Tinnitus, TMJ, Headaches, Neck Pain, Facial Pain, etc. — Possible Treatment

#781
Happy 2015 everyone.

I went to four visits with the John F. Barnes Expert Level physical therapist. Each visit was an hour. I have not noticed anything so I'm not going to buy any more sessions. It costs $205 per session.

I think the next thing I'm going to try is a teleconference consultation with that julstro.com lady and see what she thinks. She seems to suggest people treat themselves, but I know I bought one of her digital information products and it seemed good, but I couldn't get anything out of it. I may need to find it and look at it again, but I can't find it.
 
#782
Try this to stretch your cleidomastoid, not sternomastoid. The cleidomastoid muscle deserves to be called by its own name. I was very impressed by this video because it said to do something I just stumbled upon minutes before and did a search and found this video. That is to do the jaw thrust (underbite he calls it) while doing the cleidomastoid stretch. I feel something in the back of my mouth which is different when doing the two together.

I have stretched with the jaw thrust before and done the cleidomastroid stretch before (though not as much), but I never tried doing the two motions together, which is probably the real stretch.

 
#783
applewine said:
Happy 2015 everyone.

I went to four visits with the John F. Barnes Expert Level physical therapist. Each visit was an hour. I have not noticed anything so I'm not going to buy any more sessions. It costs $205 per session.

I think the next thing I'm going to try is a teleconference consultation with that julstro.com lady and see what she thinks. She seems to suggest people treat themselves, but I know I bought one of her digital information products and it seemed good, but I couldn't get anything out of it. I may need to find it and look at it again, but I can't find it.
Click to expand...

Happy new year to you as well!! :)

Thanks for the update!

The video you posted is very interesting, because Im starting to pay more and more attention to my anterior neck at the moment. The stretch you posted makes my ear tickle and it gives me something that could remind of a fluctuating hearing loss every now and then. We have been talking a lot about the sternocleidomastoideus and the anterior neck, and I agree that the two heads should be treated as two distinct muscles. I did injections to this muscle, and that is when I discovered how important this muscle really is, because of all the stuff that started to happen, which luckily is gone now.

It seems like this muscle plays a major role in jaw functioning, and that its tied up with the jaw muscles and they simply work together. So Im thinking that especially the cleidomastoideus could be the culprit to all this, and as I have told before, when I did neck adjustments, I got a serious weird, cold feeling in my cleidomastoideus and it instantly worsened my condition a lot. The auricular nerve is also known to cause tinnitus and all sorts of ear related symptoms and slings around the sternocleidomastoideus.

Thanks for the video! :)
 
#784
@Mr. Cartman Yes, and just from sequeezing the cleidomastoid I definately have spots that hurt. They cause referral patterns above my eye. The thing is I don't normally have any pain there, so it is not "re-creating" a referral pattern, which is what you are normally looking for. Sometimes I will also feel a pain shooting into my jaw when squeezing parts of the cleidomastoid. The problem has been that I have not gotten anything from squeezing this muscle and holding it long and low pressure and gently increasing as it adjusts. This is one technique I've heard to remove the malfunction. You can also massage like you are pulling it out in one direction. All of this though and no improvement. Maybe stretching with this new technique will help. Also, it may be that I just need to really increase the treatment number and duration of the squeezing and massage and not give up so soon. I've never tried doing it throughout the day every day for weeks on end.

The sternomastoid on the other hand I have zero pain anywhere when squeezing it. I also feel no tiny guitar string like strand in the sternomastoid when rolling through it, but I'm pretty sure I do when I roll through the cleidomastoid.

Also remember the cleidomastoid is the muscle that is supposed to cause problem with dizziness, tinnitus, refersable deafness.

Clavicular Division (right): Autonomic and proprioceptive disturbances; frontal "sinus" headache, ear pain, nausea, dizziness and car-sickness; reversible tinnitus/deafness.
http://www.round-earth.com/SCM.html

This is written about in all the sources on trigger points. Also, it is worth mentioning that I have had
1. Extreme dizzy attacks when this all started
2. Shooting pain in the ear (look at the pain referal diagram, it is in the ear for the cleidomastoid and the sternomastoid
3. Tinnitus

I have also noticed that I think I can recreate the weird tingly numbness thing on my face when stretching the cleidomastoid sometimes. This numbness thing comes and goes whenever.

I also have this right lower back, hip, abdomen pain which is on the same side of my jaw pain. I'm not sure what to do about that. I have tried many things, but I'll be looking at that some more.
 
