Somatosensory Tinnitus

A 58 years old man viits our office and reports that he had been suffering from somatosensory tinnitus for 1 year.  

Somatosensory tinnitus is a generally agreed subtype of tinnitus that is associated with activation of the somatosensory, somatomotor, and visual-motor systems. A key characteristic of somatosensory tinnitus is that is modulated by physical contact or movement. In clinical practice, tinnitus is still considered as an untreatable symptom, and many professionals tell patients that “there is nothing to be done” or that “you have to learn to live with it”. 

More often than ever, researchers are concluding that tinnitus can be evoked or modulated by inputs from the somatosensory, somatomotor and visual–motor systems in some individuals. This means that the psychoacoustic attributes of tinnitus (loudness and pitch) might be changed immediately –though only temporarily – by different stimuli, such as the following: forceful muscle contractions of head, neck and limbs; eye movements in the horizontal or vertical axis, pressure on myofascial trigger points; cutaneous stimulation of the hand/fingertip region and of the face; electrical stimulation of the median nerve and hand; or finger movements as well as orofacial movements.

On his first visitation,  after Dr. Lu gave him acupuncture treatments,  the patient reported that the noise reduce and he needs move farer to hear the noise. After 5 sessions treatments, the noise reduced a lot, and sometimes he cannot hear the noise. Now he keeps his treatments.