Chronic pain and hearing risks; Tibetan Medicine - Happiness.
Nerve pathways become a habit, breaking the habit can be as simple as learning that the injury is healed so it is just a memory issue. The pathways need to forget those old patterns. Postural exercise
We can have a back-ache because of a childhood fall that hurt the back and the brain kind-of just stuck with a pattern of pain pathways instead of letting them fade away as the injury healed. Pain and stress can lead to more pain and stress in an escalating cycle which we will discuss more later. A chronic lack of endocannabinoids can increase risk of ongoing pain as ‘forgetting’ nerve pathways and rebuilding new ones ‘learning’, requires cannabinoids within the nerve synapses of the brain or body.
Postural evaluation and exercise can also help correct old patterns that have led to ongoing pain or restricted movement. A tight muscle may cause pain and limit range of motion.
Learning and practicing posture - standing upright, can correct pain from muscle pairs that are out of balance in use and strength. We need our opposite sides to get an even amount of work for best health. Pete Egoscue method can be helpful.
Mindfulness practices or breathing techniques of many types can help train the body to reach a relaxed state more easily and to be less reactive – but it the time spent doing it that works, not reading a book. About 8 weeks of mindfulness practice of 45 minutes several times a week or daily, can achieve significant change in stress levels or chronic conditions.
Hearing issues can result from Physical trauma – childhood or domestic abuse, assault, a car accident, or military explosives
Physical trauma, loud or explosive noise can be a cause of tinnitus and hearing loss. Recovery from acoustic trauma may occur within 16 to 48 hours or within a few weeks or it may not. If symptoms persist for more than a month, they may become permanent. Prompt treatment can help. (Kruezer, et al., 2012) Nutrients that might promote healing or reduction in tinnitus or hearing damage are discussed later.
One-sided tinnitus suggests one-sided damage to hair cells in the inner ear occurred and that might be more difficult to recover from. Newer treatments for regenerating hair cells might help, also discussed later.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can cause hearing loss and tinnitus. The leading causes of TBI in civilians include motor vehicle accidents, falls, and assaults, while explosions are the leading cause in military personnel. TBI can affect blood flow, auditory nerves, the inner ear, and the auditory pathway, which can lead to tinnitus. Post-traumatic tinnitus refers to tinnitus caused by trauma, which might include head injuries, concussions, brain damage, neck injuries, or tinnitus after surgery.
In order to reach our goals, we have to not be sabotaging ourselves. Internal unspoken beliefs can be blockers that leave us constantly making the same choices that had left us feeling not-so-good on other days.
Positive self-talk can be learned too, and some of us may have only grown up with negative voices and may need guidance to even know what positive self-talk is like!
Singer overcomes a speech impediment by learning that she didn’t stutter when she sang!
Focus on good elements of a situation or person and remember that we are all a mix of good/bad, tired/energetic, happy/sad, or angry/content, and we can all have a bad day. Try to let it go and see the funny, or the beauty, or the lesson in the experience. Tibetan Meditation on Anger (post)
Frame self-talk as positive outcomes – the good or the goal is already present, is already achieved. That sets up the brain to see it as possible rather than focusing on the difficulties to overcome.
Repeat the positive outcome self-talk, or write it on a card and reread it throughout the day for a few weeks to help embed it within the memory.
Consider Emotional Freedom Technique – vagal nerve stimulation combined with a pattern of self-statements that help bypass nonverbal blockers that might be sabotaging our efforts. “Even though….bad stuff happened in the past, or I have pain, or an addictive urge right now, I deeply appreciate and love myself.” The method can help break through stubborn habits or reduce pain associated with old trauma.
Mistakes we make about chronic pain are also the mistakes we tend to make about inflammatory conditions.
Seven biggest mistakes people make about chronic back pain (losethebackpain.com) are also the seven biggest mistakes people make about any type of chronic pain or other symptoms of chronic inflammation. Bad moods are a sign of inflammation – the body isn’t happy, because it is hurting at some level. The following list is paraphrased from low back pain tips by Jesse Cannone, founder of the Healthy Back Institute.
Video offering a free book (send shipping and handling) The 7- Day Back Pain Cure, by Jesse Cannone, 2009/2015, (book), video about the offer: losethebackpain.com.
The following list of 7 points is based on points Jesse included in a video from a not-physical set of DVDs. The price is higher for a physical DVD course and not super expensive, $97 now. I think I spent $39 on a digital view package (and the book was mailed) and I was very pleased by the quality of info.
If you are doing something that is not working, then you need to cut that out, at least temporarily.
After chronic inflammation has been reversed for a couple years, food sensitivities might become less sensitized, and be better tolerated (in small amounts) rather than needing to be strictly avoided.
Deal with pain issues right away. Ignoring it can just make it a worse problem that is more difficult to reverse. If the pain goes away after a rest, but then you return to your previous routines, then the pain condition is very likely to return.