#786
Last week I started the trigger point therapy by of of the only professional certified trigger point therapist. There supposed to be only 80 around the world. It was hard to find any muscles that would cause T or increase it or decrease it, but it was my first time. I do have lots of weird issues with muscles that cause phantom tooth pain, eye pain and facial sensations.
 
#787
@applewine

What you describe sounds exactly what Im experiencing.
The sternal head seems very healthy, but the clavicular head hurts a lot when Im touching it. It feels very sore, and the left one seems under developed and "stringy" compared to my right one, and the left side happens to be my bad side. Its for sure something that is not right with this muscle.
And like @bwspot , I too get phantom tooth pain, eye pain, facial sensations and jaw pain. I also occasionally get stinging ear pain and weird headaches and ear pain.
I too have had some dizzy spells, but when I injected the sternocleidomastoideus it got VERY bad. The room was literally spinning and I wasnt able to fall asleep because I felt sick, a little like car-sickness or something and severe dizziness. It was aweful, but it all went away once the anesthetics wore off.

Kind of interesting if you ask me :)
 
#788
@Mr. Cartman I wouldn't say the stringy sensation in your cleidomastoid means it is underdeveloped. Taught bands and stringy is supposed to mean trigger points. I have however felt these taught bands in other muscles like the upper trapezius. They may be tendons, or be normal and everyone has them, it is hard to say. However I know I don't feel these in all muscles. I'm trying really hard to feel it in the sternomastroid and I just can't.

I also get the stinting sensations in the ears. Although like I've said they were much stronger when it started in 2008 when I had the extreme dizzy attacks. Back then they were like a ice pick suddenly stabbed in the ear out of nowhere a few times in a row for a split second and I would jump.

@bwspot I have no eye pain, but my vision shakes when looking at things up close ever since the neck pain. I have never felt tooth pain except if I scratch some of my teeth near the gum where the gum has receded or drink really cold water. Trigger points are known to cause phantom tooth pain though. It is interesting that I don't have it.

@bwspot I am interested in who this trigger point therapist is and what kind of technique or certification they are using. I definately get facial sensations.

The one thing that bothers me though is the cold water sensations I get in my feet or elsewhere, or burning when I have the annual (on average) flair up for a few months. I don't know if that is caused the antibiotics the crazy doctor gave me, or if it is somehow an injury. I had the cold water sensations in my legs years before the antibiotics, but they went away. Back then I just had the pain between the shoulder blades, the neck and shaking vision (I think). No temple, jack or other pain, except maybe some right lower back/hip/leg pain
 
#789
@Mr. Cartman @bwspot In the last day or so I'm become more interested in stretching. In the past I thought stretching couldn't work for trigger points. This is normally the position. Perhaps stretching is part of the treatment needed, or if stretching has to be done as part or the complete treatment the problem may have simply been lack of the right stretch or done the right way. I've found that stretching is actually very complicated. There are all kinds of positions and combinations and stretching is not obvious. One doesn't know which muscle to stretch or the exact angle and combinations of positions that need to be done to stretch it just right.

The example with the cleidomastoid for example. Nobody told me to do something with the jaw at the same time. If you don't do that apparently it doesn't work. Also there different angles of the neck for that muscle to try. Also, there may be different positions of the jaw to try.

I'm trying to jut/thrust the jaw forward, but I'm also trying to open my jaw all the way with the cleidomastoid stretch. Also, you should try inhaling. When I inhale I get a pain in the back of my mouth. It actually feels like my soft palate, so who knows if it actually helps. You can also try turning you neck to stretch the cleidomastoid, opening the jaw all the way and then trying laughing and see what that does for the muscles.

Also, I'm going to look at stretching my shoulder blades. I still have pain there. I think I need to look up multiple muscles. I experimented and pressing on my lower shoulder blade against the back of my chair at just the right angle feels good. Not sure what that is doing. I want to stretch the romboids and levator scapulae.
 
#790
@Mr. Cartman @bwspot

An article on stretching from a guy I've been reading for a while on trigger points. I bought his books too. He was not particularly positive on stretching though:
https://www.painscience.com/articles/stretching-for-tps.php

Stretching is supposed to be good for mild or individual muscles. Once it has spread or gets really bad it is not supposed to work as well. One thought that occurred to me is that if it has spread to multiple muscles maybe you should try stretching them all at the same time in a single pose and holding it for as long as possible. You will need to combine as many of the muscle stretches into one. This may prevent the problem of sort of "squeezing the balloon" when you stretch one segment and it just tightens up because the muscles around it are still contracted. The idea of finding "poses" that stretch as many of the problem muscles at the same time may help.

