I’ve been posting on this platform for years, looking for answers and sharing my own experiences.
I’ve had severe T for over 30 years. There have been incidences that have caused my T to increase. It’s either a bump to the head or the after affects of looking up, like when I’m painting a ceiling. I’m not Micheal Angelo but I am an artist and have spent over 50 years leaning over a drawing table. This has caused the all to vulnerable c-5 and c-6 to grow bone spurs and flanges. The nerves are compressed and there is almost no room for spinal fluid to pass up and down from my brain.
Now, I’ve seen the top audiologist, neurosurgeons, tinnitus specialists, ENTs etc. in the San Francisco area for decades. They’ve always insisted that my T was a result of exposure to loud noise however, my instincts have always told me that it’s a result of trauma to my stenosis.
I suspect there could be many things that cause tinnitus but my own experience points to a lessor known culprit. T, being a somewhat psychosomatic effect, is a response of our nervous system. That system connects your entire body. An audiologist might compartmentalize hearing to include only the ears and some bone around them. A neurologist may do the same. “Absolutely no connecting between c-6 and hearing”. I’ve pushed these doctors to consider the possibility that my T is caused by my stenosis and with reluctance they inevitably admit that “it’s possible, however, if we operate on your neck to relieve the pressure, we can’t guaranty that your Tinnitus will improve.”
Those of us with degenerative discs in our necks know the clicking/grinding sound we hear when we turn our necks to far. That sensation is felt in the ears, while maybe only a little pain is felt in the neck. Some of us T sufferers experience pressure in the head. This can be explained possibly by the fact that our brains are floating in spinal fluid which is pressurized. Our vertebrate pump and manage that pressure but if the flow gets pinched off in the neck, the brain has to self regulate the pressure using lymph nodes in the head. The stenosis will eventually lead to dementia or Alzheimer’s do to prolonged inflammation of the brain tissue.
So, I propose that some tinnitus could be a warning bell for later things to come and that early intervention might prevent senility and tinnitus ………….has anyone had success relieving T via spinal fusion?
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Wringing1212
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Yay Wringing1212, I can totally relate to what you are saying. A couple of years ago an MRI of my neck showed there was no spinal fluid to be seen in a very small section of my neck🤷♀️ I have a prolapsed disc in my neck and was offered spinal decompression although my neurologist suggested that the risks could outweigh the benefits. I have many existing physical deficits from surgery (unavoidable) 35 years ago. I hope you are wrong but I certainly can see the possibilities.
Yay TM, all health authorities are different so depending on your symptoms some may or may not get an MRI scan. Obviously a whole head and neck scan is better as it can help to rule out any specific serious problems.
However on neck mri they can check wirh any excessive spinal fluid? Or need the whole backbone coz ir would delay the diagnosis if those practice is treat your symptoms rather than the rootThats what i am worried
My understanding based on experience is that PET scans look at the activity/metabolism of organs and tissues using radioactive tracers administered by a special department (usually called 'nuclear' medicine). CT scans look at the anatomy or structure of organs and tissues. CT scans can also be contrasted with a special dye to better visualize dense organic material, but that dye e.g. gadolinium, is not radioactive. PET and CT use the same kind of machine, but with protocols appropriate to the type of scan required, i.e. metabolic or anatomic. PET and CT can also be combined to produce both types of scan at the same time.
I'm not medically trained, but I have had plenty of scans in my time!
hi Wringing. You say you’re looking for answers - and I’m not a medical person but I think it’s quite possibly that your T is caused by something that is not noise, In my case it was certainly not noise, though I’ve no idea what did set it off. Sixty years ago.
Whilst I’ve never found that T has caused me to suffer as badly as some people, and I know I’m lucky on that respect, I just accept it as part of life. Just as I accept all the other things that life throws at us.
What I’ve seen from this forum and elsewhere is that searching for a cause just makes the T become more prominent. searching isn’t likely to help - unless of course you can remove that cause, such as protecting your ears against noise.
