Flooding the sinuses who doesn't do it and why not?

[InfamousFD]

When I'm in the water for more than a three hours at a time over several days, no amount of decongestant can keep my head clear. The high humidity inside my head slowly clogs me up and equalizing will result in squeezes.

When that starts to happen, I usually think "screw it" snarf some sea water and flood my already very wet head so I don't have to worry about air pressure.

I've started wondering why I just don't flood my head from the start, I figure I'd get eye squeeze if I wasn't careful about mask compression and suction? I've found it's possible to to soak the sinuses and e-tubes but manage to keep a single nostril clear enough for mask equalization: Sort of like inducing a super moist head cold.

I have only seen a couple other references to people who intentionally flood their air spaces while freediving and it's people who are far more extreme in depth and bottom time than me. Aside from the risks of irritation (mmmm tiny comb jelly sucked into head) or infection caused by a wet set of sinuses and tubes -- is there anything really bad or horrific I'm missing on this?

I'll usually stay shallow (~20 feet) once I flood my head because I've A. Been in the water four or more hours already and am getting tired or B. In case I've missed some air trapped among the snot that could lead to a squeeze. But if I've actually flooded my head, shouldn't I be fine going down to my happy place between 50-80 feet, but without having to worry about equalization?

My head when I come upright and out of the water after 5 hours with a flooded head --> :waterwork So much nasty sea-snot.

 

[efattah]

Flooding your sinuses and equalizing with flooded sinuses pushes sea water into the eustachian tubes.
Seawater in the eustachian tubes hurts like HELL if the water is very salty; it does not hurt if the water has mild salinity.
Either way, flooding sinuses creates a risk of infection. The risk depends on the person, and on the location you are diving.
In some people who are less comfortable with it, it might also create a risk of drowning.

Many 'native' divers who dive without special equipment flood their sinuses all the time, and they did this for hours a day, every day. So it might be possible in the long term, but you need to accept possible risks.

 

[Kars]

Like with the ears I think it's sensible to keep your airways clean and dry.
I suspect that for many in favorable conditions flooding is not so bad in itself, though mucus induced reverse block could be devastating. However clean seawater may actually help to clean and heal your airways. (It does for me!) When leaving the water I would seek to dry my ears, clean my tubes and sinuses, and wear a cap to keep my head warm and avoid the wind. At home drink, eat, shower, clean rest.

I hope it's helpful to you.

 

[InfamousFD]

I suspect that for many in favorable conditions flooding is not so bad in itself, though mucus induced reverse block could be devastating.

I hope it's helpful to you.

Can you define what you mean by mucus induced reverse block?

I may try seeing if I can pre-flood my e-tubes with a bottle of sterile saline. I don't know if I can do it topside (things that seem natural underwater are harder to replicate in my shower, especially that neutrally buoyant hovering upside-down thing) but I intend to look very odd with a litre bottle of saline and see if this is do-able.

 

[Kars]

"mucus induced reverse block"

'Reversed block' is a general diver term that explains a dangerous and extremely painful situation caused by the at depth accumulated air in the cavities in the head that are blocked from escaping on the way to the surface. As you know air expends when one ascends and pressure drops. And when it cannot escape from your sinuses or ears the pressure will deform, cause pain and eventually tear and break things up.
Sometimes people with congestion can with effort dive and equalize to some depth, but will find that on the way back up the air they pushed in their cavities does not flow back out, this is called reverse block. Mucus, slime, swollen tissue etc can cause or such a block.

I don't know of any particular way to remedial such situation when underwater. I had it once myself, and from what I recall it was very painful and I just tried to relax and go up with pauses and extremely slow. I'm also looking for more wisdom here.

Thanks for posting the questions,

Kars

 

[Simos]

I'd probably just get out of the water if you get to the point where you can't equalise even for shallow depths like 20ft - the way I see it, it's time to end diving for the day, don't think it's worth risking damage to ear structures etc and you've already had plenty of diving

I personally would also not risk infection etc for shallow depths - 20ft is shallow enough to descend at an angle (instead of vertically down) and still have plenty of bottom time and descending at an angle should make equalisation a lot easier so not sure you are gaining that much by flooding and worrying about all the complications that come with it...

