Tinnitus from Wellbutrin — Now My Tinnitus Is Gone

Just to remember you guys, regarding my T:

No more pain/stiffness in the neck/jaw ---> no more spikes of T and the chronic "static high pitch" noise reduced to near zero after months.

 

Yeah. But my problem is my new years resolution is to lose some weight, so I'm exercising. This results in extra neck pain and a lovely orchestra in my head. It dies down after the muscles are recovered.

Just like now I can spike my tinnitus by changing my head to left and right, because these muscles are a bit stiff now

 

I just happen to have an update here. In fact, quite major, at least for me...

Until recently, I did not try your exercises yet because I was still doing the ones that I found myself, and my recent neck pain made me believe that something was wrong in the neck itself: I wanted clarity there first before I would "expiriment" with the neck more. So, I decided to go through with an MRI, which was done last Monday. (By the way, not intending to give the ENT's here any fuel on hearing damage accusations, I wanted to prevent that as much as possible. I found a silent MRI, type 3T, out in the corner in the Netherlands here. Worked out very well, including the provided hearing protection, it didn't make more sound that a loud vacuum cleaner.)

As it turns out, the MRI showed no damage at all. To be frank, this felt like a bit of a disappointment at first: I honestly hoped I would get a clear visible indicator of the neck pain (and perhaps T cause). However, I happened to talk to my physio the day after, and he was quite enthusiastic about the result: to him, this was the last part of evidence we needed to confirm that the only issue here is muscle strain. He encouraged me to try new exercises to find (and treat) the other muscles that are responsible for both the pain and my T.

So naturally, this Tuesday evening I checked out this topic again, before I went to bed. I watched the first video and tried to focus on what parts of my neck hurt the most (which was a bit hard to do, as it felt like everything in the area hurt). Eventually, I concluded that the part below the skull (like mentioned in the video) did give complaints, so I tried that exercise, and the one in the other video as well. The pain and T got a slight spike afterwards, but I ignored it and went to sleep.

In what felt like the next moment, my alarm sounded: apparently I slept for 8 hours straight. Kinda odd since I normally wake up at least once in between, and I wasn't that tired yesterday... but ok.

The next thing I noticed was a lack of tones. I did hear one slight hiss on the left side of my head (comes up occasionally, nothing new), but both tones that I've been hearing most of the time in my left and right ear could not be traced. Even when firmly burrowing my ear into the pillow: there was nothing but the slight static.

Right after, I acknowledged that my pain was reduced a lot. Not completely gone, but definitely unlike other mornings I had in these past weeks. Just to give it an indication, let's say 30% of what it used to be.

Well, this could all be a coincidence: I've had real quiet days before as well, and on occasion I slept long. As the tone in my right ear has a reactive nature, I had no doubt it would slowly "boot up" in the car or during work again. I got up and headed to work.

My next strange experience was in the parking garage, and this one did nearly convince me that something had changed. First up, after turning off the music in the car, there was still no tone in my right ear, which is uncommon. Next, and this is a bit hard to really explain what it feels like... but when walking in the garage, I suddenly realized I could localize where all the sounds originated. This has been an issue for certain frequencies in the last 9 months, but the problem just... vanished. Every minor sound, every engine, every voice, they came from exactly the place where I thought they should be.

Skipping through the rest of the story: this situation remained exactly the same up to the evening. Around 20:00, already being at home for a while, I finally started to hear the tone in my right ear again: faint, but now it was there. Excluding the occasionally hisses (which usually don't last more than an hour, and were not noticed during work that day), it felt like I'd been T-free for at least 12 hours, where the max had been 3 hours before. I'd had no issues with any kind of T reactivity at all, the tone was still gone when I arrived at home: normally I have to sit in the living room for at least 30 minutes for it to lower again. Where my previous neck exercises eliminated 6 of my 12 sounds, they only reduced the reactivity. This exercise apparently hit the spot and completely vaporized it.

Thursday has been the same experience, but with a 7-hour straight sleep and tone at 21:00 instead. As one would expect, I kept doing the exercise for the area beneath the skull before heading to bed.

