Somatic Tinnitus: Is It BAD to Move Into the Body Position That Causes an Increase in Tinnitus?

Hi all,

I've had manageable tinnitus with no hearing loss for about 4.5 years now. I'm able to suppress it almost always with aerobic exercise, with notched sound if I need a little more, and with low dose melatonin if I really need it. I hardly ever do the melatonin because the exercise has been working great.

I've had increasing neck tension in the past few weeks and a very stuck C1 vertebra. (Work, too much phone-staring and lots of running: bad combination.) Yesterday I went to my long-time massage person (Hendrickson method) who got lots of release going, then went to my chiropractor / active tissue release doc who got the C1 to move. During the massage, a fan noise in the room was prominent but not uncomfortable. I had a low level of tinnitus at that point.

After the C1 adjustment, which was done very gently, I felt a million times better neck-wise. But NOW I notice that if I flex my neck downward, tucking my chin, the volume increases! this has never happened before (or I have held my neck so tightly to suppress the tinnitus that it never arose as a possibility before?)

So I get that this is "somatic tinnitus" now, or perhaps it always was that way and I never moved my neck downward to that degree!

My question: is it BAD to move into the body position that causes the increase? I sure would not want it to be permanently at that volume.

If I move my neck sloooooowly to that position, the volume does not change. So it is perhaps more related to the speed of movement.

Also, additional and perhaps related:

• About 4 months ago I gave myself vertigo, and learned how to get rid of it.
• And last week I had an incident of "ocular migraine", no headache just the visual effects. Since my overall health is really good (see "aerobic exercise" above) my doc is not worried about it being stroke-related.

Anyway, I'm interested now in this whole somatic thing, which I didn't read about in the past because it did not seem pertinent. I will go read past posts so please don't spend your valuable time telling me things if you have already written about them - I shall go do my research!

Many thanks,
Nancy

 

I read an article on gaze induced tinnitus, where it was discovered that exercising your gaze in the direction which induced the tinnitus eventually resolved the tinnitus in a few weeks. The whole idea of dry needling for somatic tinnitus also seems also to be to stipulate the muscles so they eventually relax. Seems possible that provoking muscle movements in a manner which produces tinnitus might eventually relax the muscle?

 

There was a guy in my group who had neck issues and neck movement modulated his, so he did neck exercises. He kept doing them and the tinnitus went away.

I have been having neck physiotherapy and mine is significantly reduced. It flared it up initially, but overall it has improved A LOT.

I would recommend looking into potential neck problems and addressing them. Think of the ringing as a symptom of an issue and address the issue regardless of what the ringing does.

 

My neck issues are very likely part at play. I'm currently waiting for my cold and ETD issues to go away. If tinnitus persists after that I'll be looking into neck physical therapy because even if it doesn't fix my tinnitus, it'll at least decrease pain and discomfort in my neck and shoulders.

As for the OPs question, I don't think it can result in permanent tinnitus unless you somehow permanently damage anything while doing so - but that's just my understanding of neck induced tinnitus.

This happens to me too occasionally, with very few movements, but I haven't figured out which movement exactly.

 

Same experience. T had a short and small spike after every exercise, but it went down from 9 to 2 within a month.

@NancyL
Stretching the related muscle(s) should be safe. Just don't overdo it: tension is good, pain is not.