Poll: Residual Inhibition from Head Tapping / "The Reddit Tinnitus Cure"

[Matchbox]

I'm trying to see how many people out there are like me.

There is a trick you can do for residual inhibition, and I'm trying to get some data from tinnitus sufferers as to what happens when you do it. It's the head tap trick, using vibration.

This would be similar to road noise while driving and the potential tinnitus spike afterwards.

I'm trying to gauge what happens to people with Hydrops, versus Otosclerosis, versus AIED, versus acoustic trauma.

When placing your palms over your ears creating a seal, with your fingers against the base of your skull, begin tapping with your index/middle fingers along your skull/base of your neck so that you can hear loud thumping. Do this for about 20 seconds.

Please reply in the poll / below with what happens to you immediately after, and after about 30 seconds to a minute. I would love to know the cause of your tinnitus below and further descriptions.

For me, I get reductions in wavering seashell distortions, and in tinnitus, and they dramatically increase to satanic levels before going to high ringing then baseline finally. Wish I knew why. I haven't heard of anyone else or read about others getting post effects of this nature yet.

 

[Chinmoku]

I had a few seconds of residual inhibition in the early stages with the shower and with some special types of white noise. Now it's all gone. I don't have distortions, only hearing loss and a inhumane ever-worsening electric scream.

 

[Matchbox]

Yeah, mine used to be dead silence for a while then back to pinch/static.
God, do I miss those days.

 

[Mary97]

I'm too paranoid to try.

 

[Damocles]

I'm too paranoid to try.

Same Mary. Not gonna lie, I'm scared.

 

[Matchbox]

Same Mary. Not gonna lie, I'm scared.

Everytime I do it, even now, the worsening is temporary and only for at most 3 minutes. I get complete silence first, and then the ringing goes down in volume.

 

[Óscar PP]

No effect whatsoever on my piercing high pitched ringing.

 

[Matchbox]

No effect whatsoever on my piercing high pitched ringing.

Sorry to read that man. For some people it's a temporary break.

@roy1159, @__nico__, would you guys be up for trying?

 

[Matchbox]

It would be very informative to hear from people with Meniere's or hydrops.

 

[Matchbox]

Sorry to annoy but anyone else? I feel this is very low risk to try and could yield a lot of info with known causes. At the least a correlation point.

 

[kingsfan]

Nada, nothing, no dice...

 

[linearb]

Interesting that a full third of responders get a temporary effect here.

 

[Matchbox]

If anyone with hydrops could respond, it would also be very useful.

 

[MindOverMatter]

@Matchbox, with this, my distortions and reactive tinnitus reduces dramatically, and slowly go back to baseline after a couple of minutes.

Wonder what I should explain this with?

 

[Matchbox]

@Matchbox, with this, my distortions and reactive tinnitus reduces dramatically, and slowly go back to baseline after a couple of minutes.

Wonder what I should explain this with?

Same happens to me, except it swings to become way worse for a few minutes (like new sounds at triple the volume) and then dies down to baseline. That only started after attempting steroids and DXM to help my tinnitus, which initially did.

My inhibition still has the original noise induced tone I got, which I think is not going anywhere.

I think it has something to do with overwhelming receptors with Glutamate release from hair cells, pushing the tinnitus signal down. There's also mechanical vibration of ear fluids.

In my case I think it also implies potentially something else going on with hydrops or sodium channel blockade which never resolved due to inflammation. Pretty crazy thought but I'll have some better testing done to confirm any of this. Might take a while, it's hard to convince specialists, and even harder in Canada.

For those where nothing happens I think it's certainly just a really potentiated signal where there is no longer inflammation of the auditory nerve fibres, that needs to be broken up with neuromodulation when that finally becomes more mainstream, that or Ketamine.

 

[Matchbox]

For those who the head tapping did not work, how long has your tinnitus been present?

 

[kingsfan]

For those who the head tapping did not work, how long has your tinnitus been present?

I tried the head tapping thing a few years ago when my tinnitus was just at the "quiet room" level. It didn't work then either.

I'm in the middle of month 10 from loud hissing forming and month 9 of the "quiet room" tone getting LOUD.

 

[ZFire]

It has no effect on me. It used to, but not anymore since getting worse.

 

[Matchbox]

Does anyone have anything like wavering craziness come on post head tapping or am I that special?

The following is an accurate re-creation of what I hear. I hear it in one ear only (a tiny bit on the other).

Please lower your volume and slowly increase until you can comfortably hear it!

It begins with a series of taps (which is the head tapping trick) followed by baseline tinnitus tone.

It dies down and goes back to baseline with that tone, those distortions are always present in some form baseline, but never get so loud unless I have noise trauma or the head tapping.

 

[Matchbox]

Bump. Could use more data.

 

[DebInAustralia]

Bump. Could use more data.

Didn't affect my tinnitus either way.

Chronic tinnitus - since 2013.

 

[ZFire]

Hey @Matchbox, I gave this another try, but this time on a day where my reactivity and distortions were much more noticeable. Still no effect on tinnitus (maybe a slight decrease), but it reduces the distortions + reactivity to a great deal for about 2 minutes. My refrigerator and the bathroom water faucet while its running sounded way more normal in that period of time.

Another thing. If I keep shaking my head rapidly, this reduces the tinnitus dramatically. I can barely hear it.

 

[ZFire]

Bump. Could use more data.

Bumping this in case you missed my post from about 1 month ago (above this post). I re-attempted the head tapping thing again. Hopefully it will provide some use for you.

 

[Matchbox]

Hey @Matchbox, I gave this another try, but this time on a day where my reactivity and distortions were much more noticeable. Still no effect on tinnitus (maybe a slight decrease), but it reduces the distortions + reactivity to a great deal for about 2 minutes. My refrigerator and the bathroom water faucet while its running sounded way more normal in that period of time.

Another thing. If I keep shaking my head rapidly, this reduces the tinnitus dramatically. I can barely hear it.

No re-bound effect where distortions got louder after a short period of time, then back to normal crap level?

 

[ZFire]

No re-bound effect where distortions got louder after a short period of time, then back to normal crap level?

There was no rebound effect of that kind. It just goes back to normal levels afterwords.

 

[karsten]

After tapping, I get basically a second, maybe two full seconds, of tinnitus going way down to near silence, then quickly back up to where it was.

No distortions. Doesn't get worse.

(Tinnitus since 2011/12, which died down very gradually to a negligible volume after about 5 years, and continued to be very slight, negligible, for about 6 years, but then jumped back to its initial loud state four weeks ago, hours after my first-ever Pfizer shot.)

 

[TomBradyGOAT]

This helps me. So does rubbing my hair around. If only a woodpecker would land on my head. I have no tinnitus days, ultra loud tinnitus days and in between. Sounds like it is in my head, intrusive when loud of course, but I think it is partly because I hear it in my head. Really somatic or whatever they call it tinnitus. Eye movement, pressing on my jaw, neck, changes the tone. Less so when when it's already really loud.

 

[Marshall]

Bump. Could use more data.

I did this. My normal high pitch tinnitus stopped for a bit, and both my tones from barotraumas in both ears got louder.

 

[GuitarMan]

Doesn't really do much for me but I can get almost complete silence for anywhere between a few seconds and a few minutes by playing a sound file of a pure tone or very narrow-band white noise that matches my tinnitus tone for about 30 seconds.