I've been meaning to start this thread for a very long time now, but whenever I get the energy to make it happen it always slips my mind. But here I am today, finally doing this. It is a very dear subject to me, as I feel like the potential importance or impact of this area of research is highly undervalued - probably due to its low status and unintuitional way. Anyway, I want to start of with my story just for a quick reference and why I believe muscular involvment is much more important than the views currently adopted.
I got my tinnitus during a club dance with relatively high music for about 2 hours. It was not obscenly high, just high, back in 2011. Nobody else in that club, at least not to my knowledge complained of getting T. But I got it, and it has stayed with me ever since. I always wondered why?
Now, as a Type A-personality, I tried to find out everything I could about T, read on forums and read it all, you know the drill. Back in sweden, there were very few treatment options (just TRT, and pscyhological counseling). As a "going-to-be" medical student I eventually discovered one man who seemed to have a very controversial part-theory in contrast to the regular "ear-damage-brain-dysfunction"-theory. Now, he didnt say that it was all due to muscular involvement, but he had found that some of his patients got completely cured of their T when injecting a local anesthetic (lidocaine, xylocaine) into the lateral pterygoid muscle during Dentist-work. This was way back in the early 90s, but his research didn't take off. He didn't get any money and only got occasional attention from the media and the otolaryngology-society. As we all know, different branches of research don't cooperate very well and their discussion between fields are infested with status, prestige, money, treatments and job opportunities and few people dedicate their lives with only regard to what's best for patients.
Unfortunately for me, back in 2012, this guy, Assar Bjorne, had past away a few years earlier. What was left from his legacy was only his treatment centers home page http://www.yts.se/ and his former dental nurse. I contacted her back in 2012, and we had some skype-conversations and I did some psychological evaluation with her which I felt was futile (She had no psychological education, and that was not what I was looking for). I was trying to find out the method that Bjorne developed and recieve that treatment. It was a massage-technique with intention to loosen up the jaw-area, and then specifically the lateral pterygoid muscle. But, the method Bjorne Pioneered died with him, and this whole area of research fell into a deep black whole of shadow. Sure, the dentist-community knows that you can ease up or lower your tinnitus with chew-bracers at night that stops you from clenching your jaws. They know that tense jaws can be a cause of tinnitus, but noone has dug deeper than Bjorne did. He speculated about muscular dysfunction resulting in nerve-dysfunction, which the research community back then laughed at. Unless their is clear visible damage, their cannot be any symptom-cause and hence it is "impossible". But to me, as always, what is impossible today will be possible tomorrow.
My search for the magic bullet ended then and there, but Bjornes profile of people who have tinnitus due to muscular dysfuncion in face, jaw, neck and shoulders fit me so perfectly that I couldn't really never forget the thought. Despite the fact that my tinnitus was caused by loud noise. Or triggered? The 100 million dollar question.
Now, speed up a few years and in early 2015 I developed severe CPPS ( Chronic pelvic pain syndrome). I have had slight symptoms since 2012 (probably triggered because of tinnitus/stress/sleep deprevation). I was in a real mess, and still aren't good. But I've had time to think and read about the potential connections between both tinnitus/cpps and let me just say there are more similarities then there are differences.
They are both symtoms, not diseases. The research community is a big ?!?!?!, and CPPS has been speculation of being both this and that. The newest, and most popular, although not extremely widesperad among GPS (who most of the time knows less than google), is that in most cases (with 100% certainty mine) a muscular dysfunction. And suddenly Assar Bjorne popped back in my head.
So I started trying his own methods, with no real idea how to reach in there, or what to do. But I used the standard manual of the CPPS-community for massaging your muscles. In Sweden, there are no treatment facilities that treat CPPS. You are left on your own. The scientific evidence lags behind, but the community and the medical theorist work in symbiosis, not knowing what to do, speculating, without money for double blind random controlled trials and so on. So the patients try what the doctors without proof have to offer. And it seems to be working.
Now, let me state this clearly, my tinnitus has always been dynamic, flexible, adjusting to stress, some days having quite loud, while some days always seemed to be non-existent. I cherished those days, but always wondered why? It always seemed completely random. I have always been able to manipulate my tinnitus with jaw movement, either getting new sounds, higher sound, or more random sounds.
