Acid Reflux and Tinnitus

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Member
Author
Benefactor
Jul 31, 2012
634
West Cornwall, England, UK
Tinnitus Since
06/04/2012
Cause of Tinnitus
Not sure
#1
Fish

I remember you mentioning something to do with this or something very similar ages ago? Sorry.. can't find the thread! - and thought you may be interested in the following from a pilots' forum - the pilots are suffering from ear problems...
(http://www.pprune.org/medical-health/294662-blocked-eustachian-tube-4.html)

'The plot thickens...

Having got back from the GP, he is suggesting that I could have a problem relating to Acid Reflux, whereby acid is getting into my Eustachian Tubes....
My visit to the GP has reminded me just how complex the diagnosis process is, and just how little an amateur like me really knows
Anyway, I do have one or two symptoms associated with the disorder, such as occasional gurgling noises emanating from my neck. I also suspect that my unconventional lifestyle with regards to rarely adhering to regular mealtimes could be an issue.
Anyway...no doubt there are a hundred and one other illnesses that can cause ET problems... Acid reflux is about as plausible as any diagnosis I've found, so I'm now on antacid pills and will see what happens...
I feel sorry for anyone finding this thread - there's no magic bullet - you'll probably have to try a hundred and one treatments to find a solution'



I'd never heard of acid getting into the eustachian tubes - did anyone mention this to you?

Click
 
#2
yes acid reflux can get all the way up into the mouth...a special type of reflux called atypical reflux or LPR (laryngo, pharageal reflux) is where instead of just refluxing into the esophagus, the reflux gets all the way up to the voice box ,mouth and or lungs, throat etc

interesting that there is a relation between reflux and tinnitus...could be associational or causal....no one knows...(anxiety, stress ???)

guess how come i know something about this...yep you guessed it
 
#3
hi MT

Well I'm sure that fish said he was on some kind of medication prior to getting T & I think it was for acid.

I know the consensus of opinion appears to be that there are many, many causes of T but as we're just guessing there may be many but there may only be one cause... or maybe very few causes.

It would be interesting to gather some kind of stats for how many people have this.

Also how many people have other things - we may well see some kind of pattern emerging?

Click
 
#4
I take Nexium (Esomeprazole) but only ever 5 to 6 days. It works well for me . I have had acid reflux bad several times in the past.
They say it can make tinnitus worse but it has never made mine louder at all.
 
#5
Thanks Mike.

I'm looking at it as a possible cause but it's interesting that the nexium doesn't make the T worse. You obviously had the acid reflux badly enough to see a doctor.

So that's Mock & Mike (& possibly Fish) with the same thing... now ... if we can just have 50 more replies ... & we start a thread for anything else that we think may have caused it... we may be able to record a few statistics & find the strongest pattern :cautious: Maybe there is something (apart from T) that we all have!

I'm still testing the 'eustachian tube congestion' theory here - perhaps caused by an allergy to something - I have three water air cleansers running 24/7 & I'm sick of spicy food & of sucking menthyl :p but something is changing with my T so I'm sticking to it for a while longer... (of course I could be imagining a change in my T - it's so d***d variable anyway :arghh:) .
 
#6
Hello click, yes I did take antacid meds for my atypical reflux (LPR) symptoms such as chronic cough and hoarseness of voice and it did help temporarily, somewhat confirming the LPR diagnosis.

Reflux is a condition where stomach acid goes past the malfunctioning lower esophegal sphincter and causes irritation, known commonly as heartburn.

LPR is a less common form of reflux where stomach acid goes all the way up to the throat, mouth etc. causing ENT problems.

I have to warn you though, proton pump inhibitor class of drugs (nexium among others) is very "addictive", causing a rebound of reflux symptoms when you stop taking them. This has happened to me, I started having heartburn after quitting pantoprazole. My tinnitus started somewhere at that time aswell. By the way, many PPI drug inserts mention tinnitus as a possible side-effect.

But do not get me wrong, I cannot say I have T because of reflux or because of PPI drugs. At the end of the day I have no clue what is the cause of my T. I really wish I knew but I do not.

Tinnitus caused by reflux was just my theory not backed up by any sort of research nor a doctor's diagnosis.

Let us know how it goes click!
 
#7
#8
Prior to T, I was taking several considered ototoxic meds for Cholesterol, High Blood Pressure, Acid Reflux as well as under much stress and anxiety. I also took Doxyclycline antibiotic for a short time.

Now I don't take any of those. If there is one benefit I have received from T, it is that I changed my eating, lifestyle, manage stress, dropped 25lbs and much healthier than I was prior to T. I no longer need blood pressure meds, cholesterol meds and I no longer have acid reflux.
 