Muscle imbalances can develop due to how we typically sit, stand, and move throughout our day, and that can cause pain in other areas of the body. Muscles work as teams, and if we are not moving both sets of muscles equally, then one can get really strong, and the other one gets weaker. That leads to pain as one muscle is being over-worked and the other one is not getting moved enough. Muscle movement helps us to clear out toxins. So, the under used areas of the body accumulate more toxins due to less removal, and the overworked muscles are creating more toxins as waste products of the increased energy use.
Muscle cramps or tension headaches can be symptoms adding to Hangry or Hanxious moods. When we are hungry, we need magnesium which helps muscles to relax and helps prevent migraine and other types of headaches.
Don’t think that you are fit and that your exercise habits are too good to cause muscle imbalances – we all have some muscle imbalances, the severity of them varies though. The fit person who does regular flexibility exercises would probably have more balanced muscle pairs, than a person with a desk job who is not doing any exercises to strengthen the back and abdomen muscles. When our neck is constantly bent forward, then it is common to have tight neck and shoulder muscles. And that equals inflammatory pain that is adding to our body’s need to remove toxins.
You have to treat both the symptoms and the cause of a health problem like chronic pain, or you are likely to have ongoing problems forever. Or until the underlying causes are identified and reversed.
Chronic back pain lasting 50 years has been ended once poor posture habits were changed – with practice moving, sitting or standing differently. How we move can help us clear out toxins or lead to toxins accumulating. The math here is simple – if you are sitting most of the time, then body fluid is going to tend to just sit there too (the visual here is cellulite – poor lymphatic drainage within our thighs).
Back pain and other chronic pain is a process that develops over time, rather than typically being due to a specific pain event – lifting that heavy thing was the camel straw that finally broke the camel’s back, rather than being a solo cause of back pain. Lifting the heavy thing was probably trying to use the weakened half of a pair of muscles. Sitting too much – having a desk job, leaves our leaning-forward muscles overworked and our arching-backward muscles underworked and weak. Then we try to do something strenuous and the out of balance muscles just can’t handle it.
Whatever label of spinal issues was diagnosed, bulging disc or sciatica, or muscle strain – research has shown that surgery isn’t really effective, nor medications. Muscle imbalance and long term posture habits are the cause due to some muscles having been overworked or underworked for a long time.
Be open-minded – Try! Just because health information is new to us, doesn’t mean it isn’t a problem for us. It may just be a problem that we hadn’t understood well or even noticed well enough to put into words. Shoulder muscles can be too tight for a long time before they become so tight that the pain is obvious, and range of motion is reduced. Tight muscles will stop you from being able to turn your head as well or move your arms and shoulders fully.
Take control of your health issues for yourself, rather than turning your power over to a health professional or some other person. NO ONE ELSE can know your body as well as you do. It can be comfortable to not have to make any decisions for yourself – and to just follow “Doctor’s orders” – but what if the doctor is incorrect about the cause of your problem? What if their advice is leaving you feeling worse? Do you still follow orders, or do you think for yourself?
I can’t know exactly what foods are problems for you, but I can tell you which foods are commonly problem foods for many people. I can help you learn how to pay more attention to symptoms and mood changes so that you can figure out what foods are helping you and which may be adding to negative mood or pain symptoms which increases oxidative stress and that is a risk to hearing, brain health and to our mitochondria and gut microbiome.
Societies or parents that are more authoritarian, more controlling, of children, can lead to adults that don’t really know how to make their own decisions. And they might not even feel comfortable making their own choices. If you haven’t had to do something, then you aren’t going to be skilled at it. Mistakes are more likely when first learning a new skill. With authoritarian upbringing, by parents and the school system, someone else has always directed what to do, what to eat, what to wear, what to say, or not to say; and when to do things, or how, or where, or with whom. Reasons for why to do things the authoritarian’s way might be given, but maybe not, or a misleading reason might be given. It can feel comfortable to have someone tell you what to do, because then you have someone to blame if it doesn’t turn out well. That is giving away your power to figure things out for yourself though. That is a victim mentality.
Back pain might not seem related to hearing damage or tinnitus but anything increasing inflammation can be related and there is a strong association between chronic pain and tinnitus, severity or risk of tinnitus increasing with severity of the chronic pain. Any chronic symptoms will involve chronic inflammation in some way. So, our biggest goal in protecting or healing our hearing or protect our brain against degeneration is to better understand what is making our body more inflamed and also learn what helps reduce our inflammation.
Tinnitus and Chronic Pain Association
Research indicates a significant association between chronic pain and the risk of developing tinnitus.
Gatekeeping Controls: The brain’s ability to control noise and pain signals is compromised in individuals with tinnitus and chronic pain, leading to persistent perception of noise or pain. (medicalnewstoday.com) We will discuss our ear’s protective mechanisms and pain related more specifically to the inner ear and hair cells later in the TRP ion channel sections.
Brain pathways learn ‘pain’:
“The brain “reorganizes” itself in response to injury, is how Prof. Josef Rauschecker, director of the Laboratory for Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition at GUMC, describes it.
