- Hi, guys, Cliff Olson, doctor of audiology
and founder of Applied Hearing Solutions
in Phoenix, Arizona.
And in this video,
I'm reviewing the new EarPlanes EP squared filtered earplugs
to see if they really do prevent ear pain
when flying, coming up.
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As long as humans have been able to fly,
we have experienced ear pain upon taking off and landing
due to extreme changes in air pressure.
And ever since that time,
we've been looking for ways to get rid of this ear pain.
The human ear is comprised of three main sections,
the outer ear, which includes the ear canal and the eardrum,
the middle ear, which includes the ossicles,
Eustachian tube, and middle ear air cavity,
and the inner ear, which includes the cochlea.
When flying, the air pressure
in the cabin of the plane changes rapidly,
and the air inside of your middle ear cavity doesn't change
until air has a chance to enter
or exit through the Eustachian tube.
This difference in air pressure between the outer ear
and the middle ear can put in a lot of strain
on the eardrum, which can cause an immense amount of pain
if you're unable to regulate this pressure quickly enough.
This is what makes products like the EarPlane so interesting
because if they are effective at reducing ear pain
by slowing down this pressure change,
they could be the difference maker that you need
to reduce the amount of pain that you have when flying.
But before I get into my review of the new EarPlanes,
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Now let's go ahead and take a look
and see what these EarPlanes are all about.
EarPlanes have been around for a while,
but they just updated the EarPlane
to the EP squared version for adults,
as well as the EP squared version for children.
And I will link these down in the description below
if you wanna check them out for yourself.
Of course, for my testing, I use the adult version.
And this is essentially what they look like.
You can see they are blue,
but inside of the handle there,
you can see there's a little white filter.
And that is supposed to slow down the pressure change
while you're wearing them.
Now I'm gonna go ahead and put this one in my ear.
Sometimes it helps to pull your ear back.
You really wanna make sure you get it in there well
so it creates a good seal.
And then basically, that's what it looks like
when you're wearing it.
So they are pretty big when it comes to an earplug,
but it reminds me of a simple earplug that you would use
if you wanna go shooting at the range.
I do find them to be very comfortable.
I can wear them for several hours
without having any comfort issues.
And they are relatively inexpensive at only $7 for a pair.
They do have an added bonus
of having a noise reduction rating of 20.
So if you want to reduce the noise inside of the cabin,
you can wear these to do that as well.
But perhaps the coolest thing
about the EarPlanes' earplugs is that they actually have
a smartphone app that will tell you
when to put them in your ears
and when it's safe to take them out of your ears
because it will actually use
your phone's internal pressure gauge
to determine if you're having rapid pressure changes.
Not only did I find this app incredibly helpful
by receiving notifications on when to insert
and remove the EarPlanes' earplugs,
but I also found it incredibly fascinating
to see how quickly the cabin air pressure
and elevation was changing during takeoff and landing.
I recently had a chance to test out these EarPlanes
on a vacation that I took overseas
where I had seven flights in a span of eight days.
Right before take off,
the app tells you to press the Start button
and insert your EarPlanes' earplugs.
Once you reach cruising altitude,
the app will tell you that it is safe to remove the earplugs
from your ears.
And then once again,
once you start to descend to go into land,
the app will give you another notification,
telling you to put back in the earplugs.
So how well did these things actually work?
Well, from what I could tell,
they didn't really do that much.
Typically, when you are taking off in an airplane
and you are ascending,
the air pressure inside of your middle ear can escape
through your Eustachian tube much easier.
So I didn't really find these to be very helpful
when taking off.
Now when you descend in an airplane,
that is when people usually have issues
because you're getting a lot
of outside air pressure bearing down on you.
And it's a lot more difficult to get air
through your Eustachian tube into your middle ear space.
Now in order for me to test these out,
over the course of my seven different flights,
I kept one earplug in one ear,
and I kept the other ear open.
And I tried not to regulate my own pressure
by yawning, swallowing, or performing the Valsalva maneuver.
On one of my flights from Phoenix to Dallas,
I was having some allergy issues,
which was preventing me
from regulating my middle ear pressure as well.
And I did get some ear pain over the course of this flight.
But from what I could tell,
the EarPlanes did absolutely nothing for me.
I had the same amount of ear pain in the ear
that I wore the EarPlanes in compared to the amount of pain
that I had in the ear that I did not wear them in.
On every other flight
where I did not have any allergy issues,
I still couldn't tell any difference
in how the pressure was changing between both of my ears.
I was actually concerned that I did not insert them
into my ear canals properly,
which is a little bit of a shocker,
I know because I'm an audiologist
and I deal with ears all the time.
But I pushed them in a little bit further,
and that still had no effect.
Honestly, I'm not even really sure
that the theory of slowing down the rate of pressure change
inside of the ear canal would have any impact on ear pain.
In fact, the best that I could even find
were just some user reviews on Amazon.
And even then, you're not sure if they actually got benefit
from the EarPlanes or they just didn't have ear pain
on their particular flights.
Since it wasn't working for me anyway,
I went ahead and removed this filter
that is inside of the EarPlanes' earplug.
And what it turned out to be
was just like a little piece of plastic.
I don't really even know how this qualifies as a filter.
To be quite honest, having the filter in
and having the filter out feels absolutely no different.
Now, trust me, I really wanted these to work
because I wanted to be able to sell these things
like hot cakes through an Amazon affiliate link,
but I cannot in good conscience actually recommend them.
In my opinion, if you were looking
for a significantly better and more effective way
of reducing ear pain when flying,
you should check out my video
where I'm talking about the Eustachi
and my video where I'm talking about the EarPopper.
Both of them are significantly better
when it comes to popping your ears
when flying to get rid of ear pain.
If you wanna check these videos out,
I will have them linked in the description.
So whenever that next time is that you fly,
just know that there are ways
that you can reduce your ear pain.
I just do not believe that the EarPlanes are one of them.
That's it for this video.
If you have any questions,
leave them in the comment section below.
If you liked the video, please share it.
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go ahead and hit that Subscribe button.
Also, feel free to check out my website, drcliffaud.com.
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