Mask, Headaches & Ear Muscles

I don’t know about you but about an hour or two into wearing a mask I start to get a headache.

Well it turns out that just like our shoulders can get tight from slouching over a computer all day. We have muscles that connect to the ears and a mask pulling on them all day can cause that same tightness which can then lead to headaches.

While not all of us have those little muscles around our ears some of us do and those of us who do can try moving our ears to get relief.

How to Get Relief/ Move Your Ears

A mirror is helpful with these because if you’re anything like me and haven’t tried moving your ears since middle school using a mirror helps me to focus on the movement and also is a way to find out if you can do it.

The easiest movement is moving the eyebrows up, this can often times pull the ears back, the next one is smiling wide, and lastly trying to unwrinkle your forehead.

One of these three should help you move your ears if you have the little muscles, but most likely only one of them will work for you.

The reason why moving other facial muscles (moving your eyebrows up, un-wrinkling your forehead) is because the Facial Nerve that controls the muscles of facial expression has a branch that becomes the Auricular Nerve a nerve that controls the ear muscles. Many of us don’t have enough control of those specific muscles so movement of other facial muscles helps to get the ear muscles firing and moving.

Check out the short video below to see Dr. Jake explain how this works.