Tinnitus can follow when the ears are damaged by loud noise, something the brain continues to “hear.” In a similar way, chronic pain from an injury can remain inside the brain long after the injury has healed.” […]
Roughly 10% of the US adult population has experienced tinnitus lasting at least 5 minutes in the last year
The incidence of tinnitus for people ages 65-84 years is approximately 27%
Around 13 million people in the US report tinnitus without hearing loss.”
Chronic Pain and Tinnitus Association:
A study found that individuals with chronic pain are more likely to experience tinnitus, with the odds of having tinnitus increasing by 64% in those with chronic pain. (Ausland, et al., 2021)
‘Dose-related’ - Severity of Tinnitus increased with more severe chronic pain: The relationship between chronic pain and tinnitus was stronger with more bothersome tinnitus, with the odds of having highly bothersome tinnitus increasing by 144% in those with chronic pain. (Ausland, et al., 2021)
Increased Number of Pain Regions, increased risk of tinnitus: Among individuals with chronic pain, the number of body regions experiencing pain was the most strongly associated factor with tinnitus, with an odds ratio of 1.17 for an increase of one pain region. (Ausland, et al., 2021)
In this study, 40-54 year-olds were at higher risk than older survey participants, the loud music or earbud era?: The association between chronic pain and tinnitus varies with age, with the strongest associations observed in younger individuals (40-54 years). (Ausland, et al., 2021)
Treatment for chronic pain with a healed injury may be as simple as learning that it is ‘phantom’ pain. People have ended decades long chronic backpain after learning that with a healed injury, it might just be a learned pattern, and posture problems – the learned patterns of standing, slouching, lifting by bending at the waist rather than the knees. Desk jobs have us leaning forward too much and some reverse, arching and arm exercises are needed to keep the body’s muscles in balance. Pain can occur from one set of muscles being overworked while other unused ones become weaker and weaker, and then balance of the joints and body can be affected and pain may worsen.
Depression and Anxiety: These conditions often co-occur with tinnitus and chronic pain, indicating a complex interplay between psychological and physiological factors. Lack of magnesium is a risk factor for depression or anxiety and would worsen oxidative stress which increases risk of hearing damage or tinnitus.
Poor sleep and a larger psychological burden (more stress or worries/anxiety or mental health diagnoses perhaps) –was associated with increased severity of tinnitus and more likely to also have chronic neck pain. (De Meulemeester, et al., 2023)
Local mechanical hyperalgesia means hypersensitivity to touch, a light touch is felt as PAIN. Distant mechanical hyperalgesia might mean a light touch over here, causes PAIN to be felt there, even though the injury had been somewhere else. There is now hypersensitivity over here too. Referred pain is a different term. In a heart attack, pain from the lack of oxygen in the heart may be felt as pain in the arm.
Mechanical hyperalgesia has more to do with inflammation leading to an increased number of pain sensing TRP channels to be produced and then they are like a bigger protest all shouting pain in unison, instead of a few shouting. We will be discussing TRP channels in depth later.
“Chronic subjective tinnitus is a prevalent symptom, which has many similarities with chronic pain. Central sensitization is considered as a possible underlying mechanism of both symptoms.” […] “Symptoms of central sensitization and local mechanical hyperalgesia were significantly more present in both tinnitus groups, compared to healthy controls, but were most extensive in the group with chronic tinnitus+chronic idiopathic neck pain. Distant mechanical hyperalgesia, indicative for central sensitization, was only observed in the group with both chronic tinnitus+chronic idiopathic neck pain. This group also displayed a significantly higher psychological burden and poorer sleep than patients with chronic tinnitus only and healthy controls. Signs and symptoms of central sensitization were also shown to be associated with tinnitus impact, pain-related disability, psychological burden and sleep disturbances.” (De Meulemeester, et al., 2023)
Brain Abnormalities: Research has identified specific brain abnormalities in individuals with tinnitus and chronic pain, suggesting that these conditions share underlying neural mechanisms.
Risk Assessment: Understanding the brain mechanisms behind tinnitus and chronic pain could lead to standardized risk assessment and earlier, more targeted treatment for these conditions. (Brave AI summary)
Remember that pain is a message from our body about something wrong, or that it thinks is wrong. Pause, thank the pain, and ask it what it wants to tell you. Maybe you will get a response, or a better sense of the tensions that you are holding onto during the day or night.
General advice – #1) use hearing protection and turn the volume down – common sense counts. #2) Everything else. Epsom salt soaks for magnesium sulfate can bypass poor absorption of magnesium in the gut and provide a bioactive source of sulfate which is needed for detoxification. A methyl B complex, CoQ10 and other mitochondrial support and Nrf2 promoting polyphenols would be helpful, sleep, sunshine, exercise, water, etcetera.
Disclaimer: This information is being provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of Fair Use and is not intended to provide individual health care guidance.
This link does not work.... http://loseyourbackpain.com/
Great article...thanks!!