Shaking Head Quickly Stops My Low-Frequency Tinnitus Hum — Is It from Anxiety?

[daniel12345]

@Sydnears, I've made significant progress in understanding my tinnitus. I may have had an underlying ear infection, or possibly C1 to C3 cervical spine degeneration. However, I think the main triggering factor for me is neck strain. Specifically, I believe strain of the sternocleidomastoid muscle on the right side, along with the upper trapezius muscles from forward head tilt, is causing inflammation and sending abnormal nerve signals into the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN).

As I understand it now, my tinnitus is:

130 Hz low-frequency unilateral hyper-reactive tinnitus with residual inhibition, stemming from cervical, TMJ, and SCM muscle strain, as well as other somatic causes of DCN overstimulation.

The hyperactive part means that after I hear low-frequency noise—whether it's from the car engine or the shower—my tinnitus spikes for about 5 to 10 minutes afterward. This isn't the cause itself, but a trigger. If you experience this after driving, try opening the windows during the same drive and see if the effect changes.

This hyperactive component is documented in some of the research I cite below.

The reason I know (or think I know) so much now is because I've been using artificial intelligence to help diagnose and manage my tinnitus, specifically Grok.

Here are some of the articles it recommended:

- The Role of Somatic Inputs from the Temporomandibular Joint and Cervical Spine in Tinnitus Perception, Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2019
- Low-Frequency Noise Exposure and Its Impact on Somatic Tinnitus in Patients with Cervical and Temporomandibular Dysfunction, Journal of the American Academy of Audiology, 2020
- Clinical Outcomes of Neck Stretches in Somatic Tinnitus, Journal of Manual & Manipulative Therapy, 2019
- Cervical Traction Effects on Somatic Tinnitus, Spine, 2016
- Inflammation and Tinnitus Severity, Otology & Neurotology, 2018
- Stress and Cortisol in Tinnitus Aggravation, Frontiers in Neurology, 2018
- Forward-Head Posture and Somatic Tinnitus, Frontiers in Neurology, 2020
- Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Fasting, Journal of Clinical Medicine, 2018
- Postural Correction and Tinnitus Reduction, Journal of Manual & Manipulative Therapy, 2019
- Eustachian Tube Dysfunction in Tinnitus Patients, Otology & Neurotology, 2019

If you have something similar and make further progress, please post back here and let me know. I also tried making another post on my profile, but I'm not sure I did it correctly. Maybe we can figure this out together. Good luck.

This regimen is working for me. After swimming, I usually get between 4 and 6 hours of quiet on average. I've been tracking this for the past 30 weekdays, with the exception of the last two days where I may have had some extra neck strain.

"Regimen" Cure:

• Keep your head up—don't look down at your phone, even briefly
• Maintain good posture throughout the day
• Do neck stretches to loosen muscles
• Do neck exercises to strengthen muscles
• Massage the neck, shoulders, and jaw
• Chew only on the left side
• Swim regularly (40 laps a day)
• Use a sonic toothbrush
• Take Magnesium, CoQ10, multivitamins, and Vitamin D
• Take cold showers
• Practice fasting (avoid chewing and looking down at your plate)
• Follow a low-carb, low-sugar, low-sodium, low-gluten, low-fat diet
• Include garlic, ginger, and turmeric in meals
• Drive with the car window down
• Extremely limit phone use

Obviously, speak to your doctor first, but if you try any of these, let me know how it goes.

 

[Mae]

I have almost the exact same symptoms.

What are your thoughts on the theory of tensor tympani or stapedius muscle spasms?

Sometimes I wonder if there could be a clog in there, and the vibrations, whether external or internal, might start a chain reaction of sound waves trapped with nowhere to go, creating an ongoing cycle that we process as noise. We already know it's very reactive to certain sounds, especially vibrations.

Here's another test you could try: when it's buzzing, put your finger in your ear and, with your other hand, tap lightly on that finger for about twenty seconds to create sound waves. After you take your finger out, does it go quiet for a bit and then slowly start to flutter back into a hum or buzz?

I understand what you mean about it improving with exercise. Mine does too, but I'm not sure if that's from better blood flow, or if our heartbeat gives off vibrations that the ear picks up and reacts to. Another thought is whether the back of the neck or the sternocleidomastoid muscle could be clogged up somehow, and exercise helps to "unclog" it, so to speak, allowing better circulation.

