The most frequent questions I have received over the past year, from medical professionals and non-medical people alike, all over the planet, are related to tinnitus and hearing loss. On the whole, I have never in my decade as a Doctor of Physical Therapy seen so many unexplainable, horrific, “random”, neurologic manifestations as I have in the last year. Why is this? Well, when you insert foreign, man-made substances into your body that hijack your DNA-to-RNA-to-Protein transcription process by explicitly instructing your cells to produce a poison they were never meant to produce, bad stuff happens.

I mean, really people, we are currently discovering brand new forms of RNA and RNA inheritance that we never knew existed. Wait, so, if we are discovering brand new things about how human RNA works all the time, wouldn’t that mean that screwing around with forcing our body to react to alien RNA to produce a poison is likely to cause unmitigated disaster? Yes. Yes, it does. Hence the massive increase in tinnitus and hearing loss, along with other common complaints of random, widespread neuropathy and autonomic nervous system dysregulation.

Since nobody has the slightest clue as to the long-term consequences of these latest developments, the overwhelming majority of people that contact me say they have gone to numerous doctors for help with their recent onset of tinnitus and/or hearing loss and received basically zero helpful information or treatment. Allow me to give you a little insight. If you are seeing a doctor for hearing issues that started after you received a new medical treatment humans have never received before, and you have never had hearing issues before, and that doctor says they do not know why your nervous system is dysfunctional, that person has zero ability to think critically and should not be working in the medical field. Here is another way to think about it. If you go to a doctor, first do a google search for the questions you have. Then ask the doctor the same questions. You know what happens? Most of the time, a doctor cannot tell you anything different from what you learned on google. I challenge all patients to do this with all medical practitioners. This is really easy. If your doctor cannot provide you information other than what you find on google, run. Run quickly, if possible….

One thing a lot of poisons have in common, box jellyfish poison, rattlesnake poison, black widow poison, man-made poison, is they cause acute, severe, sympathetic autonomic nervous system hyperactivity, leading to body wide inflammation, along with lots of other nasty stuff, that turn into chronic, debilitating conditions like tinnitus. Just in the last month, using dry needling and joint manipulation, I have fixed near complete one-sided hearing loss and 4-5 cases of functionally damaging tinnitus, all of which happened “randomly.” By random, I mean random like someone hitting you across the face with a plank of wood, then “randomly” getting a bruise. Think Tommy Boy…. Not here, or here so much, but right here… Nope, nothing, ship-shape!… You get the point.

Now, just like Tommy Boy, don’t lose hope! If you are experiencing problems with your ears and have had no significant success with typical medical treatment, it’s not that your problem is unfixable. It’s that you are receiving the wrong treatment, as is so often the case. Almost no typical medical treatments specifically focus on regulating the autonomic nervous system toward homeostasis, which is the underlying reason so few medications actually work for any significant percentage of the population and why almost all medicines have pleasant side-effects, like death. Remember, treatment to induce autonomic homeostasis, the key to health, should typically include sympathetic depression and parasympathetic elevation, secondary to the fact that the majority of humanity is living with chronic sympathetic autonomic hyperactivity. Mental and physical stress, strain, and trauma all result in sympathetic hyperactivity.

To treat and resolve tinnitus and hearing loss with the thoughtful combination of dry needling and joint manipulation, the general idea should be depressing sympathetic hyperactivity as much as possible, while at the same time stimulating the parasympathetics as much as possible. The overall result we are looking for is significant sympathetic depression, parasympathetic elevation, and autonomic homeostasis. Mind you, the specifics involved in this process are going to be different on a patient-by-patient basis. However, there are some pretty common areas that I treat for hearing-related impairments and numerous other conditions.

Target Areas to Treat and Resolve Tinnitus and Hearing Loss

• Parasympathetic-dominant locations: C2 spinous process, suboccipital periosteum, auricular branch of the vagus nerve in the ear, sacral plexus (S2-S4), Otic ganglion of the trigeminal nerve.
• Remember, C2 spinous process is the level where the trigeminocervical nucleus sits in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord. Any deviation of C2, the most mobile joint in our spine, disrupts the trigeminocervical complex in the brain, which is connected to the trigeminocervical nucleus.
• Psoas major and multifidus muscles: These are the two major muscles closest to the sympathetic chain we can target. Remember, abnormal stress on the sympathetic chain elevates the sympathetics. This is typically from a combination of tight muscles, which have caused deviated spinal joints.
• Pelvic floor: This should be treated in 100% of Physical Therapy patients. The 9 pelvic floor muscles are unique insofar as they are all innervated by a parasympathetic-dominant portion of the ANS, S2-S4, to some degree. It is impossible to maximally regulate the ANS towards homeostasis without treating the pelvic floor.
• Scalene muscles: the scalenes attach the first rib to the cervical spine, including C2. Tight scalenes deviate the first rib cephalic, placing abnormal stresses on the thoracic outlet, phrenic nerves, brachial plexus, and vagus nerves.
• Quadratus Lumborum: The QL’s are in opposing areas in the ribcage to the scalenes. The QL’s attach the 12th rib to the lumbar spine and the pelvis. If the QL’s or scalenes get tight first, the other shortly follows.
• Any other areas of pathologic, tight, short soft tissue. Remember, sympathetic autonomic hyperactivity can cause tinnitus. Personally, the only time my ears ring is when my blood pressure goes up. Guess what causes vasoconstriction and high blood pressure? Yup, sympathetic autonomic hyperactivity. It is very possible to get tinnitus from pathology anywhere in the body, since tissue pathology anywhere in the body elevates sympathetic activity.
• Tensor veli palatini muscle: This is the most accessible muscle we can treat that directly attaches to the inner ear-tube cartilage. This is the muscle that can make directly cause tinnitus. To access it, you must travel through both masseters and 2 or three pterygoids on each side.
• Make sure to use low frequency, 1-5 Hz, microcurrent to connect these various areas to each other. I like 1 Hz, as it is close to typical heartbeat.

If you or people you know are suffering from the “random onset” of never before experienced neurologic dysfunction, including tinnitus, neuropathy, and autonomic nervous system dysfunction, one of the best bets you have at restoring normal nervous system function is with the thoughtful combination and application of dry needling and joint manipulation.

Related: Online Dry Needling 1: Dry Needling & The ANS

Thanks for reading, let me know if anyone has any questions about anything.