Equalization the Science and Biology

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

jamesadele

Registered
Messages
5
Reaction score
0
Location
United Kingdom
# of dives
0 - 24
Hi Guys

Had a great response to my last question so thought I would see what peoples thoughts are on this question.

I have read that practising equalization in the days before a dive can make equalization easier and more controllable.

I have no problem equalising right now but have yet to go very deep anyway so this is just a theory question.

Now I know that obviously with practise of anything, you will become more proficient at it but my question is:

Does it have any biological effects? E.g. you do bicep curls your bicep gets bigger and stronger. If you do equalisation practice by blowing in to your closed off nose does it promote the use of the muscles in the throat where the eustation tube is. Is there a muscle that seals off the eustation tube that can be controlled better with practice?

Thanks for any insight
 
The answer is no, practicing equalization by Valsalva or other pressurization techniques does not exercise anything except your ability to blow into your nose.

There is a technique called Voluntary Tubal Opening that does depend on using the muscles in the posterior pharynx in a very specific way. For most people, if they even can learn it, it requires practice.
 
I don't understand the actual biological mechanism involved, but I will confirm that practicing it out of the water does indeed help.

When I was a new diver, I was just horrible at equalizing. An instructor even told me I might have to give up on the whole idea of diving because I had so much trouble. I learned that if I worked at it for the days before a trip, I was much better at it, and when I had been diving a few days on the trip, I had no trouble at all. Today I barely have to do anything at all to equalize. It all happens easily. I attribute that simply to doing it a lot, not to any improvement in skill.

As for going deep, that should not be a problem. The most difficult equalization is in the first 10-15 feet. Get past that and everything is much easier. When you get down to 100 feet or so, you rarely have to think about it.
 
I use a form of voluntary tubal opening, but found the online descriptions strange, so I’ll try to describe what works for me.

Think yawning and ear wiggling, with some jaw-thrust thrown in.
Read some of my posts (including this one) and you might feel a need to stifle a yawn. That’s good! Can you feel it in your ears? An actual yawn can clear your ears, too - but you don’t want your regulator to fall out of your mouth.
See if you can wiggle your ears. Try it some more. Do you feel it inside? Genetics might determine whether this part will work for you.
Relax and shove your jaw forward – you should feel it behind your jaw hinge.
Practice all of these – preferably in front of a mirror, and probably when no one else is watching. Focus on the sensation of your ear “crackling”. Eventually your ears and jaws will move less, but your Eustachian tubes will reliably open.
Keep practicing. And when you’re on an airplane flight or driving in the mountains, intentionally pop your ears instead of just letting the pressure change do it for you. A benefit: - it’s hands-free.

Good luck!
 
Actually there are muscles that allow you to do the Voluntary Tubal Opening method of Equalization, a completely hands free method.

If you've ever been on a plane an yawned to clear your ears, you've used these muscles. The training behind VTO or BTV (Beance Tubaire Volontaire) is using those muscles that are often tied and activated with yawning. Except training yourself to activate those muscles without activating a yawn reflex. With perfection, you can pull your tubes open and have all the equalization done on the fly; no pinching or blowing, it just equalizes. And if you're descending too fast for it to equalize fast enough because of the narrow flow through your tubes, you just exhale to push more air through.


Generally I teach people to first practice a Frenzel manuever which involves pinching your nose and using your tongue to piston air into your Eustachian tubes. Once you master that, even better if you don't need to pinch your nose, you then move on to BTV/VTO.
And as an added hint, for the Valsalva manuever you want to blow your throat not your nose. Blowing your nose often makes you constrict your throat, you want to pinch the nose and blow air only into your throat. ie like your blowing up your cheeks; except your keep your cheeks tensed and don't inflate them.

Realistically your Eustachian tubes are behind your tongue, so you want to keep your throat as open as possible when trying to equalize. I believe a lot of new divers have trouble with this when they're told to blow their nose.
 
Blowing your nose often makes you constrict your throat ...

Realistically your Eustachian tubes are behind your tongue, so you want to keep your throat as open as possible when trying to equalize.

Being underwater is an alien experience, and I would imagine for most new divers, it creates stress. Certainly, some people try it and give up because they are so uncomfortable with being underwater. Stress can easily cause tension in various parts of the body, even clenching. So could increased ability to equalize that some divers gain with experience be related to becoming more relaxed and less tense while diving?
 
Being underwater is an alien experience, and I would imagine for most new divers, it creates stress. Certainly, some people try it and give up because they are so uncomfortable with being underwater. Stress can easily cause tension in various parts of the body, even clenching. So could increased ability to equalize that some divers gain with experience be related to becoming more relaxed and less tense while diving?

In addition yes. That's another big part of it, I believe.
 
Thanks for sharing that video, I had seen it before and lost the link, but yes its a great video!
 
I had downloaded the video for future viewing but hadn't viewed it 'til now. So thanks for posting.

In addition to the video, Dr. Kay's website has a PDF that reiterates and summarizes some of the information in the video. I recommend reading that as well as watching the video.

Doc's Diving Medicine Home Page

The PDF is Middle Ear Barotrauma: A tutorial on prevention of Ear Squeeze
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

Back
Top Bottom