 

[InfamousFD]

How I learned to consciously hold open my e-tubes

(FYI I think I'm to the point where I want to find an ear-nose-throat doctor or a diving doctor to discuss sinus flooding with. I've been casually looking up listings. Any recommendations?)

I managed to catch some hellish virus last month, and is my wont, I cleared out my head with saline. Because of my current fascination, and since I was stuck at home with a bottle of saline, I began playing with Eustachian tube flooding. I've always been able to pop/click my ears voluntarily without jaw movement, so I started improving that muscle control.

So, here's what I've learned: To practice holding my eustachian tubes open, I pick a note, or a chant, and make a continuous humming sound with my mouth closed or open (like laaaaah or ohhhmmm) and "ear click." If you try it, you'll notice that when the tubes are open, suddenly you sound louder. Not all ear clicks mean the tube is held open, there's a clear difference in sound quality when the path is cleared. This way I can identify when the middle ear and tubes are open and connected and to what degree by the amount of sound inside my ear. I practice the muscle control until I get the loudest hum for the longest time. It's trickier to do it mouth open because then there's no pressure backup in the head to help push the tubes open, so I got good at that after being able to do it mouth closed. I don't hold my nose closed or anything like that.

Once I got comfy holding them open, then I can flood them and my sinuses in some sort of acrobatics with the squeeze bottle and head tilting (have yet to, uh, master the "process" for this part so it's mostly random motions and me cursing if I mixed the saline wrong and it burns.)

If the tubes are flooded it will sounds like one side of my ear drum is underwater. Then, I hold the tubes open again to drain. I'll usually go running afterward and click my ears while I run to get lots of air movement inside my sinuses and tubes while I'm breathing hard to dry everything out. So far, no heinous infections, over-drying, or anything. I found, surprisingly, that if I sleep on my left or my right side I'll get a little build up of crap in that ear and it makes it harder to hold the tube open. So either I'll have to take decongestants then somehow sleep, or sleep on my back, somewhat elevated, before trying this in the ocean.

I am becoming really interested in the idea of never having to equalize again, and wonder how realistic it is.

I would love to never risk a squeeze again, and to avoid that god-awful conflict of moving very slowly up the water column, wanting air, but not bobbing up to the surface right away because my left ear is depressurizing in a too slow squeak from 70 friggin' feet.

 

[growingupninja]

Hmm. This is interesting.... I have never had eq problems and have always been able to easily open my etubes without any kind of mouth/throat acrobatics, except on my deepest empty lung dives.

I have a sinus infection at the moment so I have been staying out of the water and using a neti pot. I can eq fine with a stuffy nose but I am trying to rest.

I will start experimenting when I neti pot...

 

[growingupninja]

Okay, hmm, I just tried this. Funny I have never done it before. I just tilted my head back and ran the neti pot into one nostril, pinched the other one closed, opened the e-tubes and let the right one fill up with water. Not painful but I am not sure if I care for the sensation...

After it drained, that ear felt a little bit sticky for a minute or two; I couldn't hear any click when I opened the e-tube although it didn't feel as if was full of water and my hearing was not affected.

 

[InfamousFD]

I am very strongly contemplating trying the tube and sinus flooding in the high diving pool at the university where I do my dive training. I will probably scare off all the international students in the locker room, being older and shoving water into my head while rolling my head around, but I'd really like to be able to go straight down and up without equalizing. I want to see what the chance of getting that reverse block I was warned about in an earlier post, but in a controlled environment where I can't go deep enough to blow an eardrum.

