BEST Way to STOP Ear Pain When Flying? | Earplanes EP2 Earplug Review

- 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.

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Also, feel free to check out my website, drcliffaud.com.

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