So for me I stretched my right lower back which hurts by putting my arms bechind my back and leaning back as far as I could. I did this while also tipping my neck all the way back and then also opened my jaw all the way. So, my back is all the way back almost falling over, but twisted to the left (to stretch my right lower back) and my neck is all the way back to the left (to stretch my right cleidomastoid) and my jaw is all the way forward and open or forward. Then take a deep breath to get the last bit of stretch and feel the pain in your mouth and then hold that position for as many minutes as you can.

I'm not sure what to do with the shoulder blades yet.
 
#791
applewine said:
When I inhale I get a pain in the back of my mouth. It actually feels like my soft palate, so who knows if it actually helps.
Click to expand...

Now, this is VERY interesting, because I have had this for a very long time..! And it makes my palate feel "tight" so to speak.
It does indeed feel like my soft palate, but when I remove the "slack" of my jaw and wiggle it left to right hard, ive done this to exercise the lateral pterygoideus and I get the stinging sensation (stabbing pain) that I sometimes get in my ear in the exact same area as you describe. It might have something to do with tensor veli palatini.. At least that would make sense because it is a part of the otic ganglion, and this ganglion innervates Tensor veli palatini, Tensor tympani, Medial pterygoid and Chorda tympani through a branch of the trigeminal nerve (medial pterygoid nerve) and a branch of the Glossopharyngeal nerve (The tympanic nerve).

Im very confident that they are related.

Its very true what you say, stretching can be done in a lot of combinations and will effect different muscles. Thats why I kinda like to play around to see what happens. Ill read through the link you pasted :)

As a sidenote, Im one of those that are anatomically wired to get aural fullness, jaw tension and neck tension together with my acoustic reflex. I remember this from when I was a kid. If I knocked a hammer on a metal plate I could feel that my jaw, head and neck tensed up immediately when my middle ear muscles would. It was easily noticable, and the sensations I have now are very similar to what I would expect from my acoustic reflex for a few seconds.

It could be that the headache clinic is spot on, that the neck, ear and jaw muscles are innervated by nerves that are controlled by the same center in the brain, so if one or more muscles tense up, so will the rest of those muscles in the group.

I dont know, but it could be something to this theory.

Also, if you inhale, the anterior scalenes should be activated, as it assist in elevating your first ribs. And it seems like theres some connection between the anterior scalenes and tensor veli palatini (if this is the muscle I can feel tensed up at the roof of my mouth).

And if something is able to create muscle tension to tensor veli palatini, I would think tensor tympani would follow as well, as they are both innervated by the same ganglion.
 
#792
Thanks for the tips.
Most practitioners dont have time to teach you how to stretch or they dont know. The trigger point therapist I go to now told me that she needs at least 1.5 with me for every session to work on muscles and teach me how to heal myself. My first appointment with her was 3H !!! Compare this to regular doctors, max 15min.
 
#793
@bwspot What type of specialist is this? I agree with the idea of 3 hours and everything it all sounds good. However you should keep in mind she may not have a good success rate or actually know what she is talking about in a practical, non theory way. That has been my experience with every expert I have ever met. Even people who specialize in just trigger points.
 
#794
@Mr. Cartman That is a lot for me to digest you just said there but all the terms are familiar.

Wow, something really weird just happened. I was just eating dinner and with every single bite I got a sharp stabbing in my left ear. It has not done that in as long as I can remember and I've had this since 2008 and I can't remember if it did that back then when I would get the stabbing a lot.

This is after I've done a lot of stretches today with that cleidomastoid and jaw and everything I told you. It has to be related to that because it has never done this before and I just did this kind of stretching for the first time. For whatever reason it was stabbing on the left side and my right side is normally the more active side with jaw pain and all that.

It seems to have stopped for now. I was almost afraid to finish my dinner because it kept doing it with every bite a sharp pain very localized to the left ear. I was able to finish and it stopped before I was done.
 
#795
applewine said:
@bwspot What type of specialist is this? I agree with the idea of 3 hours and everything it all sounds good. However you should keep in mind she may not have a good success rate or actually know what she is talking about in a practical, non theory way. That has been my experience with every expert I have ever met. Even people who specialize in just trigger points.
Click to expand...
I do have some issues with neck being stiff, tinging around eyes, pain in eyes, phantom tooth pain and tinnitus.
She is a professional trigger point therapist. I did a PT for my neck but regular doctors wants me to eat steroids which i am not a fan of. Once pt was finished the underlying problem was not solved and i still dont know what is causing all weird pains, so I decided to try her.
 