#10
omeprazole and all the other acid reflux medications that fall under the catagory of "proton pump inhibitors" have a nearly identical method of action...they stop the cells in the stomach from producing acid (parietal cells) by halting the ADP_ATP (adenosine tri phosphate) energy reaction

ATP is whats behind much of what ever happens in the body...the power supply...its what moves muscles for example

many years ago johns hopkins univesity performed some startling experiments

-----

"Brain scientists at Johns Hopkins have discovered how cells in the developing ear make their own noise, long before the ear is able to detect sound around them. The finding, reported in this week's Nature, helps to explain how the developing auditory system generates brain activity in the absence of sound. It also may explain why people sometimes experience tinnitus and hear sounds that seem to come from nowhere.

The research team made their discovery while studying the properties of non-nerve cells in the ears of young rats. These so-called support cells were thought to be silent bystanders not directly involved in nerve communication. However, to the researchers' surprise, these cells showed robust electrical activity, similar to nerve cells. Further, this activity occurred spontaneously, without sound or any external stimulus.

"It's long been thought that nerve cells that connect auditory organs to the brain need to experience sound or other nerve activity to find their way to the part of the brain responsible for processing sound," says the study's lead author, Dwight Bergles, Ph.D., an associate professor of neuroscience at Hopkins. "So when we saw that these supporting cells could generate their own electrical activity, we suspected they might somehow be involved in triggering the activity required for proper nerve wiring."

To figure out how these cells were generating electrical pulses, Bergles' team suspected that a chemical might be involved; so they applied a number of different candidate drugs and chemicals to the developing cochlea -- the small, hollow and liquid-filled chamber in the inner ear that converts sound waves to electrical signals -- hoping to block the mystery trigger. The few drugs that altered the electrical output all disabled ATP (adenosine triphosphate), a chemical most often used as a cell's energy currency but also, as in this case, as a signal to communicate with other cells.

According to Bergles, a breakthrough came when it was discovered that ATP also caused the supporting cells to change their shape. By simply videotaping the developing cochlea, the team was able to monitor where and when ATP was released. After studying these movies, they found that ATP was being released near hair cells, the cells that are responsible for transferring sound information to auditory nerves. It was known that hair cells have receptors for ATP, so they might also be affected by the ATP released from the supporting cells. Indeed, the team found that hair cells also showed spontaneous electrical activity, which occurred at the same time as the responses in neighboring support cells and was blocked by drugs that block ATP receptors.

In a domino-like effect, ATP then signals the hair cells to release another chemical, glutamate, which then activates the nerve cells that project into the brain. "It is as if ATP substitutes for sound when the ear is still immature and physically incapable of detecting sound," says Bergles, adding that "the cells we have been studying seem to be warming up the machinery that will later be used to transmit sound signals to the brain."

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/87377.php

-----

i found the ATP glutamate connection fascinating, when i first read this article, and it was one of the inputs to my thinking that shifted me from a GABA to a glutamate solution

whats amazing about the PPIs (proton pump inhibitors used for curbing stomach acid) is that as one withdraws from taking PPIs or as the body gets "used" to PPIs, like lots of other drugs you gotta take more to get the same effect...AND when you stop, if abruptly, things go into over drive

so one could see how the use of PPIs might b related to tinnitus

plus

did you read the part above about how as the ear is developing the nerves produce ATP next to the developing hair cells and cause the sence of sound in the embrionic ear, even tho there is no sound...hmmmm seems similar to tinnitus where hair cells have been wiped out to me...maybe

again as erik and others have pointed out, how do we get the treatment to the problem spot and not affect the entire brain nor the entire body

one wonders if insted of pumping AM-101 into the ear, if instead a very small dose of omeprazole trickled thru the round window might do the trick

very interesting stuff

i continue to think the fix is to be had in the cochlea which is not to say that lots of people dont use the filtering and processing centers in the auditory cortex or dorsal cochlear nucleus or other more central parts of the brain (limbic system etc) to wed out or mute tinnitus..no im not saying that...yes there may be some brain entered adjustments or remediation that can alleviate the sense of tinnitus

but i still believe the part that is really broken and is subject to repair in the cochlea and specifically the hair cells an th organ of corti

of course im way out on a limb here...not a doctor nor a biologist or a scientists so take what i say with huge grains of salt...im a rank amateur at best

best of good luck to all
mt

its all so complicated it hurts my head just to think about it so maybe the just learn to ignore it and habituate is still the best medicine...i... just... dont.... know

i guess my compulsivity drives my continued search or greater understanding and an effective treatment
 
#11
#12
Petloy said:
Click I added IPOD use...I suspect Ibuprofen and Trilipix (for cholesterol) too
Click to expand...

Thanks Pete - we need as many people as possible to complete it & add anything they can think of.

I go round in circles reading bits of this and bits of that on here... and, as wonderful as this forum undoubtedly is, I just end up confused.
 
