Tinnitus Due to Bent Cochlear Hair Cells?

I heard somewhere in this forum someone mention about bent cochlear hairs that cause tinnitus.

Am I right to say cochlear hairs that are gone will experience no tinnitus at all.

Inner hair that is bent will cause tinnitus?

When we sleep we lie down and the orientation of the head long term cause the hair to straighten somehow which cause lower tinnitus?

This explains why sometimes in this forum we hear people saying when they do yoga pose on head stand example and doing vacuuming which I presume need to bent their body can somehow reorientate the inner hair?

I presume the damaged inner hair are weaker and unable to hold in the straight position for too long and randomly it will bent again resulting in sudden spikes?

Loud spontaneous noise when we experience will shake the damaged hair so much that easily bent it unlike strong healthy hairs.

Also explains why some people experience louder tinnitus when they lie down.

Also explains why when people nap on chairs their tinnitus can suddenly become louder as due to head position?

If it's true, all we need is strengthen those hairs that is causing tinnitus as they should still be intact. Just like how we nourish the grass that was semi dried due to dry weather. Given sufficient water they can still grow back.

What does everyone think?

 

I think the theory is ridiculous. If it was that easy, tinnitus would have been solved a long time ago.

 

was wondering why cant doctors take microscopic photos of people with T and invesitgate what they have in common. I believe this is possible as i can google photos of cohlear hairs.

 

We're talking about cells, so i don't think position and gravity really affects them.
Plus if they are bent it means theya re dead. So if yoga relieve tinnitus it's more likely stress related.

but yes there is a possible link ( not sure, but like all things linked to tinnitus) between the status ofhair cells and T. But there is people with hearing damage and no T. So it's more complex.

Healthy lifestyle/diet is always good. But compare hair cells with grass, as if the only thing they need is water... hum...
Hair cells cannot regenerate.

 

You might be referring to something I said a few days ago in this thread:

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...-may-i-please-have-another.10162/#post-124058

The "sitting on the lawn" analogy is the best way I've hear cochlear hair damage explained. When you sit on the lawn and then get up a few minutes later, the blades of grass are bent 90 degrees, flattened to the earth, but they're not dead. In time they will rise back up and resume normal plant functioning. But if you sit on the grass for a very long time, the flattened blades of grass will die and will never rise back up.

Likewise, when cochlear hair cells are traumatized and knocked out of place, they're still alive, but they only have a limited window of opportunity to "get back up" or else they will die.

As a society, we really need to start popularizing the idea that anyone who gets any kind of hearing damage should get the emergency room immediately. There's so much opportunity to save people's hearing that's going to waste because people don't know it's an emergency and that there are options to salvage the hair cells in the early period.

Quentino, I agree with you that gravity probably has zero effect on most cases of tinnitus. But to be fair, the same type of hair cells (located in the vestibular portion of the labyrinth), are specifically designed to be extremely responsive to position and gravity. In fact, that was their original evolutionary purpose; they've only recently been repurposed for sound perception.

Not true. See the grass analogy above. Cochlear hair cells can actually live for weeks, maybe even months, in a traumatized, toppled over state. The goal of emergency medicine is to salvage them as quickly as possible before they die, so they can return to an upright position. In fact, I believe the whole theory behind AM-101 is to prolong this window of opportunity by shutting off the process that would lead to the traumatized cells being deliberately killed off by the body (on account of their perceived uselessness).

 

During acoustic trauma the cochlea hairs either get bent or are completely destroyed. If they are bent it means that the tip link between the neighboring stereocilia has been destroyed and the detached stereocilia will no longer function normally. So it's not a matter of waiting until the grass gets back up. There's many microscope pictures of cochlea hairs that show them completely ripped off due to loud sound.

At the emergency room they cannot do anything for acoustic trauma except maybe give Prednisone which I believe treats inflammation which do even more damage. It's not too useful if you've had acoustic trauma over a couple of years because the damage is there.

Based on all the anecdotes I've read. If the tinnitus from acoustic trauma continues after a month it's very likely to be permanent. Those with tinnitus should protect their ears because they don't have much cochlea hairs left so any damage will be magnified and the tinnitus will get exponentially worse.

 

How does prednisone cause more damage? What I've read on this board so far (I'm still relatively new) seems to indicate that for most people it either has no effect or some benefit with just a handful saying it worsens their T.

 

I mean that the inflammation might cause more damage.