#796
@applewine

Yes!! Working with the cleidomuscle generates stinging ear pain while chewing for me too.
It might be related to the auricular nerve.. We should also not forget the anterior scalenes which passes slightly behind the SCM as well :) It has to be related man :)

It always goes like this: I do something with my neck, I chew and something happens.
 
#798
@applewine

I watched the entire video, I think its great! I can also relate to what she says about constant tension in the jaw and muscle spasms when sneezing.. :p

I have noticed something though.. After I started to take care of my neck and my jaw muscles, it seems like I have stopped grinding teeth.
Before, I could wake up with my jaw painfully shut, my teeth would hurt upon waking up, my jaw muscles felt like they were about to explode, but I dont have that anymore, and it seems like the teeth grinding has come to an end.. At least as far as I can tell.. Or that it has gotten a lot better and I just dont notice it anymore..
 
#799
@Mr. Cartman I have no idea where people get this teeth grinding idea from. It seems to be something you can't observe and it happens while you are asleep, but nobody knows if it happens.

I'm suspicious of the video, but there are lots of different treatments that dentists use that they say work. Another is actually moving the bite forward and open more.

One hypothesis I have is that they may be fixing the problem in some people simply be catering to the muscles which are shortened. So, rather than lengthening the muscles they simply work around that. It may not be that the bite has caused the problem in the first place. This may work for some people and not others. This may also be why studies show that certain bites don't cause the problem because lots of people hate these other bites that don't have problems. The reason may be because the bite isn't the cause, but if you change it it could fix it in some people.

If the muscle tensions is caused by the bite in the first place then the ideal thing to do is treat the muscles. Of course it could be that a different bite is easier on the muscles once those muscles have trigger points, but that bite isn't the cause or necessary to remove the trigger points. The bite they give people when they change the bite (not exactly this video) is essentially similar to the stretch we are doing. They Thrust the jaw forward and open it. So basically they are doing one long permanent stretch.

The thing is the doctors who do this all the time and specialize in TMJ, they don't have that many videos of it working on people for somebody who does this all the time. Also, for some people it doesn't work all the way and just lessens the problem. Also a lot of people aren't really clear on how bad or similar their problem is to us. Also of course any of these changes especially like the one in the video are permanent changes. He is basically sanding away teeth. Also in some people he has to build up the teeth. He doesn't show any of that in his video.
 
#800
@applewine

I totally agree with what you are saying! Im also bigtime suspicious towards videos like this.. However, I do believe that tight jaw muscles can compress nerves in the infratemporal fossa, and i believe that shortened/tight neck muscles might be the contributing factor to my previous teeth grinding..

I really feel that there is a strong connection between the neck and the jaw, and theres a lot of literature regarding this connection.

It could be that the teeth grinding thing is a natural way for the body in an attempt to relax the neck muscles.

I still believe that my neck is the culprit to most of this stuff and not the other way around. I also believe that it could be entirely related to my anterior neck muscles..

At least Im trying out different stretches/exercises in an attempt to understand where this stuff starts. And the stretch you posted a video of earlier for sure touches a soft spot, and when I work out my anterior neck my ear starts to itch, I get some stinging pain, weird sensations etc, so theres something going on there.. And I think the jaw is secondary to the neck, at least in my case.
 
#801
When my trigger point therapist checks my jaw it clicks. She presses on few muscles and all goes away and no more clicking. It's all muscles!!!
 
#802
bwspot said:
When my trigger point therapist checks my jaw it clicks. She presses on few muscles and all goes away and no more clicking. It's all muscles!!!
Click to expand...
You weren't very specific about what kind of clicking you are talking about. Some noise clicking is normal I think. If I do some really extreme jaw stretches sometimes my jaw will get a little out of whack and my jaw will do some popping noise for a little while. My jaw does not normally do this though. Most of my stretches tend not to cause this either. Sometimes I'll get a little sand grading or something too. It is probably a minor disolocation of the disc or something. I've had a very temporary sand grading pretty much all my life that happens maybe a few times a year and will happen for a few jaw movements within a 30 minute period and then it is gone. Pretty unconcerning really.

You also weren't very specific about the muscle pressing. Is she holding the muscles while you move the jaw? I hope you aren't assuming that loss of any sound is an indicator of anything.
 
#803
On a somewhat off topic note. I haven't cured my TMD, tinnitus or whatever, but I think I have cured or am on my way to curing some bad back acne I started getting several months ago. I did a search on back acne and apparently it is caused by dairy it is claimed in many sources. I did not have any face acne, just lots of back acne, with some on my chest.

