Can you hear that? The Ringing that only you can hear.

Am I crazy?

Years ago I remember asking my older sister if she could hear “that?” She looked at me funny like I was crazy and just hearing things. What I was hearing was a ringing. I could have sworn that everyone could hear it, because it was distinctly in my ears. It wasn’t a constant ringing and it was never the same pitch or volume. I talked to my parents about it because it was starting to bother me. My family history is one of hearing loss. My dad has worn hearing aids since he was in his early 20’s and I had a level of hearing loss of my own.

We scheduled an appointment with an audiologist to figure out what was causing this periodic ringing in my ears and his advice was logical, for a 9-year-old. I was told that the ringing in my ears was a result of too much sodium in my diet. I was instructed to cut back my salt intake, which at the time, was pretty minimal. So what is less than minimal? None! Zero. So I developed an aversion to salt and that has carried on into my adulthood.

Here was the end result: Nothing. There was no change. I kept hearing the ringing periodically and eventually I just learned to live with it. I was grateful that it never got to the level of William Shatner, but it was still annoying.

Fast forward to 1999. I was in Chiropractic school and was learning about how powerful an Atlas adjustment is. More in particular, an Atlas Orthogonal percussive adjustment. I was learning from the developer and master of the AO technique, Roy Sweat, and got my atlas adjusted by him. I didn’t notice anything miraculous until I realized that the ringing was not as frequent.

In fact, I hardly experienced it anymore. I couldn’t believe it. Was my atlas the cause of years of ringing? I can only assume. I hadn’t changed anything else in my life.
How would an adjustment to the spine affect my ringing in the ears? A German study had my answer. In the International Tinnitus Journal it states that ringing in the ears or “Tinnitus” is a symptom of injury to the upper cervical spine. According to their research, tinnitus can disappear after “operative correction and stabilization of the articular geometry.”

I have enjoyed life with minimal ringing in the ears for a while now. It’s not completely gone, but this is to a level that I can handle.