#13
I have been searching for a cause for my tinnitus and one of the things I try to keep logged about it is certain environmental changes, health changes and the things I know of that happened within days, weeks or months of it's onset. I recently came across some information about acid reflux causing ear pain, it was then I realized I had stopped taking a double dose of a common medication used to treat it within a couple of months onset of my tinnitus. I talked with my ENT about the possibility of acid reflux being a cause for my symptoms. He said it was not entirely unheard of that he once had a child patient that when he took a sample of fluid from his ear it turned out to be stomach acid fluid. So one of my trials is to start back on a daily double dose of the medication to treat heartburn. Heartburn doesn't always cause symptoms that are typical in fact when it was initially prescribed by my ENT the symptoms were just trouble swallowing, which at the time I thought was odd. Although I was informed it is quite common to see acid reflux have a variety of different symptoms that are not typical.
 
#14
Let us know how it goes. I once had mysterious cough and hoarsness for several months, which ultimatelly was because of 'silent reflux', i.e. upper GERD / reflux that irritated my throat.
 
#15
Most doctors will say no. However, I had LPR, misdiagnosed for 3 years, now all better. I experienced gradual hearing loss in those years and now have full blown tinnitus and moderate hearing loss. It's one ear only so cannot make any connection. Stress and lifestyle had everything to do with the LPR.. not sure if it was the cause of my hearing loss/tinnitus though.
 
#16
Chrisarti said:
I have been searching for a cause for my tinnitus and one of the things I try to keep logged about it is certain environmental changes, health changes and the things I know of that happened within days, weeks or months of it's onset. I recently came across some information about acid reflux causing ear pain, it was then I realized I had stopped taking a double dose of a common medication used to treat it within a couple of months onset of my tinnitus. I talked with my ENT about the possibility of acid reflux being a cause for my symptoms. He said it was not entirely unheard of that he once had a child patient that when he took a sample of fluid from his ear it turned out to be stomach acid fluid. So one of my trials is to start back on a daily double dose of the medication to treat heartburn. Heartburn doesn't always cause symptoms that are typical in fact when it was initially prescribed by my ENT the symptoms were just trouble swallowing, which at the time I thought was odd. Although I was informed it is quite common to see acid reflux have a variety of different symptoms that are not typical.
Click to expand...

Chrisarti
That would be wild if it was acid reflux causing T; although your doc found stomach acid in your ears (wow!) I still don't really see the correlation.

BTW: on a side note, I'm an avid runner and sometimes (a few miles in the run) I get some acid reflux. I found the best way to take care of it is to stay hydrated and then eat an apple about a half-hour before the run -- an apple will kill heartburn faster then anything.

Let us know how this turns out for you...

Mark
 
#17
Since T my diet has been awful....tons of terrible food, lots of booze, smoking, eating really late. This seems to be giving me terrible heart burn, I wake up with my throat burning.

Stomach acid or gasses get to the ears through the eustachian tubes?

I have posted a few times about my tinnitus and ear issues progressing....Maybe this could be the reason?

Anyone have any experience with this?
 
#18
Telis said:
Since T my diet has been awful....tons of terrible food, lots of booze, smoking, eating really late. This seems to be giving me terrible heart burn, I wake up with my throat burning.

Stomach acid or gasses get to the ears through the eustachian tubes?

I have posted a few times about my tinnitus and ear issues progressing....Maybe this could be the reason?

Anyone have any experience with this?
Click to expand...
Somewhere on this site and recently to I think , a woman's husband had bad T for three years and described as loud crickets or buzzing. He started taking meds for his acid reflux and she proclaimed that his T stopped.
I know your T is bad but you need to clean up your diet. If you eat and drink like shit how do you expect to feel good on top of dealing with T. It does make a difference. Blood pressure, cholesterol and all that stuff makes T worse.
 
#19
I have had ETD forever, as well as gastritis and IBS-C. Belching is a common occurrence for me for which I take domperidome 10 mg tabs. None of the PPIs I've been prescribed were ever useful to me. They increase the T and don't relief the heartburn without giving me other side effects. H2 blockers work better for me, but they can lead to gynecomastia (man boobs), as can cannabis. In fact, cannabis is the leading cause of man boobs.
 
#20
Jay M said:
Somewhere on this site and recently to I think , a woman's husband had bad T for three years and described as loud crickets or buzzing. He started taking meds for his acid reflux and she proclaimed that his T stopped.
I know your T is bad but you need to clean up your diet. If you eat and drink like shit how do you expect to feel good on top of dealing with T. It does make a difference. Blood pressure, cholesterol and all that stuff makes T worse.
Click to expand...


I don't work, I don't socialize, i am crippled by my H and T....so having a ideal diet is not at the top of my list these days. Getting through the day is where my head is at, not counting calories or watching my sodium intake.
 
