neofonz, you got it.

daddy-o:

I tried those stupid ear candles once. Never again. I had to walk around with my head all tilted and shiat to see where I was going.


wait, when your head is tilted to the side, you have to excrete from your eye sockets so that you can see where you're going? That's seriously messed, dude.

The ear wax fell out after hitting that tree...

Entheogenic

"The doctors can't explain anything and he's starting to believe in miracles I think."

No, the doctors are just hoping you don't sue for 15 years of not being able to diagnose severely clogged eustachian tubes...

That happened to me once, reduced hearing, headaches, tinnitus, and sneezing or coughing made my head feel like it was going to explode. Took a strong dose of decongestants, ears popped and I could hear again, mind you it was super powered hearing and everything was too loud, creepiest thing was hearing the wax draining inside my head.

drumsac:

Were I only a little earlier to work AND had mt JD DVD with me, I'd have beaten you to it. WITH a screen cap! ;-)

*my

/damn the arrogance that drives me to uncheck the "preview" box!!!

allergies can cause fluid to build up in the ear membranes (just like having a stuffy nose, but in the ear).

a friend's cat once triggered this in me. couldnt hear from my right ear for 2 days. then the weather started shifting, heard a loud pop and a rush of air and voila..hearing was normal.


/would much rather have allergies in the nose than ears
//waking up half deaf is scary

the dolomite alps are pretty damn incredible.



http://images.google.com/images?q=dolomite%20alps (linky)

Mad Scientist, what is going on there?

So you are saying there is a chance.....


/someone who recently lost 1/2 his hearing to cholesteatoma

I woke up with a clogged ear a few months ago. Lasted about a week. I tried decongestants and those OTC ear drops. Didn't work.

What finally worked was an ear syringe. Not the crappy turkey baster thing you get with the ear drops. It looks like a regular syringe, but instead of a needle at the end is a short piece of flexible hose. it's designed to give you maximum water velocity without puncturing your ear drum. Keep shooting warm water into the clogged ear, it takes a while to loosen up. Eventually NASTY chunks of ear wax come out. Then all of a sudden....whoooosh. Bionic hearing.

Believe what they say about not using Q-tips in the ear canal. It pushes wax inside. I though I was cleaning my ears, but I was actually creating a plug.

birkin: the dolomite alps are pretty damn incredible.

I hear they're a bad mother trucker

Shirley Ujest: Shortly after that fun wagon of Vertigo, I had the opportunity to take our scheduled trip to deutschland to visit zee family relations and eventually a glider ride at a thingie over there. Every time my ears popped, I thought I'd get my hearing back. Cause in that microsecond of the bubble/air popping, the sounds would be good again. Sigh.


did you tell your doctors about this? it might help them find a treatment for your ears that would work.

reminded me of this:

I can hear!!
*THUD*
Nope... I was wrong.

Shirley Ujest Have you tried sniffing airplane glue? I'd sure hate to think that you've picked a bad week to give THAT up.....

...then discovers he lives next to idiots who let their dogs bark all night, every night. Goes crazy and kills them all.

/bitter

Is there anything the man can't do?

Maybe the bones in the ear had become dislocated due to the rattling of the eardrum during his time in the artillery. And just about all of us have had our ears pop going up on an airplane, so maybe as the pressure lowered the ear drum was sucked outward, pulling the bones back into place.

was thinking it may have 'coincided' with a divorce...

Not so benign is a ruptured eardrum caused by a blow to the ear, as with the palm of an open hand, forcible insertion of a foreign object such as a twig or a pencil, or caused by a gunshot report next to the ear. I have seen both of these events in my practice. Such trauma to the ear can leave the ear bones (ossicles) dislocated and incapable of carrying sound properly until they are microsurgically relocated. Blood from the ear canal, decreased hearing or persistent ringing in the ear after direct trauma to the ear should prompt immediate ear specialist (otorhinolaryngologist) examination.

