How do you prevent ears hurting on a plane?

Hey all,
I recentely came back from my holiday on my first flight experience ever, all was good apart from when we where coming to land my ears hurt so much becuase of the pressure. Does anyone know a way to prevent that? I've heard that you can burst your ear drum if you just leave it. Does chewing something really help?
Thanks

 

keep swallowing

 

keep your mouth open and eyes closed til your ears pop. Though u will probably get a few people staring at you like wtf?

 

Hold your nose and breath out through it, will pop them back into place.

 

agreed, this is the best way. It's called equalisation and it is the same as what scuba divers do when come up and go down.

 

Chew a lot of gum, drink, whatever keeps you swallowing. The worst is flying with a cold. It happened to me, and that was truly miserable. I felt like my sinuses were going to burst.

 

Some people just get it worse than others, it must be something to do with the size of your sinuses or whatever. Also it depends on the altitude of the plane, I think once you reach a certain level the pain goes away slightly. For me the shortest flights are the most painful, and usually the short flights are at a much lower altitude :dunno:.

 

Chew something, like fruit pastilles (gum isn't great because as people have already said, you need to keep swallowing as well as chewing, so sweets are best) anything that'll keep you chomping/swallowing for a while helps massively!

 

Try sucking a hard bolied sweet or a lollipop. Anything that keeps you swallowing is meant to help.

 

I don't fly.

 

ok i go diving,,,
The most common method of clearing your ears is called the Valsalva maneuver. To perform this, you close your mouth, pinch your nostrils closed and gently blow through your nose.

 

Many thanks to ur post. I love it.

 

Take the boat instead
hmy:
Suck a boiled sweet, the hostesses usually hand them out anyway. Drinking water can help too.

 

yeah i agree too, either hard boiled sweets or pop your ears,

 

Pinch your nose, close your mouth and breath out.

makes your ears pop and works really well for me.

 

I didn't know planes -had- ears! ....sorry.

 

A valsalva is the best way to clear it out. Followed behind that is moving your jaw around and pulling on your ears. Hopefully you dont try to fly when sick cause illnesses will make it near impossible to do a valsalva and it will be painful.

I spend alot of time on planes and well after a while you just dont notice it anymore.