Applying Pressure on My Lower Set of Teeth Increases Tinnitus

Today I noticed that when I use my thumb to apply pressure on my lower set of teeth, increases tinnitus loudness, while applying pressure on the upper teeth does not.

Any ideas?

 

When I push up on my jaw it significantly reduces my T. And when I open my mouth my T decreases. My neuro-otologist says it is changing the impedance of the sound. My TMD specialist doesn't know what to make of it.

 

That seems troubling, because this is an extremely common manifestation of TMJ, and tinnitus sounds changing with muscle tension in general is extremely common and probably occurs in the majority of tinnitus patients.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2566901/
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/somatic-tinnitus.812/

Put simply, the nerves of the face, head and neck are in very close proximity to the auditory nerves as they pass through the TMJ region... so you're just experiencing some data crossover from the sensory nerves into the auditory nerve. Normal, not harmful.

Many of my friends without tinnitus have told me they can evoke it temporarily by clenching or extending their jaw.

 

same with me. When pushing my lower teeth it increase, but pushing upper teethe nothing happends. When open my mouth wide open the sound goes down en replace my jaw to the left the sound is almost gone. When pushing behind my earlobe it increased and when pushing my skull on the left it increased.

 

Well, the upper jaw is part of the rest of your skull. So pushing there is just like pushing your entire head backwards.
Your lower jaw is a separate bone from your skull. Pushing there influences muscles, joints, nerves etc...

 

Actually I do have a good idea I think. There is a nerve that run from the lower jaw from under the teeth up near the ear canal. It's called the trigeminal nerve.

This is why tmj disorders or impacted lower wisdom teeth can cause tinnitus.

Here is a pretty good illustration of it: http://www.mcvitamins.com/trigeminal-neuralgia.htm

 

@MattK my dentist told me i have TMD. Is that why i can manipulate the sound? I don't have hearinglos. Somethimes feel pressure in my ears en headache in the front, and a fulness feeling in my head.

 

You'd have to talk to your dentist but I wouldn't rule out that possibility.

 

I guess I should have been more clear and said that my TMD specialist saw this phenomenon as only part of the problem. The jaw is definitely involved because of the close proximity to the ear, but he said something else is also going on as well. The bite splints seem to change the noise, but it does not go away.

 

Somatic nerves compensating for the loss of auditory input.

Read work of prof susan shore

 

I wish I could pinpoint the problem for you (or me!), but alas ... no.

While I've had tinnitus since '06, the jaw pain has only kicked in over the past 3 or so months when at the same time the tinnitus has blown me right off the charts.

I started to see a specialist just recently and he has asked me to do exercises to stretch the jaw - put left and right middle fingers on bottom teeth and left and right thumbs on upper teeth and press ... so that gently push your jaw into a more open position.

My problem is that this causes my daily headaches to be worse. However, I am told that if you don't have a headache probem, whis should potentially help.

Wishing you all the best.

 

there is a muscle called the lateral pterygoid inside the mouth -- wikipedia will show you where it is. I wonder if this muscle is tight/inflamed/tense for you? You can manually release trigger points in one end of the muscle by pressing pretty hard with a finger inside your mouth behind your back teeth, but it's difficult to explain. There are PTs that can show you how to release those muscles, though. I think they might be a big culprit in TMJ for a lot of people; they are for me, and my ringing can get MUCH louder when that stuff is worse.

Since your jaw pain and T increased are related in time, it seems possible that treating your jaw muscles successfully might make a big difference. The kind of muscle release I was talking about before, is somewhat helpful to me.