Is There a Way to Alleviate Somatic Elements of Tinnitus?

My tinnitus is 100% noise-induced, so I know that my somatic elements have to do something with auditory nerve inflammation. Dr. Minbo Shim (not trying to start controversy, he was simply the only person who could give me an answer as to what was going on---the rest of my doctors tried to blame it on ETD and TMJ) told me that my somatic elements were likely to due to the nerves in my eustachian tube and jaw interacting with my auditory nerve, which likely has been inflamed/damaged due to acoustic trauma.

Is there any way to alleviate somatic symptoms? My tinnitus is so somatic that burping, moving my jaw, chewing, moving my neck, stretching, pressing on different spots of my head/neck will spike my tinnitus. A sudden movement will also sometimes spike my tinnitus for up to an hour.

It's frankly exhausting.

Is there anything that can be done for these elements? It seems like Susan Shore's device is the best option but as of right now there is no telling when her device will be out.

 

Well, I am an advocate of something called curcumin/turmeric. It doesn't help everyone but it has helped some of us. It is a supplement. It won't hurt and it might help.

 

@JohnAdams curcumin will help [in theory] with the inflammation. But it may be that that will just take time to settle. In the meantime, you could also be working towards relaxing the muscles in your head/neck/jaw/ear as much as possible, to reduce the likelihood that they pull/poke/rub against the aggravated nerves. The ways to do this are pretty low-tech, and won't be flashy, but that doesn't mean they won't work:

* Hot baths (lay down on back, ears in, mouth out)
* Heating pads
* Massage (self or professional)
* More hot baths
* Non-benzo muscle relaxants (eg. methocarbomal)
* Meditation/yoga/guided relaxation
* More hot baths

In case you can't tell, I'm a huge fan of a hot bath. I don't know if it's the heat, the water, the relaxation or the fact that sound waves roll and distort underwater, but I can almost always count on 10 minutes with my head under water to lower my tinnitus symptoms by two notches. I wish I understood how it happened; but I accept the magic, regardless.

Your mileage may vary.

 

I’m trying a 60mg prednisone taper for 3 weeks. Small Mayo Clinic in grocery store prescribed this. Highest dose I was ever on. They said their clinic was for common conditions not chronic ones, so next time to go to regular clinic.

My noise was getting severe so I needed to try something. Seen a chiro for electrical stimulation too today. They used it on the back of my neck.

 

My tinnitus is very somatic as well, like yours. Mine could be noise induced, but I've kind of ruled this out since most people with noise induced tinnitus do not have somatic symptoms as severe as ours. How are you sure it is noise induced?

I have not found anything that lessens the somatic symptoms.

 

Some people find prednisone will increase tinnitus symptoms temporarily. Nothing permanent, so don't worry - but just thought I'd mention do you don't worry in case you experience some extra noise during the course of the drug.

 

@pinklights98 You may want to go see a TMJ specialist and get fitted for a nightguard.

Recently I talked to a neuroscientist through Facebook who had just developed tinnitus from acoustic trauma himself (loud concert). He said that his t got so much better after he was fitted for nightguard by a TMJ specialist. I asked him how that could make sense and he gave me two theories, one the one that you mentioned about inflammation of auditory and jaw nerves and then an alternate theory that I found really interesting and will attempt to paraphrase below.

He said that in the back of the head/neck (DCN area) is the first 'relay' after the auditory nerves come out of the auditory system and meet the sensory nerves of the jaw/face/head. The DCN integrates the signals from the auditory nerves and the sensory nerves. Why? Because think of how you listen to sound. If your head is tilted in a certain direction it affects the loudness of the sound that you hear from the outside world and your ability to judge the location of that sound. So the brain integrates sensory input with the auditory input because it's constantly plus-ing and minus-ing the sound that we hear based on the direction or tilt of our head/neck etc. Also, we have additional filters to dampen down our own sound of chewing for instance.

When you suffer an acoustic trauma some damage to the auditory system occurs temporarily (whether that is to the nerves or hair cells) which causes a loss of information. The DCN which integrates auditory and sensory nerve input, doesn't know what to do with the loss of information from the auditory nerves and to compensate, up-regulates the information it receives from the sensory nerves. Hence somatic tinnitus. And why even though you had acoustic trauma, fixing something like a jaw/TMJ issue could help to resolve your tinnitus.

I thought this was an interesting explanation and it seemed to work for him and be on par with what reports that I had heard from other people.

 

This seems reasonable. There are quite a few "hyperactivity-to-compensate-for-reduced-auditory-inputs" theories out there, but this is the first one I've heard that considers somatic issues specifically. Whether that mechanism is entirely correct or not probably doesn't matter (for our immediate purposes). What *is* known is that auditory/somatic integration is important and faulty...so relieving pressure where that integration takes place can help relieve at least some symptoms.

Thanks for sharing @lcj.

 

@lcj thank you for explaining this! I will set up an appointment and see if I could get a mouthgaurd fitted. It would be amazing if it could help reduce my tinnitus.

 

Cup your ears with your fingers facing backwards and cross your index and middle finger and tap in the base of your skull a few times ... instant relief but it doesn't last. I used to take turmeric in the past before I developed to tinnitus but stopped ... I'm reading all your comments about it for tinnitus and will use it again.

 

This used to work for me, but doesn't anymore.

I think it stopped when my sounds changed from tonal to electrical/screechings/statics.

 

I have both noise induced and somatic tinnitus. Read my Introduce Yourself post to see why I'm sure it was noise induced.

Annoyingly, whenever my NIT settles down, my somatic hissing comes to take its place. It becomes louder than anything else in my environment and is completely unmaskable. My ENT consultant said it was caused by my bruxis/TMJ and he would not accept that I could possibly have NIT which predated my somatic T. I'm living proof that he doesn't know about tinnitus though he charged me £250 for his 10 minute consultation.

EDIT. I also have tonal tinnitus which multiplies and intensifies when I yawn or turn over in bed. This was initially noise induced too but also responds to neck and jaw movements.

The pattern of tinnitus symptoms in one patient should not be assumed to stem from one single cause.

 

Thanks, I do seem louder. As I said this is the highest dose prednisone I have ever been on. I’ll probably follow through on the taper at this point. I have some spinal problems in my neck and lower back which may or may not be contributing to my noise. I had read C2 issues can cross over to the auditory nerves. I have HF hearing loss too so it’s hard to know. I crave a silent day again. This crappy static hissing is hard to bear.

 

For me I found about 3 days after the taper my tinnitus sounds came back to baseline.

 

They have me on 60 mg for 5 days before the taper which seems awfully high. My static is bad atm. I was on the 4 mg taper pack in the past.

 

60 is just about max dose.

I was on a 50mg taper for 5 days, followed by a 4 day taper. So similar to you. But by day 3 I was suffering, and so I altered the dosage myself, to an earlier, but more gradual, taper. So I did: 50, 50, 50, and then: 40, 40, 30, 30, 20, 20, 10, 10. With the dose consistently decreasing, the spike stayed more manageable. Plus, a more gradual taper will never do you wrong.

 

Mine is supposed to be 60, 60, 60, 60, 60 then 50, 50, 50 then 40, 40, 40 then 30, 30, 30, etc. until I run out of tablets. I would continue but my static is terrible. I thought they would help. I have a total of 38 20mg pills.