I even found a pubmed article that claims:

"all one needs to do is take a history to learn that extensive back acne is almost exclusively due to excess dairy intake, but not always mill"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2715202/

I also just noticed it says that dairy may cause breast and prostate cancer. I have used hemp milk in the past and liked that, so if you like milk try that. No cheese, but you can make schmaltz at home from chicken thighs and use that instead of butter to put on your rice and other foods.

I thought about the claim that dairy caused back acne and realized I was eating a diet very heavy in dairy recently. I had been eating about half a stick of butter a day, but no milk. The theory is that the hormones from dairy cows causes acne, particularly back acne, but this may vary by sex and individual. Well, if any dairy product has lots of hormones it would be the one with the most fat, and that is no doubt butter.

I cut out all dairy except probably some that was in the cookies over the holidays. My back acne is almost completely gone in one month. If any of you have back acne cut out the dairy and I bet your acne will be gone in three months, 12 months tops for extremely bad cases. It may work for face acne for women too as I've seen some claims that it is more likely to be a problem for women.

I must have been getting a super mega dose though because I was eating tons of butter.

I wonder if muscle pain and trigger points could be caused by dairy or any other food. I tried going gluten free once and it didn't do anything for my muscles. What if you had to go dairy and gluten free? I kind of doubt it, but if it was two foods you would never know unless you eliminated all of them.

I remember around the time I was getting the neck pain I started out drinking tons of milk with my strength training under advice. I started puking it up so I switched to whey protein.
 
#804
applewine said:
You weren't very specific about what kind of clicking you are talking about. Some noise clicking is normal I think. If I do some really extreme jaw stretches sometimes my jaw will get a little out of whack and my jaw will do some popping noise for a little while. My jaw does not normally do this though. Most of my stretches tend not to cause this either. Sometimes I'll get a little sand grading or something too. It is probably a minor disolocation of the disc or something. I've had a very temporary sand grading pretty much all my life that happens maybe a few times a year and will happen for a few jaw movements within a 30 minute period and then it is gone. Pretty unconcerning really.

You also weren't very specific about the muscle pressing. Is she holding the muscles while you move the jaw? I hope you aren't assuming that loss of any sound is an indicator of anything.
Click to expand...
First she presses on the jaw muscles from inside the mouth. Then she presses on the jaw muscle close to the ear and asks me to slowly open while pressing on it. Usually my jaw clicks or locks when i open it but it is nothing that was serious for me. She just noticed it and offered a fix.
Exact muscles are:
http://www.myofascialtherapy.org/symptom-checker/symptomcheck/symptom_head_masseter.html
 
#806
@Mr. Cartman Also guys. Your neck may hurt when you wake up because you are turning on your side while sleeping, not because you are clenching or bruxing your jaw while sleeping. This would be fine if your muscles were healthy, if they they are not it may make them flare up.

I woke up and my neck was stiff and my right lower back hurt. Normally my back doesn't hurt until standing or sitting though.

The whole clenching or bruxing your jaw during sleep thing to me seems a little hokey almost like psychological pseudo-science. I say if it is happening then record it happening while that specific person is sleeping and prove it and even then that doesn't prove it is the cause.
 
#809
applewine said:
@bwspot I've seen three different people through that site and none of them were any help.
Click to expand...
She seemed to know muscles a lot.
She is very dedicated and always has time for me. Not sure if she can help with tinnitus as I think it is due to cochlear damage but muscles wise I hope to get some release. She teaches me how to treat myself so I don't have to visit her. So far we could not find a trigger point to release the tinnitus.
 
#810
applewine said:
@Mr. Cartman Also guys. Your neck may hurt when you wake up because you are turning on your side while sleeping, not because you are clenching or bruxing your jaw while sleeping. This would be fine if your muscles were healthy, if they they are not it may make them flare up.

I woke up and my neck was stiff and my right lower back hurt. Normally my back doesn't hurt until standing or sitting though.

The whole clenching or bruxing your jaw during sleep thing to me seems a little hokey almost like psychological pseudo-science. I say if it is happening then record it happening while that specific person is sleeping and prove it and even then that doesn't prove it is the cause.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but I can guarantee that teeth grinding / bruxism is real (from my own experience), and it will put a ton of strain on the jaw complex.. :)

"Nocturnal bruxism can generate incredible forces resulting in significant loads to the masticatory musculature and to the TMJ complex. The average working force that can be delivered to a natural tooth is 175 psi (66). Nocturnal bruxism activity can increase that force to 300 psi, with reported cases of 100,000 (67) to 175,000 psi (68)."

The source below also mention dysfunction of the tensor veli palatini muscle (at the roof of the mouth) and tensor tympani as a result of bruxism.

Source: http://www.drjimboyd.com/TriPhar.html

 

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