Hi all,

Maybe someone can offer an answer to my question.

If I puff my cheek out (keeping my mouth closed) and then force more air into it I hear a kind of pinkling crackling sound in the ear on that side, and the inside of my cheek tingles. My cheek is then sore for several hours afterwards.

What causes the crackling sound and the pain?

clop

You are blowing air into your salivary gland. Do it enough and you'll end up with "Gillespie pouches"! The pain is your body saying "don't do that".

__________________
Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Lol, that reminds me of the old joke. A guy goes to a doctor and says, “Doc, it hurts every time I do this.” And he demonstrates some odd body movement to the doctor. Then the doctor says, “My best advice is to not do that.”

My brother got to use that line when he was an army medic. Fortunately the guy found it funny.

Any sinus problems?

__________________
*

No, and I've been able to do this since I was a kid (and regretted it every time). Have you tried to do it? You have to fill your cheek with air and then really increase the pressure. If you do it hard enough you can make the entire side of your face hurt all day long. It feels like something is stretching and snapping at a cellular level. Maybe the salivary gland thing is right?

clop

lol - reminds me of people who say "oooh this tastes terrible, here taste it". Why would I want to taste it if it tastes terrible? And why would I would to hyper-inflate my cheek if it hurts for hours afterward?

Yes, I have done this, I always wondered, but never asked. This is actually really neat to find out. It usually happend when I was blowing up birthday balloons.

__________________

Never done it, though I haven't tried that. I don't think I will either, after that description.

Something about "it can make the entire side of your face hurt all day long" perhaps?

__________________
WANTED:

Schroedinger's Cat

Dead And Alive

One of my mom's friends got this question all the time when she was studying to be a doctor.

"What could it be if THIS hurts?"

She took to replying, "Uncomfortable."

__________________
[Foot mouth in put]
Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

Why would you keep doing it i fyou know it's going to hurt?
Why not jusy stick pins in somewhere?

__________________
'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

And to think people call us sciency types closed-minded.

How many of the anti-science brigade are able to come up with novel ways of making their faces hurt for a whole day?

maybe temporal mandibular? ever have lock jaw? do you get a clicking noise when you eat?

__________________
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. ~ Ernest Hemingway ...

Sounds like it. You have a salivary gland in the side of your face that opens through a duct in the vicinity of your back teeth.
Most people will probably find that they can't do this, even in the unlikely event that you've tempted them to try, because the tension in the cheek flattens the duct and tends to prevent air being squeezed up into the gland. If you can do it, you've given yourself a pneumoparotid, which is an occupational hazard for people who blow into musical instruments. It can lead to infection, if you squeeze some bugs from around your teeth up in there where they shouldn't go.

Grant Hutchison

Thanks Grant!

clop

It's an old joke, and I never thought it was the least bit funny. If some movement, however odd, did not used to hurt, and then began hurting, something is wrong. An advice I got from a car mechanic once (and doctors are really just mechanics for body) applies: "If your car started doing something unusual, however harmless, have it checked. It may be a sign of something going wrong."

__________________
Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

I wouldn't try to do it simply because of the danger of air going into the
Eustachian tubes and blowing out an eardrum! Or blowing bacteria into
them and getting an infection, as Grant suggested. Temporary pain I
can take, permanent loss of hearing, no.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"The other planets?
Well, they just happen to be there, but the point of rockets is to explore them!"
-- Kai Yeves

Good point Jeff but it's not that far back in your mouth. You can give yourself the pneumoparotid whilst blocking the back of your mouth with your tongue, and using the muscles of your cheek and face and jaw to over-inflate your cheek, so there's no pressure on your Eustachian tubes and no danger to your ears. If you do it hard enough the popping and crackling sound as the air is driven into your salivary gland ducts is very loud and ominous-sounding inside your head. It's interesting that not everyone can give themselves a pneumoparotid. I think ravens cry and I feel pretty special right now.

clop

Pleasure. Here is a review article on pneumoparotid you might like to read. It concentrates on patients who present with swelling of the salivary gland because of recurrent episodes.
This might put you off doing it:(My bold)

Grant Hutchison

BTW, here are some photos of Dizzy Gillespie in action. At bottom right he's demonstrating the "Gillespie pouches" Kaptain K mentioned.

Grant Hutchison