A few years back, as my plane prepared to land in Hobart, I really thought I was going to die. There was no engine failure, or electrical storms, or big hairy Muslim-cum-terrorist sweating profusely next to me and fidgeting non-stop. None of that. It was ten times worse. My brain felt like it was going to explode.
It came from nowhere. My pea size brain suddenly pounded to the size of a tennis ball, as some mysterious force pierced my skull with a three inch wide needle, and then played the hokey-kokey inside. And whilst all this was going on, someone then stuck a dagger right into my mouth where I had a filling the day before. This lasted for fifteen whole, long, minutes.
If you’re a woman reading this, you are probably thinking this was a bad version of man flu or something, but I am not alone:
“The first time I experienced this, I thought I was dying. I ran around the airport looking for a doctor. I thought I was having a brain hemorrhage. The most intense pain imaginable, like having boiling water injected in to my forehead spreading down to my eye very scary.” Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-2156396/Plane-headache-How-flying-headache-says-study.html#ixzz24PCxiYvM
I had put it down as a one off. I firmly believed that it was down to the butcher of a dentist I had visited the day before. She was pure evil. She had actually started to drill into my mouth without an anaesthetic until I had screamed for mercy. Surely she had damaged a nerve and the drop in cabin pressure had triggered off the acute pain in the brain?
But then it happened again last week on a flight back from Brisbane. I was bent over rubbing my head, fighting back tears for the twenty tortuous minutes of the descent into Melbourne. I was paralysed.
“I never used to experience this when flying until about 18 months ago and since then anytime we’re at about 20,000ft it starts behind my left eye and WOW it’s agony …first time it happened I almost asked the stewardess for a doctor as I genuinely thought there was something seriously wrong.” Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-2156396/Plane-headache-How-flying-headache-says-study.html#ixzz24PH2xJCW
I obviously considered making an appointment with a brain surgeon for the following day. But first I thought I would google it. I found the answer. Aerosinusitis. Or as the Daily Mail likes to dumb it down to: Plane Brain. Officially ‘a painful inflammation and sometimes bleeding of the membrane of the para nasal sinus cavities’. It can be ‘can be characterised by its severity and position on one side of the head and near the eye.’
Here’s the technical reason why it happens:
“The sinuses are hollow spaces in the face and skull. Like the middle ear the sinuses are filled with air. The pressure in these cavities is normally equal to the ambient pressure (pressure of the environment), but if the ambient pressure suddenly changes and the body is unable to equalize the pressure in the sinuses, then barotrauma (insert: ‘excruciating pain in the head’) will occur.”
“Thank you for printing this… and I thought it was just me… I always have appalling headaches when flying, particularly transatlantic, and despite all efforts to avert these headaches I still get them!” Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-2156396/Plane-headache-How-flying-headache-says-study.html#ixzz24PIHDDya
It isn’t dangerous, it’s relatively common, and the best treatment is a decongestant – a common nasal spray. For future trips, I won’t be leaving home without one.If you do suffer from this condition, and don’t have a nasal spray to hand, then here’s a temporary fix that the flight attendant can help with.
“A flight attendant was passing by the aisle, we were just starting our descent, while I was in severe pain, she saw my face, I was literally out of it, I wanted to DIE it hurt so much. Poor hubby didn’t know what to do with me, I had my head in both hands and kept saying to hubby “I can’t go on”. I really thought something was going to explode in my head! The attendant immediately went into the galley and came out with 2 styrofoam cups loaded with steaming HOT wet towels, she then told me to place them over my ears and keep them there until we land. I did this and it worked! To my amazement!”
9to5explorer 