Well, back to my treatment-plan. I massaged on the outside of my jaws, and tried to reach the lateral pterygoid muscle. Checked anatomy books and figured where it "should be". Most of the time I probably just were on other muscles, but oddly enough it seemed to work some days. I started checking my tinnitus, and some days it was better, some days it was the same, but I really got the sense that if I actively massage my jaw muscles I get relief. Now, the effect lags, so it is not like i massage for 5 minutes and afterwards everything is fine. No, its more like, massage, and the next morning it may be better. I did this for a couple of weeks but tired, since my T doesn't bother me that much anymore and it takes quite an effort to use the force needed to make the muscles feel more relaxed. The resultes were very inconsitent too and the parameter of chance is of course great. I can just be anecdotal, but those days when I did it RIGHT I could feel it. I hit the right spot, used the right force, and the next day, what was left was a faint whisper where there before was quite some noice. It was just a feeling, nothing else. But to me, a very convincing feeling. I felt like I had found the missing puzzle piece of why my tinnitus is randomly better some days. Maybe I ate a lot of carrots that made my muscles relax?
Now, I want to elaborate more on this, due to its surface-similiarity to CPPS. I have had this theory for a while, that some tinnitus-cases (and probably hyperacusis) can be explained to be the equivalent of pelvic muscular dysfunction in cpps. An initial injury (loud nice) causes the muscles that protects the ear from high noice (tensor tympanii, stapedius muscle) to contract forcefully to the point beyond dysfunction. What happends next, is that the muscles STAY contracted after the event (as in CPPS). What is important here, is the possible implication of jaw/neck/shoulder muscles. The face/ear/neck/should muscles/nerves are VERY intrically connected. In cpps, you can get problems with peeing/defecation/erection/pain due to a muscle contraction in your quadriceps (thigh). This causes an inflammation in surrounding blood vessels/lympathic tissues/nerves which end up in a self-sustaining loop where the inflammation keeps the muscles tense and the tense muscles keep the inflammation going. It can even cause surrounding muscles to compensate by contratcing and opposing muscles forcing to relaxing growing weak and so on and so forth.
Apply this to tinnitus and the ear muscles have created a loop with the jaw disturbing the nerves (trigeminal, vagus) reaching for the ear hence producing a sound that doesn't exist. How this happens, I cannot think of, but maybe the inner ear cells get some signals distorted due to wrong information from protectional muscles, or the nerve send double messages/no messages. It's hard to tell.
All I can say is that I am convinced of the importance of muscular implication in some tinnitus/hyperacusis.
So please, help me with researchers/scientist that address this area. Or just discuss. What are your thoughts on this? Maybe we could know more?
Best wishes and regards
FutureDreams
I got my tinnitus during a club dance with relatively high music for about 2 hours. It was not obscenly high, just high, back in 2011. Nobody else in that club, at least not to my knowledge complained of getting T. But I got it, and it has stayed with me ever since. I always wondered why?
Now, as a Type A-personality, I tried to find out everything I could about T, read on forums and read it all, you know the drill. Back in sweden, there were very few treatment options (just TRT, and pscyhological counseling). As a "going-to-be" medical student I eventually discovered one man who seemed to have a very controversial part-theory in contrast to the regular "ear-damage-brain-dysfunction"-theory. Now, he didnt say that it was all due to muscular involvement, but he had found that some of his patients got completely cured of their T when injecting a local anesthetic (lidocaine, xylocaine) into the lateral pterygoid muscle during Dentist-work. This was way back in the early 90s, but his research didn't take off. He didn't get any money and only got occasional attention from the media and the otolaryngology-society. As we all know, different branches of research don't cooperate very well and their discussion between fields are infested with status, prestige, money, treatments and job opportunities and few people dedicate their lives with only regard to what's best for patients.
Unfortunately for me, back in 2012, this guy, Assar Bjorne, had past away a few years earlier. What was left from his legacy was only his treatment centers home page http://www.yts.se/ and his former dental nurse. I contacted her back in 2012, and we had some skype-conversations and I did some psychological evaluation with her which I felt was futile (She had no psychological education, and that was not what I was looking for). I was trying to find out the method that Bjorne developed and recieve that treatment. It was a massage-technique with intention to loosen up the jaw-area, and then specifically the lateral pterygoid muscle. But, the method Bjorne Pioneered died with him, and this whole area of research fell into a deep black whole of shadow. Sure, the dentist-community knows that you can ease up or lower your tinnitus with chew-bracers at night that stops you from clenching your jaws. They know that tense jaws can be a cause of tinnitus, but noone has dug deeper than Bjorne did. He speculated about muscular dysfunction resulting in nerve-dysfunction, which the research community back then laughed at. Unless their is clear visible damage, their cannot be any symptom-cause and hence it is "impossible". But to me, as always, what is impossible today will be possible tomorrow.
