Sneezed with Earplugs In!

[Coyotesheaven]

So, this happened.

My hearing has still been deteriorating for the longest time ever in any case. I believe my problem is vascular or CSF related, but haven't been able to do the proper testing.

Then this happened. I had a bit of an allergy attack and could not act fast enough to stop me from sneezing with my earplugs in. It was pretty loud, but not terribly, but I seemed to have lost a lot of my hearing again.

Is it pretty dangerous to sneeze with earplugs in? Mine were loosely inserted, and so the pressure concern was not what is worrying me so much is that loud noise that I made. I would say the noise was around 85-90 dB. I'm not a loud sneezer whatsoever...

 

[Bill Bauer]

Thank you for sharing. I will now try to make sure not to sneeze when I wear earplugs...

 

[dd314]

This just happened to me. I tried to pull the earplugs out before I sneezed but I was too late. My hearing seems unaffected but tinnitus is a little louder.

I can't really think of a mechanism that would explain hearing damage from sneezing with earplugs. A sneeze doesn't open your Eustachian tubes like a yawn does. It should be roughly equivalent to shouting or coughing with earplugs in.

The only other thing I can think of is the occlusion effect which amplifies internal sounds, but it didn't really seem that loud.