A minor setback occurred yesterday, where I somehow caught a cold: this reduced my sleep back to 4 hours, and caused the right-ear tone to appear a bit more frequently, though still not for more than one hour straight. Sound reactiveness has not returned even in the slightest, and most of the neck pain has diminished. As the third day mark has passed, I definitely believe this exercise did this for me.

Did I mention that the tone in my right ear was the first sound I had when this whole T ordeal started, and that its nature (reactive & going up and down in volume every second) made this tone the worst by far? It was the hardest sound to get used to, and of all the sounds, this one annoyed me the most.

Seriously, I've had the week of my life here. By the way, I'm also writing this whole piece while having silence in my bedroom

To set one thing straight, and also to explain why I don't consider it my success story (yet?):
I'm not cured yet. This night was another 4 hour sleep again, though probably simply due to the cold I caught, which makes it harder to stay asleep. The static noises/hisses are still there, but these are really minor and not noticeable during the day at all. I'm sure that I will need to continue my current neck exercises and switch to new ones every once in a while: the process in total could still take months. I'm also working on my walking/sitting postures, gonna start doing sports, etc: all kinds of thing one could think of to reduce the muscle strain and to increase the muscle strength. In the end, I will need to hit every single muscle that is responsible for a sound, and I'm sure that some of these muscles will be harder to locate than the ones so far.

Yet again, I also want to simply enjoy life again. I'm not gonna spend every minute thinking about the remaining hisses and exercising to get rid of them: there is a whole world out there, and I'm gonna live it. My treatment for the remaining T can wait until set time periods of the week.

I'm extremely grateful that I can feel this alive again. @Aharant, so much for sharing your success story! This helped me out a lot, and I will make sure I share mine as well once I recovered fully.

To everyone else: keep the hope alive. I know that with so many causes of T, it can be hard to find relief, especially if hearing loss is included. Yet again, research in physiotherapy has been catching up in the last few decades, and knowledge wíll increase for other sectors as well. For those of you that happen to have a sore neck, please, at least try to do exercises with it for a few weeks. I'm not saying it will cure you, but if there is a relationship then it could bring some relief, and in the "worst" case it excludes a possibly related factor. In the end, you need to have as much data as possible to know what area of your body needs a "fix".

 

I did this for the first time last night because I now suspect forward head posture and TMJ might have something to do with my newly acquired tinnitus tones, hyperacusis and distorted hearing. I might be crazy, but I swore my hearing distortions were worse while doing this technique. His voice was distorted while I was doing it, but I usually never hear distortions in voices. Usually some music at certain frequencies and white noise type sounds that make me hear distortions.

Then I went to bed and woke up at 2am out of breath with my heart racing and a huge spike in my hyperacusis where every little sound (even my gf's light breathing) felt like a pinch or a tug on my central nervous system. I've had this happen before, but it's been a couple months and I thought I had moved past it.

 

I'm so happy for you that you found a massive relieve. Keep on doing the good work, hopefully people start reading your story and story of others (like me) and start investigating why this is actually is possible. People are so quick to think that's hearing damage, but why can allot people modulate their tinnitus with your jaw and in your case complete remove some tones. For me I can only remove the high pitched one by stretching the muscles around the atlas (c1).

 

Wow, I hope you're doing okay after this massive change and increase in your hyperacusis/tinnitus.

I don't have the balls to do that stretch again. I did it twice and everytime it fills up my sound completely and only hear static rumbling. It becomes so loud, but luckily for me it goes to the background. There is really something with our nerves and tinnitus, but I'm not a specialist too actually understand why this happends.

But I do have a trick to remove my high pitched tinnitus, this type comes and goes. Comes in different forms like a typewriter, morse code, etc. I just have to turn my head a wrong way and I got another tinnitus tone added, but by stretching the muscles around the atlas it dissipates for a short while. The more I do the stretches the longer it goes away. Maybe this will help you with your ongoing battle with constant new tones added to your arsenal. Mine changes from day to day, so I understand where you're coming from.

It's this stretch and I hope it can remove some tones for you:

Dr. Mandell's Chin Tuck Technique for...

And this one:

Instant Neck Pain Relief Using Chin Retraction...

 

Was there a worsening before things got better? I'm finding that most of these exercises make symptoms worse. I'm only a few days into doing them.

