Have you had this? Sore throat began, and then the ear ached. Someone may think that this is otitis media. Well, as a complication from a cold. Theoretically, purulent complications after a common cold occur in about 5% of people.
In fact, it may be a reflected sore throat.
Reflected pain is remembered when the back or neck hurts. This is when the muscle hurts and the pain shoots somewhere else. For example, the neck hurt, and the pain spread to the temple or eye.
That's about the same story with the throat. The tonsil hurts, and the pain spreads to the ear. The ear really shoots. Very unpleasant.
The otolaryngologist sometimes turns this ear inside out, but cannot find a reason. It's good if the reason is in the throat, which the otolaryngologist also examines. But this is not always the case.
Sometimes the cause may even be in the cervical vertebrae. The fact is that nerves depart from the first and second cervical vertebrae, which at some stage coexist with the nerves responsible for pain in the head and neck. Pain impulses are mixed somewhere inside the head, and there is a reflected ear pain. The otolaryngologist will not help here. A neurologist steps in.
Most often, the cause of the reflected ear pain is hidden somewhere near the tonsils. In second place will be bad teeth. And only then all other reasons will go.
No one knows exactly how and where the nerves are bridged so that the ear also hurts along with the throat. I love the idea of muscles. There are tiny muscles in the middle ear that help our hearing to tune in to different sounds.
And now it turns out that these tiny muscles, sometime in the very beginning, originated from the same ancestor as the muscles in the throat. The reflected pain immediately becomes clearer.
We are accustomed to the fact that we have lumbago in the back and neck, which radiate in different directions. So a similar lumbago happens in the ear, the source of which sits in the muscles of the sore throat.
This would all be funny if about 2% of people with throat cancer didn't get ear pain. So otolaryngologists usually do not expel such patients, but begin to examine them in detail. In order not to miss anything worse.
Did your ear hurt from your throat?
