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Rare but useless Voluntary tube opener here. Ask me anything. https://vester.si/bodily-oddities/oddities/voluntary-eustachian-tube-opening/ https://vester.si/b

Rare but useless Voluntary tube opener here. Ask me anything. https://vester.si/bodily-oddities/oddities/voluntary-eustachian-tube-opening/ https://vester.si/bodily-oddities/oddities/voluntary-eustach...

vesterde 2mo ago
My friend who does free diving would kill to be able to do it! She can't learn it.
- adamgordonbell 2mo ago
  I'm not a diver but I suspect it can be learned. I have allergy issues that cause my ears to not equalize when allergies are hitting and I think I just learned how to do this. its just sort of muscle that can sort of be lightly controlled. Controlling one side vs the other I can't really manage.
  - vesterde 2mo ago
    Ye ye, she is frustrated it's taking so long to learn it. It's so valuable for divers.
- andai 2mo ago
  My mum taught me the ear popping thing, while we were traveling by air, to relieve the ear pressure. I can do it on command but never paid attention to how before. It's basically "yawning manually". There's a couple different muscles activating at the same time, most irrelevant to the popping, I can't control them individually yet. (Probably learnable, if I practiced I could probably get the pop more efficiently.) But yeah, just yawn real wide, that should do it. A lot of stuff is learnable, like I couldn't move my ears but taught myself how to do it because I was bored.
  - zhivota 2mo ago
    For me I describe it more as trying to open your jaw with the muscles near your ear, while holding the jaw in place with the main jaw muscles. Like an isometric hold. I actually didn't know I could do it until now, I could always get the click and it's how I clear ear popping sensations but I didn't realize it I push it harder I get the hollow voice thing and apparently it's useful for diving. Cool.
    - andai 2mo ago
      My jaw also moves in the process but it seems like I can pop my ear without moving my jaw. So it might be a different muscle, I'm not sure.
ball_of_lint 2mo ago
Ooh! I also have this (but didn't know the name)! For me, I'm pretty sure it's related to having just awful seasonal allergies as a child - I'd quite often get stuffed up and have an unfortunate amount of pressure in my sinuses and ears. So then I'd pinch my nose and try to adjust it, eventually realizing I didn't need to pinch my nose.
- adamgordonbell 2mo ago
  My story is similar!
greenbit 2mo ago
I scrolled the whole list looking to see if there was anything about being able to stop hiccups by conscious effort alone. Suspect that there would be some overlap between voluntary tube openers and hiccup stoppers, as the internal sensations are kind of similar.
- adamgordonbell 2mo ago
  Dude I wish. If there is some hicup trick I would love to learn it.
  - greenbit 2mo ago
    There was a popular (then, anyway) notion that drinking a large glass of water would kill hiccups, and it sometimes seemed to work, but other times it didn't. Long story short, it works when you swallow at just the right time relative to the hiccup cycle. An ordinary swallow starts as a voluntary action but switches over to an automatic involuntary completion. Try to get that start of the involuntary part to happen in the last quarter of the hiccup cycle, a bit before the hiccup arrives. You don't even need to use water, just time a swallow just right and it cancels out the hiccup cycle from retriggering.

vesterde 2mo ago

My friend who does free diving would kill to be able to do it! She can't learn it.

adamgordonbell 2mo ago
I'm not a diver but I suspect it can be learned. I have allergy issues that cause my ears to not equalize when allergies are hitting and I think I just learned how to do this. its just sort of muscle that can sort of be lightly controlled. Controlling one side vs the other I can't really manage.
- vesterde 2mo ago
  Ye ye, she is frustrated it's taking so long to learn it. It's so valuable for divers.
andai 2mo ago
My mum taught me the ear popping thing, while we were traveling by air, to relieve the ear pressure. I can do it on command but never paid attention to how before. It's basically "yawning manually". There's a couple different muscles activating at the same time, most irrelevant to the popping, I can't control them individually yet. (Probably learnable, if I practiced I could probably get the pop more efficiently.) But yeah, just yawn real wide, that should do it. A lot of stuff is learnable, like I couldn't move my ears but taught myself how to do it because I was bored.
- zhivota 2mo ago
  For me I describe it more as trying to open your jaw with the muscles near your ear, while holding the jaw in place with the main jaw muscles. Like an isometric hold. I actually didn't know I could do it until now, I could always get the click and it's how I clear ear popping sensations but I didn't realize it I push it harder I get the hollow voice thing and apparently it's useful for diving. Cool.
  - andai 2mo ago
    My jaw also moves in the process but it seems like I can pop my ear without moving my jaw. So it might be a different muscle, I'm not sure.

ball_of_lint 2mo ago

Ooh! I also have this (but didn't know the name)! For me, I'm pretty sure it's related to having just awful seasonal allergies as a child - I'd quite often get stuffed up and have an unfortunate amount of pressure in my sinuses and ears. So then I'd pinch my nose and try to adjust it, eventually realizing I didn't need to pinch my nose.

adamgordonbell 2mo ago
My story is similar!

greenbit 2mo ago

I scrolled the whole list looking to see if there was anything about being able to stop hiccups by conscious effort alone. Suspect that there would be some overlap between voluntary tube openers and hiccup stoppers, as the internal sensations are kind of similar.

adamgordonbell 2mo ago
Dude I wish. If there is some hicup trick I would love to learn it.
- greenbit 2mo ago
  There was a popular (then, anyway) notion that drinking a large glass of water would kill hiccups, and it sometimes seemed to work, but other times it didn't. Long story short, it works when you swallow at just the right time relative to the hiccup cycle. An ordinary swallow starts as a voluntary action but switches over to an automatic involuntary completion. Try to get that start of the involuntary part to happen in the last quarter of the hiccup cycle, a bit before the hiccup arrives. You don't even need to use water, just time a swallow just right and it cancels out the hiccup cycle from retriggering.