 

In the beginning I could remember a worsening, but maybe it's first safe for you to only massage your neck and jaw muscles and start working on your posture. If you can walk straight and neutral for a few days it will give your neck muscles on the back some rest. I'm lazy and workout allot and these neck muscles are always painfully and so is my tinnitus a full blown orchestra. But by sleeping on my back it subsidizes.

 

Sigh, I'm afraid my post was too soon after all. Can't tell if it's the exercise or the cold I caught, but a few days after posting, I slowly got two new sounds and one of the old ones returned. By the time my cold had withdrawn, the situation was worse than when I started, and the exercise did not help anymore. I've only had bad nights without any silence since

Eventually I moved back to my old exercises. Luckily not all things are bad: most of the times my T is very easily masked during the day, and luckily its reactiveness is still extremely low as long as I'm not lying down.

If it wasn't for lack of sleep, I'd be fine. Sadly, the short nights leave me quite unstable on emotional level, I have a lot of mood swings right now. Ended up in an abrupt fight with one of my best friends, still not sure what I said wrong... but I guess it's lack of insight from me due to tiredness.

@Davey
Something interesting though for us (the dutchies, I mean): I found a quite recent article of a KNO that actually seems to know his work around tinnitus patients. In the article he describes the need to hear out the patient's symptoms, as one out of three T cases are non-hearing related (his own words). He works in the hospital in Groningen, which is a much better drive than going back to Regensburg for me. I plan on asking my GP if he can forward me to this guy.

 

A lack of sleep combined with the hopelessness of the aggravated tinnitus makes a person a ticking time bomb. Allot of stress can lead to more muscle tightness around the neck. The only thing you can do is lay in that storm and just let it happen. It will go down.

Article looks good and it's much closer. I'm still doubting about my first visit at UMC+ Maastricht, because it's a 3,5 hour drive or 4,5 hour by train. And they want to do a hearing test. I really don't want to travel for 8/9+ hours just for a simple hearing test Groningen is much closer for me.

P.S. that article is really great, that doctor sounds like someone who would listen to us. I have to many tricks to modulate my tinnitus and even create new tones if I want. Would love to meet a doctor who would experiment on me and want to find why this is possible.

 

Regarding the hearing test: the main issue I have with it is that on a bad day, the default KNO uses it as ammunition to point out you have hearing loss, while having twelve sounds dancing around simply makes it impossible to hear the tone from the headset well. Next up the test is added to your online file, and every next KNO looks at it and draws the same conclusion, unless he's willing to do a new one if you just happen to have a good day when the appointment is up. How some specialists can't understand the difference between cause and effect is beyond me.

Anyway, if you schedule an appoinment in Groningen as well, it can only help draw attention towards neck issues

 

I'm going to contact Maastricht and ask them if they're open to my findings and i'll start looking into Groningen and that doctor. If Maastricht only do a hearing test and some formal conversation with a ENT-doctor than I'm not going. I think the doctor in that article sounds more promising.

Would love to participate in a research surrounding tinnitus and modulation through specific movement. If there are more Dutch people like us they will probably take us more serious.

 

I am glad that you are getting improvements. Be patient, the static noise reduced slowly, and it was the last sound that disappeared, in my case.

 

I have been on Wellbutrin for about 2 years now with no issues, recently switched (I think like a month ago, maybe slightly over a month) from 150 mg twice a day to 300 mg once a day, and now I am having problems with the feeling of aural fullness and some pulsation in my left ear. I wonder if there is a correlation between the two in my case as well, as my symptoms are more likely to occur in the morning, which is when I take it.

 

@Urbs My tinnitus started the day after I switched from 150mg to 300mg. There are several others on this forum who had the same experience with an increase in dosage. I would be very, very careful.

 

Check if you're grinding your teeth, making your muscles tight. I had this increasing from 300 mg to 450 mg. This thread shows my recovery history. It took many months but I got relief.

 

@Arahant definitely have been grinding my teeth in excess ever since I started taking anxiety meds a few years ago. I finally get to see an ENT tomorrow, I just want to know what the heck is going on and why my ear is pulsating so frequently.