Just wanted to share this one.
It’s a form of somatic tinnitus.
I’m not exactly sure when this specific form of tinnitus started, but my chronic tinnitus definitely started about one week into MAV.
Anyway, onto this weird one:
If I push into my scalp on the left top side top side with my fingers, I get a rising high pitched tinnitus. Let go and this element of tinnitus disappears again.
If I push into my scalp on the right top side, same thing happens, but currently a little louder.
However, if I push into my scalp on both sides simultaneously … nothing! Go figure!!
Very strange!
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sounds like you’re pressing on one of your cranial nerves
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And why does that nerve have business interfering with my hearing?!
Yeah, I used to blame/rationalise the issue on some level of hydrops (pressure on elevated inner ear pressure felt intuitively correct), but then appear to have debunked this by pressing on both sides having no effect, if the hydrops thing were correct, pressing on both sides would surely make things worse?!
It’s almost like something happened in my nervous system to de-compensate and whilst my vestibular system has completely recovered, and I no longer get most perceptible migraine symptoms (e.g. have not had a scotoma in over a year), my hearing system has not (yet!)
you might be pressing directly on or close to the trigeminal ganglion, which proceeds to the brain stem. in addition to proceeding to the brainstem, it also innervates the muscles near your ear drum, so you might be exciting it somehow by pressing on it.
the fact that it goes away when you press on both sides is interesting but the brain has ways of shutting out signals that comes from two places at once because of some mechanisms in the brain stem.
purely speculative, but i’d definitely bet something with your trigeminal nerve is what’s up
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Yeah, really interesting, but the question is why? And what can one do to help it out?! It’s clearly not as bad as it was, perhaps it’s recovering on its own.
Btw, I have had TMJ like symptoms, at one point it was really bad, but that is calming down too. I know that’s supposed to interfere, potentially.
I’ve been experimenting avoiding over the head headphones (“cans”) btw, which I used to wear a lot, for both gaming and music production. I’m trying to see if wearing in-ear buds helps avoid the “tmj” symptoms. Got a theory the pressure of the headphones on the jaw joint might be involved …
yeah TMJ or anything weird happening in that area is going to impact the Trigeminal nerve. I think the only thing you can really do is continue treatment for your TMJ and anything else in that area that might be aggravating it. if you have a particularly muscular jaw, massage of your temples or something like that might help. have you ever looked at Teeth Grinding? that’ll aggravate it a lot too and hypertrophy those muscles in your temples
botox would probably help too (i know its being used more and more for TMJ), but that seems a little extreme for something like this
(its very expensive and im not sure how the NHS rations it but american insurance companies ration it heavily due to its large cost)
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I know from experience muscles can do really strange things to nerves - I once had RSI in my hands …
… turns out the issue was in my shoulders where the muscles were pinching nerves which were supplying feeling and motor function from and to my fingers!
One 30 minute session of a chiropractor more or less cured me of RSI … and the guy just told me to do more and more varied exercise - which also worked long term!
yeah i would think its definitely something muscular and something like that might help. id maybe get the opinion of a TMJ specialist or even your treating physician for your dizziness issues
massage or something like that definitely can’t hurt
the last time I had my dentist look at my jaw, he messed with the muscles of the jaw and that night (and the next three) I had vicious positional vertigo!
So I’m a bit wary …
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