous equalizing all the way down. That's what I do. Keep equalizing regardless if you start to feel the squeeze or not. This sort of ensures that you will be equalized by the time you are at the bottom. And yes, you miight be overweighted too. Also, if you get any congestion, you might consider taking a decongestant.

 

[jbd]

Once your ear is better, do a proper in water weighting check and get your weighting right before doing any diving. With proper control of your bouyancy, which weighting is a key part, you can ascend or descend as slowly or as quickly as you want and be able stop either when you want with very little effort.

 

[Dan Dan the Scuba Man]

Keep equalizing regardless if you start to feel the squeeze or not.

ummm the whole squeezing part according to the dive txt book says if you feel ANY pain/discomfort while dicending you STOP acend till the pain goes away EQUALIZE and SLOWLY decend again..


decending horizontally and dropping a few punds is probably all you need..

 

[freediver]

When you expel a bit of air from the BCD, be sure and go through a full breath cycle (inhale/exhale) to see what the release of air will do to your buoyancy. Be sure and do this before you release any more air.
Also, you may want to try and overpressurize your ears and stretch the eustachian tubes real well before descending. In other words, go through your equalization above water to warm the tubes up and prepare them for equalization and maybe chew some gum on the way to the dive site to loosen up the tubes a bit. This helps me in freediving.

 

[Ice9]

Thanks all for your help! I'll get in touch with my LDS as soon as I'm fixed and work through this....

--T