[spinningD20]

You just sent me on a research adventure. I have struggled with chronic neck tension and pain for the last 15 years with no obvious origin event, and sometimes take 2-3 ibuprofen every day to take the edge off, when it's at its worst.

Thank you for bringing this up!

Background for me for those interested:

Within a few years of struggling with chronic pain and tension headache episodes (vomiting, catch-my-breath level of pain for hours), I had my first "vertigo event". I was sitting in a chair in an office in front of a whiteboard, writing and thinking and chatting with a team, nothing special or different. Never had an inner ear issue before this moment.

Since then, I have struggled (seemingly randomly) where I have ear fullness (almost entirely without hearing on left ear for a month about 6 months ago, then everything slowly came back, for example), varied tinnitus levels, light-headedness, unable to turn around too fast without losing balance... and it waxes and wanes.

Now I am wondering if any of the waxing or waning of these symptoms have anything to do with my usage of ibuprofen. I found a study suggesting this back from 2010 just now, and wonder how I've never connected these two dots.

Of course, I have to mention neck tension and inner ear related issue, aren't the only health issue I've had in the last 15 years. I've gained GERD (probably not surprising), hashimoto's and vitiligo, as well as sudden onset of mild astigmatisms after the first few years.

I have tried my best to avoid using ibuprofen at all, but it is the only thing that can take the edge off of the neck trouble before it turns into that awful, torturous headache/barf session.

PS) I know most folks will see "neck tension" + "inner ear problems" and jump to pinched nerve, spinal damage, ergonomics, posture, etc, but even after a great deal of lifestyle changes, reduced time at an office desk, yoga, Feldenkrais method, numerous physical therapy stints, I am confident that it is not the cause and "how good I am doing posture/movement" has no strong correlation to pain levels or inner ear trouble on any given day - it is seemingly random.

PPS) Definitely open to suggestions or ideas, but I will be surprised if something is mentioned that I have not tried or looked into.

[nilram]

What you describe sounds complex, but for the vertigo part, check out BPPV (benign paroxysmal positional vertigo). If you have seen an ENT, they've probably covered this base, but even though it's the most common cause of vertigo-induced trips to the ER, my ER doc didn't cover it. It was two weeks before I saw an ENT who basically fixed it with the Epley maneuver. "Basically fixed" because I still have some lingering (and annoying) effects that echo some of the other symptoms you describe. BPPV is unique in my experience of medicine in that it has a simple test (Dixie-Hallpike maneuver), and an easy fix.

The other thing that comes to mind is Ménière’s disease, a disease affecting the pressures of the inner ear. It's probably also considered if you've seen an ENT. A friend worked on his Ménière’s with diet (low salt, low glycemic index foods), and diuretics, but what is helping now is allergy shots. His ENT noticed that there was a seasonal component to his symptoms and sent him to an allergist. (The first allergist he went to did testing but found nothing; the next allergist found plenty of reactions and hit on an effective treatment.) Actually, his symptoms sound quite similar to yours. The Mayo clinic page on Ménière’s mentions various treatment modalities, though not allergy treatment.

[spinningD20]

Thanks for the response!

Yeah, Ménière’s and BPPV has been ruled out, thankfully.

The oddity is that the sets of symptoms waxes and wanes on the order of months. I had sudden hypertension (170/100, not overweight, ~155lbs and 5'9, decently healthy diet for sodium, etc) from 2016-2019, then within a couple months it completely disappeared and went back to normal (120/65). No known or significant changes in diet or lifestyle when it dropped or leading up to it.

I've kind of just "accepted" that I will have these various, "random" health issues, and am just doing my best to figure things out / mitigate them as they come along. The neck-tension-turning-into these "cervicogenic headaches" are the largest common hurdle to my life on a frequent basis. I can deal with the other noise of issues.

Anyway. Thanks again for responding!

[gregcrv]

I've had similar issues a while ago and I was able to resolve them. Of course everyone is different but in case you want to check: for me the cause was that my bite was off, not balanced across all teeth and my jaw was being pushed back. I Resolved it by re-aligning the teeth, moving jaw forward and having special retainer that I can clench on at night without issues.

[spinningD20]

I used to wear a special bite splint / alignment device thing after I had the misfortune of an accident that messed up my jaw in my teens. To this day, one side of teeth make contact before the other side by just a mm or 2.

My teeth don't grind at night, but the next time I head to the dentist I'll look into seeing if I can have the issue corrected... worth a shot!

Thanks for the suggestion!

Edit for more info:

My wife helps out with back and neck massages, and my traps (neck and between the shoulder blades) usually have knots on the days I have trouble. I plan on ruling out weak traps and other muscular imbalances for good this spring, but as I mentioned in my initial comment, I have had three different rounds of PT sessions with different workout strategies over the last decade, and still no resolution (nor improvement during/after).

This tension thing waxes and wanes just like the other symptoms, but far more frequently.

[ShadowBanThis01]

You're welcome! And thank you for expounding.

I am very protective of my hearing, so I don't take NSAIDS and I carry earplugs to every restaurant, pub, and other noisy venue. Yet I recently suffered depressing and life-degrading damage to my hearing, which is being blamed on COVID vaccine. After it happened, people came out of the woodwork saying, "Oh yeah, I've heard of that." And now, too late for many of us, the information is trickling out. National Geographic featured an article about it last month.

I've seen two of the top hearing specialists on the west coast (if not the USA), and both vehemently stated that this is a true phenomenon; one of them stated with equal assurance that information about it is being suppressed. Even vaccine experts are afraid of being "canceled."

And indeed, my experience here reflects why. I have been buried and shadow-banned at least three times for posting references to reports of COVID-vaccine-induced hearing damage. It's disgusting and dangerous behavior that will cause more people's lives to be ruined. Obviously I'm not an anti-vaxxer; if I were, I wouldn't have had all my shots and a second (ultimately disastrous and nearly useless) booster.

I hope you find relief. Here are some links to what I'm talking about yet again. There are probably more since I collected these. Unfortunately the Nat Geo one is paywalled and it seems my subscription has run out:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/covid-va...

https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/investigations/can-the...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8443418/

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20220523/Pfizer-COVID-19-v...

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/tinnitus-rare-sid...

Facebook group for victims, with several thousand members: https://www.facebook.com/groups/265035901879921/