After testing, the next step for me will be finding out what can go wrong with liquid in a human head for too long via medical consult. But I'm in a landlocked nowhere of a city, so there's no diving doctors nearby and I'll have to try to get a phone consult. The problem is, all the diving medicine conferences and literature seem to focus on hyperbaric medicine, marine life injuries, and shoreside recovery ...and conferences tend to occur in very remote and expensive locations, so I don't think I'm going to crash a dive medicine conference and do a poster presentation to fish for more information. There's a Northeastern chapter of the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, so I'll start with them.

I have gone out with my buddy and done underwater treks to offshore islands and things, and in those cases there's several hours between being able to reach dry land. In those cases, being able to quickly dive straight down without anything else to think about would be of benefit (like when some drunk tourist asshat with a boat rental decides it would be fun to to run us over.)

I think skipping equalization would offer much more parity when hanging out with marine life. What if I am the first human a pod of striped dolphin meet, and they mistakenly believe that human beings can only go down while pinching their faces? Inter-species cultural travesty waiting to happen. Totally unacceptable.

 

[growingupninja]

I see, so you are interested in flooding your sinuses to avoid pinch and blow EQ? If you can open your e-tubes voluntarily, doesn't that mean you can just voluntarily EQ handsfree? I have always had it pretty easy with EQ and I grew up thinking that everybody did it that way. When you flood your sinuses, does the water stay in there or does it drain? When I tried my little experiment it seemed to drain as soon as I turned my head right side up, but I may have been keeping my e-tubes open without realizing it since the sensation of a lot of water in there was strange/uncomfortable.

After some reflection, I think I have had water in my e-tubes before. Frequently when spearing I will get some water in my mask and I have felt it go 'elsewhere' during descents or when upside down looking in holes and caves. I will pay more attention in the future now that I know what water in the e-tubes feels like... To use the technique for actual deep diving (which is I suppose the only place I would want to use it) I will have to figure out how to keep the water in there.. haven't given it much thought but if I open the tubes to let water in, when descending I wonder if I will have to keep my tubes closed (this will be hard as I EQ almost unconsciously when diving)...?

Anyway, please report back. Thanks for sharing your experience.

 

[podenco]

Hello, I´d like to add my opinion to this topic. I think that when you say: "The high humidity inside my head slowly clogs me up and equalizing will result in squeezes" is not because the high humidity that your sinuses get clogged, you have to know that when you freedive you are exposing your sinuses to a big changes of pressure very fast and during several times, every time that you go down you are inflamming the mucosa of the sinuses, and maybe after several time ( three hours as you mentioned) your sinuses can get clogged due to the inflammation. In my opinion I think that you should visit a ENT doctor for checking your sinuses, maybe he puts you on nasal steroids for reduce the mucosa swelling, anyway it is wise to check your sinuses, and don´t make inventions as flooding your sinuses because suffering from sinus squeezes very often is not a normal condition, but it can be treated. I say this to you because I started having similar problems as you (get clogged after some hours in the water while spearfishing) and I did a lot of things for trying to avoid this problem (most of them were nonsenses), after going to the doctor I realized that I suffered from chronic sinusitis, unfortunatly the nasal steroids didn´t work for me and I had to undergone to a sinus surgery (balloon sinuplasty) because my sinus condition got even worse, but the surgery didn´t work too, now I am waiting for a more agressive surgery that I hope will release me from this problem.
I don´t want to scare you, and I am almost sure that your problem has an easy solution, I just want to warn you that having sinus issue is not a joke and is a problem that needs to be treated by an expert.

Good luck!

 

[cdavis]

I think, given you can equalize hands free, dive 70 plus, and sometimes have trouble with slow equalization coming up, especially after diving a while, that the previous poster is has identified your problem. Much better to fix the problem rather than trying to make flooding work. Seems like you are making yourself very vulnerable to the reverse block Kars referred to. For true you don't want to experience a reverse blocked sinus, Think ice pick in your forehead width an ugly guy driving it in with a hammer. Extremely unpleasant(personal experience).

Thanks for posting your efforts, though. Very interesting reading.

Connor