FaceFormer® for tinnitus – How does it work?

Question

Among other things, the FaceFormer is supposed to be helpful for tinnitus. Unfortunately, I don’t understand how this is supposed to work. Perhaps you can tell me something about it.

Answer

The causes of tinnitus are usually attributed to stress or disturbances in blood circulation and lack of oxygen supply in the inner ear. Stress aggravates a condition but is never the cause. Something that is weak weakens even more due to stress and comes to break through or worsen.

Stress is not the cause

But if stress were the cause, all people with stress would have the same problem: tinnitus. Circulatory disorders are just as unlikely and infusions based on them are completely unnecessary and even dangerous. There is no blood in the inner ear and therefore the oxygen conditions there play a completely different role.

Technical aids not very successful

There is no conclusive explanation for the causes of tinnitus and that is why patients in tinnitus clinics are trained to deal with the problem. To do this, they learn autogenic training and listen to relaxation music. This does not make anything better, but at least does not add to the damage. Existing technical aids, such as “noisers” or filtered music, are used to superimpose the tinnitus sound with another sound, or to unlearn it. These methods also usually prove to be unsuccessful.

Tinnitus in a functional context

We have therefore tried to derive the complex of causes for tinnitus from a functional connection. Functions in the mouth and throat area, nasal breathing, mouth closure and head balance have a decisive influence on all other functions that are located in the area of the head and neck – with effects on the whole body. You will notice the effects on the ear, for example, when swallowing or yawning. The middle ear is ventilated in the process. This process takes place about 2,000 times a day because people swallow repeatedly over a 24-hour period (even without eating). If this mechanism cannot be optimally adjusted, problems arise. Children often get middle ear infections, nasal polyps (adenoid growths), colds, etc. In adolescence and adulthood, the problems change. Affected people become sensitive to noise (hyperacusia), get so-called “hearing drops” (i.e. they have the feeling of hearing through a cotton plug in the ear), they hear worse and/or get tinnitus.

With FaceFormer, we correct a general underlying disorder that affects all functions of the head region. As a result, all other symptoms of the disease are also positively influenced. In other words, we treat a dominant cause and correct the symptoms of the disease that are triggered by it. Tinnitus is a typical effect of this complex of causes, which is unfortunately little known.

Success does not come overnight

Very many patients have been able to free themselves from tinnitus through the FaceFormer therapy. However, this does not work overnight, as FaceFormer therapy is a training programme. However, this is the only way to achieve functional changes. You have to practise the correct way until the correct way is learned and the wrong way is unlearned. This is worthwhile, however, as the success remains stable afterwards, even if you stop practising.

The FaceFormer therapy is based on neuroscientific research results of learning: Exercises have been reduced to a minimum and the exercise sequence is repeated in the same pattern.

Continuous stress reduction

Successes with tinnitus are often only felt by those affected when the sound they hear has completely disappeared. For too long they have built up fears and tried many things that did not help, in order to consider stress reductions as positive beforehand. Such, however, continuously go hand in hand with the FaceFormer therapy and improvements should lead to a strengthening of the motivation to continue the therapy. “You have finally found the right way to eliminate the problem!”

Depending on how long the tinnitus has existed, the sound, although attenuated, may still be perceived for up to a year. This should be accepted. Exercise programmes are never quick fixes, but they are effective and the condition achieved remains stable. After all, the daily training effort is very small.