Popping your ears can help open the eustachian tube, allowing fluid to drain. The simplest way to pop your ears is to yawn, chew, or swallow. You may also want to try popping your ears using something called the Valsalva maneuver: Take a deep breath and hold it.
Sinus pressure in your ears results from congestion. It can be temporary, but when caused by chronic infections, the pressure may not resolve for weeks or even months without intervention. The issue you're suffering from could be eustachian tube dysfunction.
Typically, ear pressure should go away after your cold, allergy flare-up, or sinus infection symptoms subside. If your ear feels clogged after that point or you experience new issues like ear pain or fluid drainage, you may be dealing with an ear infection, Dr. Del Signore says.
Pseudoephedrine is used to relieve nasal or sinus congestion caused by the common cold, sinusitis, and hay fever and other respiratory allergies. It is also used to relieve ear congestion caused by ear inflammation or infection.
However, when your sinuses are blocked, this can hinder the passage of air through the Eustachian tube. It's why you might find it hard to hear when you have a cold. Often, this can also result in a feeling of pain, pressure, or fullness in your ear space.
Ear pressure occurs when the eustachian tube becomes partially or completely blocked as a consequence of common colds, allergies, or sinusitis. When the eustachian tube gets blocked, sounds may become muffled and you may experience pressure, pain, or fullness in your ear.
Eustachian tube massage
Using firm, steady pressure, slide your finger down until you feel a groove between your ear lobe and jaw. Trace that groove all the way down your neck to your collarbone using the same firm pressure. Repeat this process three times on each side, three times a day.
See a doctor if you have: Severe symptoms, such as severe headache or facial pain. Symptoms that get worse after improving. Symptoms lasting more than 10 days without getting better.
Colds, allergies, infected adenoids, or sinusitis, can cause congestion of the nose and eustachian tube. This congestion causes the tube to be blocked. With the tube blocked the fluid in the middle ear cannot drain.
Home remedies: Sometimes simply chewing gum can help as this can force the eustachian tubes to open as you're chewing and swallowing. To ease discomfort, you can try breathing in steam in the shower or with a humidifier or rinsing your nasal passages with saline.
Try forcing a yawn several times until the ears pop open. Swallowing helps to activate the muscles that open the eustachian tube. Sipping water or sucking on hard candy can help to increase the need to swallow. If yawning and swallowing do not work, take a deep breath and pinch the nose shut.
If your ears won't pop you might have fluid in your ears. Thickened fluid blocks the auditory tube and prevents the fluid from draining into the back of the throat. Sometimes this is caused by an ear infection.
If you're experiencing nasal drip with thick yellow-green mucus, you likely have a sinus infection, not an ear infection. Ditto with a cough, bad breath and reduced ability to smell. However, signs such as sharp stabbing pains in your ear canal, earaches and muffled hearing point to ear infections.
There may be discomfort, pus-like ear discharge or a sensation of subdued hearing. Fluid accumulation can also cause ear or throat pain. But in the case of a sinus infection, there is a feeling of fullness and pressure in the ears. This is because there is clogging in the sinus region.
Believe it or not, by the nasal passage does connect to our ears. The ears, at roughly the same level on our heads as the nose, are also connected by the Eustachian tube, which drains from the ears into the nasopharynx. This is the passage between the upper throat and nasal cavity.