Perhaps I was right!

http://www.drhull.com/EncyMaster/E/eardrum_ruptured.html

I'm sure he'll be straight out to buy some bangin' tunes, innit.

did anyone else read that as 'dead' instead of 'deaf'?



*it's too early for reading comprehension...
**the flu is eeeevil, i tells ya

He was Touched

Lucky bugger, whish I was him.

/enjoying nerve damage
//at least I don't hear the x-wife any more
///mumble mumble GET OFF MY LAWN mumble mumble

I tried that candling shiat once.
Started my hair on fire when it burnt down.

Not to mention that it was hard to light a joint off of. had to roll reeeally long ones. (not that that's a bad thing)

Halflife2 is really hard to play looking sideways too.

My high school physics teacher was deaf. Then he was in a car accident. The impact apparently shook loose the three bones in the his ears and restored his hearing.

He was shocked at the amount of talking going on in his class.

you know the next time he gets in a plane and his ears pop hes gonna be deaf again.

I've got about 50% hearing loss, and honestly I'm not sure if I would like this to happen or not. The change would be so sudden and shocking that it would drive me nuts...

I think ear candles are BS. There's too much of the powdery stuff inside afterwards to be earwax, at least without a miraculous level of hearing improvement to go along with it. I'm positive that it comes from the lining of the candle.

still no cure for cancer?

NOTE TO SUBMITTER. ANY HEADLINE ABOUT HEARING-IMPAIRED PEOPLE SHOULD BE WRITTEN IN CAPS LOCK. IT'S FUNNIER.

The first Chiropractic success was curing...deafness!

Harvey Lillard, janitor of the Ryan Building in Brady Street, Davenport, Iowa USA, was not a happy man. 17 years before, while working in a cramped, stooping position, he had felt something give way in his spine. The immediate result was not only pain...he found he had lost his hearing.

He mentioned his problem to Daniel David Palmer, who had an office in the Ryan Building and was a keen student of anatomy and physiology. Daniel Palmer had a theory. He surmised that the spine was the highway along which ran the central nervous system. If that highway should become in need of repair and in any way restrict the constant traffic of brain impulses and orders carried by the central nervous system, other symptoms seemingly unconnected to the spinal column could result.

He examined Harvey Lillard and found that one of his vertebrae was misaligned. On September 18th 1895, he gave Harvey Lillard the first ever Chiropractic adjustment. Harvey's hearing returned...and Chiropractic was born.

Here comes the science:
The following will briefly describe two possible mechanisms, and demonstrate how contemporary neurology texts are an ally to the chiropractic profession in need of logical explanations.

Innervation of the ear

Brodal indicates that "the cochlea is supplied by three sets of nerve fibers: (1) afferent fibers of the cochlear nerve, (2) efferent fibers (of the olivocochlear bundle), and (3) sympathetic fibers." [1] We are interested in the sympathetic innervation because the adjustment is known to influence the activity of the sympathetic nervous system. [2,3,4,5] Such activity probably occurs in response to both the mechanoreceptor and nociceptor activation that occurs during an adjustment.

The sympathetic innervation of the cochlea occurs in a vessel-dependent and vessel-independent fashion via noradrenergic fibers from the ganglia of the sympathetic trunk. "The functional significance of these fiber systems is unclear, but their existence implies that the possibility of hearing disturbances due to imbalance in the sympathetic nervous system cannot be rejected." [1] Brodal goes on to state:

"The vessel-dependent system originates in the stellate ganglion. The fibers course along the vertebral and labyrinthine arteries and seem to terminate in relation to the cochlear vessels. The vessel-independent system originates in the superior cervical ganglion. The fibers reach the cochlea via the vagus and facial nerves and terminate in the cochlea central to the hair cells." [1]

Images in Ciba's text on the nervous system demonstrate that both cervical and upper thoracic segments have access to the vessel-dependent and independent systems of the internal ear. [6] Clearly, this is one mechanism by which joint afferent stimulation, via the chiropractic adjustment, may affect hearing. For information on this mechanism see Bovine's review. [7]

Central connections of spinal afferents to nuclei involved in hearing

The inferior colliculus in the midbrain and the medial geniculate body in the thalamus are known to be relay nuclei from the cochlea to the superior temporal lobe of the cerebral cortex. [1] These CNS centers must be intact for the special sense of hearing to occur.