My search for the magic bullet ended then and there, but Bjornes profile of people who have tinnitus due to muscular dysfuncion in face, jaw, neck and shoulders fit me so perfectly that I couldn't really never forget the thought. Despite the fact that my tinnitus was caused by loud noise. Or triggered? The 100 million dollar question.
Now, speed up a few years and in early 2015 I developed severe CPPS ( Chronic pelvic pain syndrome). I have had slight symptoms since 2012 (probably triggered because of tinnitus/stress/sleep deprevation). I was in a real mess, and still aren't good. But I've had time to think and read about the potential connections between both tinnitus/cpps and let me just say there are more similarities then there are differences.
They are both symtoms, not diseases. The research community is a big ?!?!?!, and CPPS has been speculation of being both this and that. The newest, and most popular, although not extremely widesperad among GPS (who most of the time knows less than google), is that in most cases (with 100% certainty mine) a muscular dysfunction. And suddenly Assar Bjorne popped back in my head.
So I started trying his own methods, with no real idea how to reach in there, or what to do. But I used the standard manual of the CPPS-community for massaging your muscles. In Sweden, there are no treatment facilities that treat CPPS. You are left on your own. The scientific evidence lags behind, but the community and the medical theorist work in symbiosis, not knowing what to do, speculating, without money for double blind random controlled trials and so on. So the patients try what the doctors without proof have to offer. And it seems to be working.
Now, let me state this clearly, my tinnitus has always been dynamic, flexible, adjusting to stress, some days having quite loud, while some days always seemed to be non-existent. I cherished those days, but always wondered why? It always seemed completely random. I have always been able to manipulate my tinnitus with jaw movement, either getting new sounds, higher sound, or more random sounds.
Well, back to my treatment-plan. I massaged on the outside of my jaws, and tried to reach the lateral pterygoid muscle. Checked anatomy books and figured where it "should be". Most of the time I probably just were on other muscles, but oddly enough it seemed to work some days. I started checking my tinnitus, and some days it was better, some days it was the same, but I really got the sense that if I actively massage my jaw muscles I get relief. Now, the effect lags, so it is not like i massage for 5 minutes and afterwards everything is fine. No, its more like, massage, and the next morning it may be better. I did this for a couple of weeks but tired, since my T doesn't bother me that much anymore and it takes quite an effort to use the force needed to make the muscles feel more relaxed. The resultes were very inconsitent too and the parameter of chance is of course great. I can just be anecdotal, but those days when I did it RIGHT I could feel it. I hit the right spot, used the right force, and the next day, what was left was a faint whisper where there before was quite some noice. It was just a feeling, nothing else. But to me, a very convincing feeling. I felt like I had found the missing puzzle piece of why my tinnitus is randomly better some days. Maybe I ate a lot of carrots that made my muscles relax?
Now, I want to elaborate more on this, due to its surface-similiarity to CPPS. I have had this theory for a while, that some tinnitus-cases (and probably hyperacusis) can be explained to be the equivalent of pelvic muscular dysfunction in cpps. An initial injury (loud nice) causes the muscles that protects the ear from high noice (tensor tympanii, stapedius muscle) to contract forcefully to the point beyond dysfunction. What happends next, is that the muscles STAY contracted after the event (as in CPPS). What is important here, is the possible implication of jaw/neck/shoulder muscles. The face/ear/neck/should muscles/nerves are VERY intrically connected. In cpps, you can get problems with peeing/defecation/erection/pain due to a muscle contraction in your quadriceps (thigh). This causes an inflammation in surrounding blood vessels/lympathic tissues/nerves which end up in a self-sustaining loop where the inflammation keeps the muscles tense and the tense muscles keep the inflammation going. It can even cause surrounding muscles to compensate by contratcing and opposing muscles forcing to relaxing growing weak and so on and so forth.
Apply this to tinnitus and the ear muscles have created a loop with the jaw disturbing the nerves (trigeminal, vagus) reaching for the ear hence producing a sound that doesn't exist. How this happens, I cannot think of, but maybe the inner ear cells get some signals distorted due to wrong information from protectional muscles, or the nerve send double messages/no messages. It's hard to tell.
All I can say is that I am convinced of the importance of muscular implication in some tinnitus/hyperacusis.
So please, help me with researchers/scientist that address this area. Or just discuss. What are your thoughts on this? Maybe we could know more?
Best wishes and regards
FutureDreams
Member
