@Matthew Gould --- Tinnitus refers to the central auditory system - dorsal cochlear nucleus, the auditory plasticity theory, the crosstalk theory, the somatosensory system, and the limbic and autonomic nervous systems. The key words for physical input of somatosensory - such as jaw and neck is crossover talk. From your history, you will need to fix the jaw and get your muscles in balance maintaining strength. It's not your C1 axial complex causing your tinnitus, but that needs to be in balance first. By maintaining correct jaw and neck posture, you should see recovery, if you don't let crossover talk become a factor.
Somatic tinnitus is in which the frequency or intensity is altered by body movements and posture such as clenching the jaw, or applying pressure to the neck and head.
According to crosstalk theory, when auditory nerve fibers are intact and some other cranial nerves are damaged, crossover can develop between individual auditory nerve fibers, resulting in the locking of auditory neurons. Cranial nerves are sensitive to compression at the root entry zone, where they are covered by myelin. Nerve compression causes crosstalk between nerve fibers, and the breakdown of the myelin insulation of the nerve fibers establishes ephaptic coupling between them. This is applied to the cochlear-vestibular nerve, which is covered by central myelin for most of its length and is vulnerable to compression from blood vessels. Such compression and consequent ephaptic coupling might lead to tinnitus if synchronization of the stochastic firing in the cochlear nerve is perceived as sound.
The activity of the DCN is also influenced by stimulation of nonauditory structures;however, the somatosensory system is the only nonauditory sensory system that appears to be related to tinnitus (e.g., in temporomandibular-joint syndrome and whiplash). Somatic tinnitus can develop from activation of latent oto-somatic interaction.
Somatic (craniocervical) tinnitus, like otic tinnitus, is caused by disinhibition of the ipsilateral DCN, which is mediated by nerve fibers whose cell bodies lie in the ipsilateral medullary somatosensory nuclei. These neurons receive inputs from the nearby spinal trigeminal tract, the fasciculus cuneatus, and the facial, vagal, and glossopharyngeal nerve fibers innervating the middle and external ears.
Stretching of the neck and masticatory muscles have been associated with significant improvement in tinnitus.
Patients with somatic tinnitus can have symptoms of cervical spine disorders, including head, neck, and shoulder pain as well as limitations in sideways bending and rotation. Treating jaw and neck disorders has beneficial effects on tinnitus. Injecting lidocaine into jaw muscles, such as the lateral pterygoid, also reduces tinnitus.
Answers to some major misconceptions of tinnitus to remain on subject.
Pulsatile tinnitus can manifest subjectively as an increased awareness of blood flow in the ear. The cause of somatosensory pulsatile tinnitus syndrome is not vascular, with the syndrome deriving from cardiac-synchronous somatosensory activation of the central auditory pathway or the failure of somatosensory-auditory central nervous system (CNS) interactions to suppress cardiac somatosounds.
Pulsatile tinnitus superimposed on steady tinnitus could result from the pulsation of blow flow with the spiral capillary of the basilar membrane.
Less prevalent forms of tinnitus, such as those involving well-known musical tunes or voices without understandable speech, occur among older people with hearing loss and are believed to represent a central type of tinnitus involving reverberatory activity within neural loops at a high level of processing in the auditory cortex.
Tinnitus due to SOAEs is mild and is more common in subjects with normal hearing and in those with only middle ear disorders. SOAEs decrease as hearing loss progresses, and hence these otoacoustic emissions are not likely to cause tinnitus when a hearing loss of 35 dB or more is present. However, SOAEs cannot fully explain the mechanism of tinnitus since aspirin largely abolishes SOAEs without improving tinnitus.