Brodal indicates that the inferior colliculus and the medial geniculate body are both driven, in part, by collaterals from the spinothalamic tract and the dorsal column-medial lemniscus (DC-ML) pathway. [1] In this manner, somatosensory input may influence hearing. It should be known that the chiropractic adjustment is thought activate both nociceptors and mechanoreceptors, [8] which are the precise receptor populations that drive the spinothalamic tract and DC-ML pathway.

1. Brodal, A., "Neurological Anatomy: In Relation to Clinical Medicine" (3rd ed), p.606-23, Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 1981.

2. Briggs, L., "Effects of a chiropractic adjustment on changes in pupillary diameter: A model for evaluating somatovisceral responses," JMPT 11(3):181-89, 1988.

3. Sato, A., "Sympathetic nervous system response to mechanical stress to the spinal column in rats," JMPT 7(3):141-47, 1984, 1982.

4. Vernon, H., "Chiropractic manipulative therapy in the treatment of headaches: A retrospective and prospective study," JMPT 5(3):109-12, 1982.

5. Yates, R., Effects of chiropractic treatment on blood pressure and anxiety: A randomized, controlled trial, JMPT 11(6):484-88, 1988.

6. Netter, F., "The Ciba Collection of Medical Illustrations, Vol. 1, The Nervous System, Part 1, Anatomy and Physiology," p.70 & 75, CIBA, West Caldwell, NJ, 1986.

7. Bovine, G., Pikula, E., "Vertebrogenic deafness: A literature review," J Can Chiro Assoc, July/1976, p.26-27.

8. Gillette, R., A speculative argument for the coactivation of diverse somatic receptor populations by forceful chiropractic adjustments," Man Med 3:1-14, 1987.

9. Sato, A., "Spinal reflex physiology," p.87-103, in Haldeman, S., editor, "Principles and Practice of Chiropractic" (2nd ed), Appleton & Lange, Norwalk, CT, 1992.

I'm expecting a chirobase posting in about 10 seconds.

I wish that would happen to my Wifey.

*sigh*

"No, Dear, I was on FARK..."

"o, Dear, I was on FARK!!!"

/got nuttin

o = No

/smacks forehead repeatedly with open palm

breast milk for pink eye?

Yes, please and thank you!

DirtyNacho beat me to the answer. I had a problem with fluid building up in my left middle ear and it took an ENT and a few tests to diagnose it. I popped my ear once and all of a sudden I could hear much better out if it. (unfortunately that wasnt the end of the story) Maybe this guy just had crappy luck with the doctors he saw. Part of it could be that they only expect that to happen in children and don't even consider it in adult hearing loss.

I've been studying altenrative medicine (as medical electives) and even I know ear candles are bunk.

The ear flush using a flexable tube syringe and warm water kicks ass though.

And to think the doctors(s) who fitted him for hearing aids thought his hearing was irreversably damaged.

Malpractice suit?

"Malpractice suit?"

If you doc said something to the effect of "I doubt there is much to I can do, we could try hearing aids, but you should see a specialist" and the patient said "I don't have money for a specialist, just give me a hearing aid." then no.

Oddly enough this is how a good % of office visists are. The general practitioner is meant to diagnose and treat easy things, and refer to a specialist for anything out of the ordinary; except that people rarely end up going to the specialist, then they get mad when they find out that something could be done.

I'm sure there's something terribly funny to be said about this story.

I just haven't thought of it yet.

still thinking....

birkin: the dolomite alps are pretty damn incredible.

It's the tough black mineral that won't cop out when there's heat all about.

It's dolomite, baby!

i call schinanigans !!