 

[Sydnears]

@Sydnears, I've made significant progress in understanding my tinnitus. I may have had an underlying ear infection, or possibly C1 to C3 cervical spine degeneration. However, I think the main triggering factor for me is neck strain. Specifically, I believe strain of the sternocleidomastoid muscle on the right side, along with the upper trapezius muscles from forward head tilt, is causing inflammation and sending abnormal nerve signals into the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN).

As I understand it now, my tinnitus is:

130 Hz low-frequency unilateral hyper-reactive tinnitus with residual inhibition, stemming from cervical, TMJ, and SCM muscle strain, as well as other somatic causes of DCN overstimulation.

The hyperactive part means that after I hear low-frequency noise—whether it's from the car engine or the shower—my tinnitus spikes for about 5 to 10 minutes afterward. This isn't the cause itself, but a trigger. If you experience this after driving, try opening the windows during the same drive and see if the effect changes.

This hyperactive component is documented in some of the research I cite below.

The reason I know (or think I know) so much now is because I've been using artificial intelligence to help diagnose and manage my tinnitus, specifically Grok.

Here are some of the articles it recommended:

- The Role of Somatic Inputs from the Temporomandibular Joint and Cervical Spine in Tinnitus Perception, Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2019
- Low-Frequency Noise Exposure and Its Impact on Somatic Tinnitus in Patients with Cervical and Temporomandibular Dysfunction, Journal of the American Academy of Audiology, 2020
- Clinical Outcomes of Neck Stretches in Somatic Tinnitus, Journal of Manual & Manipulative Therapy, 2019
- Cervical Traction Effects on Somatic Tinnitus, Spine, 2016
- Inflammation and Tinnitus Severity, Otology & Neurotology, 2018
- Stress and Cortisol in Tinnitus Aggravation, Frontiers in Neurology, 2018
- Forward-Head Posture and Somatic Tinnitus, Frontiers in Neurology, 2020
- Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Fasting, Journal of Clinical Medicine, 2018
- Postural Correction and Tinnitus Reduction, Journal of Manual & Manipulative Therapy, 2019
- Eustachian Tube Dysfunction in Tinnitus Patients, Otology & Neurotology, 2019

If you have something similar and make further progress, please post back here and let me know. I also tried making another post on my profile, but I'm not sure I did it correctly. Maybe we can figure this out together. Good luck.

This regimen is working for me. After swimming, I usually get between 4 and 6 hours of quiet on average. I've been tracking this for the past 30 weekdays, with the exception of the last two days where I may have had some extra neck strain.

"Regimen" Cure:

• Keep your head up—don't look down at your phone, even briefly
• Maintain good posture throughout the day
• Do neck stretches to loosen muscles
• Do neck exercises to strengthen muscles
• Massage the neck, shoulders, and jaw
• Chew only on the left side
• Swim regularly (40 laps a day)
• Use a sonic toothbrush
• Take Magnesium, CoQ10, multivitamins, and Vitamin D
• Take cold showers
• Practice fasting (avoid chewing and looking down at your plate)
• Follow a low-carb, low-sugar, low-sodium, low-gluten, low-fat diet
• Include garlic, ginger, and turmeric in meals
• Drive with the car window down
• Extremely limit phone use

Obviously, speak to your doctor first, but if you try any of these, let me know how it goes.

This sounds very similar to what I have. It is not a tone that I have heard before, but something completely different.

• It is a vibration or hum that I not only hear but can feel in my ear. I can feel it with my ear on the pillow.
  
  
• It is on the right ear only, and my ear canal also feels tightened on the same side.
  
  
• When I fly in an airplane or have a cold, my right side is plugged up while my left is clear.
  
  
• I have trouble popping my ear on the right side.
  
  
• I also have a slightly deviated septum and am wondering if fixing that could help.
  
  
• It stops when I breathe in or out, and restarts when I hold my breath.
  
  
• It seems to be masked by other low-frequency noises. After a fan or engine shuts off, it kicks on about a second later after the silence.
  
  
• It seems to echo low-frequency noises in the environment.
  
  
• When there is an electric motor running in the neighborhood, my ear hears and feels an internal vibration that I hear and can actually feel in my right ear.
  
  
• I have heard it as a muffled echo of low-frequency noises in the environment, like an airplane flying overhead. Different external noises produce different sound patterns in my ear.
  