#21
Jay M said:
Somewhere on this site and recently to I think , a woman's husband had bad T for three years and described as loud crickets or buzzing. He started taking meds for his acid reflux and she proclaimed that his T stopped.
I know your T is bad but you need to clean up your diet. If you eat and drink like shit how do you expect to feel good on top of dealing with T. It does make a difference. Blood pressure, cholesterol and all that stuff makes T worse.
Click to expand...

Well all my numbers are perfect...blood pressure, cholesterol etc. I lived a clean healthy life before T, so still very healthy.

I'm half deaf in both ears, I'm not sure diet will help me so much. If it helps me 5 percent, I'm still in a hell position...I might as well not bother and at least enjoy the foods I want.

However...if this reflux is a issue for my ears, I better get that handled.
 
#22
I've had T since October 4th, 2014 - I'm new to all of this. My acid reflux caused me to aspirate two separate times in my sleep within two months so my doctor prescribed Protonix and I had been taking it for about 3 months daily prior to my 1st bout of T. I ran out of the prescription - no auto refills and figured everything was fine. Now I'm wondering if I should try taking the Protonix again and see if it clears up my problem....

I have the opposite problem of most people. My T worsens when my ears are clear. When I sleep on my right side, my ears clog and my T is barely audible. But once my ears become unclogged the T is back.
 
#24
I've been told it's possible I have Larengeal Pharengeal Reflux and that it does irritate Tinnitus. This is the reflux a little higher up. Harder to diagnose, damaging to upper respiratory tissue and esophogus / throat.
 
#25
I've had this since my T increased in level ,never saw any connections until this popped up and a light went on .
Never ceases to amaze me how things just turn up on this site .
Never had it when my T was low and not bothersome .but just past 9 yrs ,often wondered why it began .
Is this the answer looks like it .? Was checked with camera 3 yrs ago when I had neck tumor removed ,nothing picked up ,just showed up healthy ,consultant said fine ,then proceeded on to the op .My family have a history to this reflux problem.? and on meds for it .Good subject on T
 
#26
Hi there

So for years now i have ringing, popping, whooshing in my ears and nasal drip and of caurse headaches!! They said its water behind my ear drums etc. been on so many different meds and nasal sprays. Nothing worked!

Today i went to see Dr with other symptoms.....sore tummy feels like pressure/burning sensation where ribs get together and also on my throat. Constant coughing, headaches, ears and nasal drip.

Looks like now he is going the acid reflux way. Gave me Lansoprazole 30mg. Have to go back in months time to see whats what

Will keep you up to date.....

(Engelish NOT first language )
 
#29
Hi folks - first time to this site. I've been suffering with T since about 5-6 months ago. I had a cerumen impaction (ear wax overload!) which, while it impacted my ears, made my T a great deal worse, but once I had my ears syringed things began to clear up. I had before that time been taking Omeprazole for acid reflux, though I was not particularly disciplined in taking it, and stopped and started frequently. Now some time on, and I have fairly consistent T throughout the whole day, but have - in the last few weeks - recognised a correlation between my T's exacerbation and my acid reflux playing up.

Very interesting to see and read that other people have noticed similar.
 
#30
It is very interesting to read this thread. I was diagnosed with laryngopharyngeal reflux disorder (LPRD, but also called LPR) about 11 years ago. My symptoms were very pronounced (although as others have noted here, you don't have pronounced burning sensations with LPR, as you do with traditional reflux). Not only did I have the sore throat and coughing, I got to the point I felt like I had a golf ball in my throat. I started having trouble swallowing.

Had tons of tests, some unpleasant. Diagnosing LPR is pretty much a process of elimination. I did discover I have a small hiatial hernia, as many LPR patients do. Treated it by making lifestyle changes (sleeping with my entire body on an angle, diet changes) as well as large doses of the PPI Nexium for a little less than a year. At some point, my doctors sent me to an LPR specialist -- who prescribed buspirone, a drug I never had heard of. I decided not to take it, given I already was dealing with the Nexium. I later discovered buspirone was an anti-anxiety med. So clearly this doctor thought my LPR was at least in part related to anxiety, although he never did discuss this with me. (would have been nice, huh?)

Indeed LPR goes after your upper respiratory system -- larynx, vocal cords, esophagus -- as the acid comes up higher than regular reflux. But I never have seen any medical articles suggesting that LPR causes tinnitus, although I could have missed 'em. It seems it would pretty hard for even high reflux to get into your eustaichian tubes.

But I do think there might be a connection between the two; I think both LPR and tinnitus have a strong correlation to anxiety. Just as heart attacks were the great killer of my father's generation, I think stress-related and anxiety disorders will be the killer of mine. Just my opinion.

Thanks for the post. I have noticed lately that my LPR symptoms are returning. Sigh. Probably time to change my diet and start the meds again.
 

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