I am deeply saddened whenever I hear parents talk about children who suffer from chronic ear infections and wind up having tubes in their ears.  The longest it ever took me to relieve an earache in one of my children was five hours, and most of the time I could relieve them much more rapidly than that. 
To understand how to relieve an earache it helps if you understand what is happening in the tissues when they become inflamed.  Inflammation occurs whenever there is some kind of irritation or damage to tissues, which may or may not involve infection.  When inflammation sets in, it causes swelling, redness, heat and pain.
Typically, what happens with an earache is that something causes the Eustachian tube to become inflamed.  The Eustachian tube runs from the inner ear into the back of the throat.  This allows the air pressure to equalize on both sides of the eardrum.  You’ve probably experienced your ears “popping” when there was a sudden change in air pressure.  That “pop” was air traveling through the Eustachian tubes to normalize the air pressure.  These tubes also allow fluid to drain from the inner ear into the throat.
When the Eustachian tube becomes inflamed it swells, just like any other tissue in the body.  This swelling causes the Eustachian tube to close, which prevents normalization of pressure on both sides of the eardrum.  The inner ear, ear canal and eardrum may also become inflamed and swollen, creating more pressure, which intensifies the pain.  Just as with any other type of inflammation, the key to rapidly resolving an earache is to get the lymphatic system to drain the excess fluid away from the tissues so the swelling will diminish and the cells will stop sending pain signals to the brain.
This can be achieved by using two simple therapies.  First, we can use some type of natural remedy that reduces inflammation and swelling, while promoting lymphatic flow, either as eardrops or as a compress over the ear.  Second, we can do lymphatic drainage massage to reduce the swelling.  Once we have reduced the swelling and “cooled down” the inflammation, the pain will subside and the irritated tissues will start to heal.