Can a Stiff Neck Affect Your Ears?

Posted in Neck Disorder on Aug 28, 2021

Do you experience hearing loss? Also, do you suffer from a stiff neck? They may appear unrelated issues, but in our practice, we have seen many patients whose hearing was significantly improved once we treated their stiff necks with chiropractic manipulations. In this article, we will explain the connection between these two health issues and how chiropractic can help alleviate them.

How Can a Stiff Neck Affect Ears?

Your neck is like a superhighway for the nerves coming from the base of your brain and spreading through your entire body to send signals. Every single move you make, such as walking or grasping a shopping bag, is coordinated by your brain, through the nerves. Most of these nerves pass through the spine, whose first section passes through your neck.
A stiff is a sign that the muscles or nerves are subject to pressure. This is usually the result of small misalignments in your cervical vertebrae. When these vertebrae are not perfectly aligned, they can pinch or press on a nerve, causing it to stop working properly, i.e. transmit the signals from your brain.
Now then, how can a stiff neck affect your ears? Let us first explain how hearing works. The organ itself is a complex mechanism, similar to a sounding board. Its role is to perceive sound vibrations and transmit them through the brain through dedicated nerves. The brain decodes these vibrations, and this is how you can hear your children laughing or listening to your favorite songs.

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Hearing Loss May Simply Mean Poor Signal Transmission

Hearing loss can be caused by several issues:
• Mechanical trauma to the inner ear system
• Infection
• Poor transmission of sound waves to the brain.
In the last case, the poor transmission of the sound waves can be the result of an injury that caused misalignment of the cervical vertebrae and a stiff neck. The most common cause of these injuries is whiplash during a car accident.

These are not suppositions made by chiropractors but supported by clinical research conducted by allopathic doctors. For example, a study published in 2017 by the National Library of Medicine found that no less than 53% of the participants in the study (patients that had suffered cervical spine injuries) also suffered from bilateral hearing loss.

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Thus, if you start experiencing hearing loss after an incident that caused a stiff neck, you should not panic. A chiropractor can help you regain both your hearing and the full mobility of your neck.

How Can a Chiropractor Help You Regain Your Hearing?

Chiropractic is a branch of medicine that believes in the healing of the person as a whole. Most of the ailments people suffer from are caused by the improper transmission of signals from the brain to various parts of the body through the nerves.
Chiropractic techniques have the role of aligning the spinal vertebrae and the joints in their natural position and relieving inflammation and pressure in a safe and non-invasive manner. Our mission is to heal the underlining cause, not just the symptoms you experience.
A chiropractor will determine the adequate technique after evaluating you. This evaluation includes


• Preexisting conditions


• Family history of diseases


• Allergies


• Medications you are currently taking.

Chiropractic Adjustments Can Solve Stiff Neck and Hearing Loss

One of the most common chiropractic techniques is spinal adjustment. Using their hands, the chiropractor will manipulate your spine, with the purpose of aligning the vertebrae back in place. But how do we know that this type of treatment works?

Once again, research by allopathic doctors proves it. A clinical study conducted showed a direct correlation between chiropractic manipulations and the improvement of hearing in patients who suffered cervical injuries. After only 10 days of treatment, the participants in the study observed a significant improvement in their hearing.

If you suffered an injury that left you with a stiff neck and hearing loss, we encourage you to book an initial appointment with us and let our experienced chiropractors help alleviate both health issues!

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