  
• I hear it indoors only most of the time. The other day, I was in the doorway, and it stopped as I stepped outside and started again as I stepped inside. And it was not the outside noise masking it. It literally stopped as I stepped outside and started again as I moved one foot inside the house. I believe this is because of how the low-frequency vibration is translated by the closed environment.
  
  
• I also hear it in my car when I shut the engine off.
  
  
• All MRIs are normal.

I suspect it may be the tensor tympani muscle vibrating in response to external low-frequency sounds. Is there a surgical procedure or can muscle relaxers help? Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Daniel, can I ask, have you habituated to this noise after five years? And has the sound changed or lessened in intensity over that time?

I'm finding it really tough to get used to this noise and hum because it's so irregular. I almost wish it were just a standard tinnitus tone.

 

[Cirq]

@Yellowblue44, you spoke of picking up your daughter from school. I took my nephew to school for most of his life—I raised him. I picked him up along with his grandmother as well. That privilege was taken away by tinnitus, and then depression. I would struggle to pick him up at high school while they were doing construction during his entire junior year. The noise was difficult, but I endured it to be there for him. Still, I lost the enjoyment of being with him from his sophomore through senior years because of tinnitus and depression.

I came out of depression before he graduated in June, attended the ceremony, and got my life back. We both have a sense of humor.

Not to get off course, but this battle takes a heavy toll on our families. The fun-loving person I was disappeared for three years. The trauma and misery are a major challenge for us here, and those around us cannot hear it, but they suffer too.

I just wanted to mention this because I love my nephew, and it destroyed me to feel like I let him down when I had been his rock for 15 years. We struggled to put food on the table, and I had to quit the business I started in 1999.

Sorry, I just wanted to comment on your story about picking up your daughter—how important that routine is. I hope I am not being irrelevant.

 

[Pixiepixie]

I've got tears in my eyes discovering this thread, and I've no idea why I've only just found it after researching all over the place.

I've got the exact same thing described above. The battles I've had with ENT in the UK, trying to get them to understand that this doesn't seem like "normal" tinnitus, have been soul-destroying. They've been more damaging than helpful.

Driving in the car is awful. Showering makes it stop for a while. If I hum a low note, it goes away completely. Otherwise, it's always there in some shape or form. It started seemingly fairly suddenly, although I initially had a blocked ear that was treated by suction. Covid had just started, and they weren't using the normal water method. I've always wondered if that damaged something, although I was already hearing the noise while my ear was blocked.

My guess has been that when I hum, I'm opening something up or creating space. I do struggle with producing a lot of gunk in my sinuses, and I've wondered if the steam from the shower temporarily clears something.

As the noise is raging this morning, and coincidentally I've got a hearing aid appointment later today, with no hearing loss, which I'll explain below, I decided to search again and found this thread.

The one thing that stops it, not blocks it, which I kept telling ENT, is playing a low-frequency ambient music track or noise in the background. I've got a couple of tracks on loop, as well as a sound that's a bit like a high-flying plane or being inside a plane. If I play those at a certain volume, the loud low hum stops. What I then hear is the high-pitched tinnitus, what I'd call proper tinnitus, and that bothers me far less.

I've also noticed that when I play that music or sound, the tension in my head is relieved, and sometimes my sinuses crack or pop, although not always. ENT's response was that it was probably because I was listening to calming music and relaxing enough to forget about it. No. It stops. I find the sound of a low-frequency fan far from relaxing, yet it stops the noise in my ears. Certain frequencies stop it. Doing this gave me enough relief to cope, especially when I initially spiraled into panic.

It's had a massive impact on music making, which is what I do. Sometimes other pitches aggravate it, or listening to a track, depending on the pitches used, makes it whirl in and out and become genuinely unpleasant to cope with. It's been detrimental.

I've had all the usual tests and was actually told to "go and get on with it" by ENT, but I was referred for a hearing aid to try to mask it. This hasn't been successful, mainly because the aids don't pair well with my phone. If I can get that working, I stand a chance of feeding the drone I need through the aids.

Later today, I'm going to sit down and properly read through everything everyone's written. I just wanted to write now because it felt like I'd suddenly found a long-lost family.

I feel certain that somebody, somewhere, will have an answer at some point. To me, it feels like something mechanical has gone wrong. The challenge is finding professionals who are interested enough to look for answers. So far, I personally haven't found any, but I know they're out there.

In the meantime, thank you to everyone here for making me feel less alone.