I’d be interested to know if any posters here can give a positive answer to the question you pose. But there are getting on for a billion people in the world with T and not all of them read this forum.
My strong belief is that there is little progress in T research because it has stayed in the audiology/ ENT field and not broadened out to other specialisms eg neurology . Only multi disciplinary, and multi specialist research will find the answers eg why the link between T and dementia?
Agree mutil specailist is gonna help , however t is generallly not life threeating , its hard for them to put resources in medical research regarding t
Although I’d mentioned lymph nodes in the head that will regulate fluid pressure, I haven’t noticed glands in my neck having swelling or tenderness. We do have some lymph nodes near our ears which may be getting overworked from the strain of working overtime to compensate for the lack of spinal fluid flow from the body.
I also find that some areas of medicine acknowledge that T can be caused by neck problems (whiplash or stenosis)while others stick to the old narrative. My intro to T was a stenosis that got whiplashed.
I notice that when I’ve been on my feet walking most days, my T gets better. When I’m working at the drafting table for more than three days, my T spikes, usually toward the very end of my workday. The problem becomes quite obvious to me. This tells me that doctors are looking in the wrong place if or when they are trying to solve our T problems.
I’d mentioned how when I turn my head too far or at an angle, I hear a grinding sound. I’m wondering if rather than it being bone on bone that I’m hearing, it’s actually bone one spinal cord that resonates to my ears in a tone similar to the T sound?
Grinding, escalated pain at certain positions, movement, mobility etc. My neck literally gets stuck in position which I then have to neck manoeuvre to release which is painful when releases. That’s one example of my sudden tinnitus worsening hence feel their must be some relative connection 🤔.My partner can hear the clonk of my cervical spine when I release, even when several feet away.
I also read that stenosis, particularly left untreated, can cause a great deal of weakness and sensory issues, tingling, pain, numbness, pin and needles etc in several body areas. I get this, the worst going up into my lower rear skull. I suffer a lot of these.
If others can find this information I don’t believe for one minute that any medical person with an interest in their medical field wouldn’t also be aware 🤔
I agree with you Wringing. My T most definitely began during trauma to my cervical spine, not loud noise in my ears. Mine seems to be linked to trauma to the spinal accessory nerve in particular, and only on the left side. I'm of the view that if assorted specialists cannot say with certainty what causes T and how to fix it, then it seems to me that they should not say with any great confidence that they know that the complex intertwined nervous and muscular systems around the neck/head do not cause T when they are seriously disturbed.
I think Prof Susan Shore (otolaryngologist) in the USA explains some of the nitty-gritty of T rather well.
Here's a link for those who fancy a read over a cuppa:
Prof. Shore's team is still developing a device called "Auricle". It's not ready for commercialization yet, though it's expected this year (I think) and there's no guarantee that it will work, or work for everyone with T. But her research is a least a very small dot of light on an otherwise gloomy horizon. If the Auricle device proves useful, I'd hope that NHS ENT clinics in the UK would pick up on it for trialling with and distribution to sufferers over here. It's likely a case of watch that space.
As for spinal stenosis and fusion, I've not heard about fusion intervention relieving T.
I personally do neck exercises designed to help encourage widening of the gaps between vertebrae to try and correct postural/disc problems, particularly the really useful move where the head is pulled in to create a double-chin effect which gives a good neck stretch. Based on my experience, I advise against any form of mechanical/manual neck traction to stretch vertebrae unless it's recommended and supervised by a fully medically qualified physio or orthopaedic surgeon.
Here's a link to demonstrate some of the neck mobility exercises that I've found helpful:
Go down the page a good way to get to the chin tuck video.
An experienced clinician, in my opinion, in the UK who has a clinical interest in cerebrospinal fluid in relation to flow and pressures within the head is Mr Laurence Watkins based in the London Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. I think he's very likely the UK's leading expert on CSF dynamics. His counterpart in the USA is Dr Wouter Schievink (Cedars-Sinai), who has shared some amazing stuff about CSF dynamics online.
I hope you find some of the above interesting, even if it provides no specific answers for you.
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