ergonomics, stress, and tintinus

[Anthony S.Wright]

> This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand
this format, some or all of this message may not be legible.

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment
Hello everyone

This is my first post to this list, and I appreciate being able to offer
some possible input and perhaps a useful response.

The first time I became aware of significant tintinus was after I had been
tuning pianos as an ear tuner for about 5 years. I went to a respected Ear
Nose and Throat doctor at a local university, who examined me and pronounced
that I had "Menier's Syndrome", which is an incurable swelling of the inner
ear; due to excess fluid in the inner ear. He said that I would just have to
'live with it'. He prescribed some rather violent diuretics to lower the
fluid pressure throughout my body, which helped some, but the relief was
temporary. He also recommended that I cut back on my intake of salty food,
to cut down further on bodily fluid retention. An additional fact; I came to
piano technology from having been a rock and roll musician, and the ENT
doctor blamed my deteriorating aural condition on my previous exposure to
high sound levels from my time in the band. I was ignorant at that time of
using ear protection, which I regularly use now.

I was fairly unhappy and worried about what he said; and didn't want news of
my condition to get around my community of technicians; who was going to
hire a deaf piano technician?

Fortunately, I had a personal friend who is a Doctor of Osteopathy (D.O.).
Osteopaths are licensed at the same legal and professional as M.D.'s in
every state and I believe every country throughout the world, yet they have
a different approach to medicine than the traditional allopathic physician,
who attempts to secure health through chemicals. I'm aware that Osteopathy
as a valid medical approach is much more readily accepted in Europe than it
has been in the United States. Osteopaths, as many of you may know, attend
to the rhythmic and cyclic movements of skeleton and musculature of the
body. My Osteopath friend heard my complaint, and diagnosed a pressure to
the temporal bones of the skull (right by the ear), from the ergonomics of
repeated motions of the right arm, from the act of tuning pianos! These
repetitive motions of tuning set up specific tensions in the body of the
technician, which among other things (in me at least) set up this
compression of the skull in the temporal region, he said.

So he did a gentle mechanical manipulation to my body, yet I am unqualified
to comment on what he did in specific terms. Within 3 days my tintinus was
significantly reduced, and within 1 week, was at levels prior to the onset
of a the high levels that had brought me to the first doctor. I have
understood from my Osteopath friend that tintinus can be brought on and
heightened through not only physical, but mental stress. He said that if I
were travelling and I began to experience noticeable tintinus, that any
qualified Osteopathic physician would know where to begin if I told them the
ergonomics of my job, and that the tintinus may be related to something
going on in the temporal bones of the skull.

I have come to pay much greater attention to my physical stance when I'm
tuning a piano, so as to brace myself so as to distribute in a much more
supported way, the distortion of my body from the more than a thousand
repetitions of moving the tuning hammer per day that my right arm will
perform. Physical activity such as the balanced stretching from Aikido
practice has also been most useful for me to relieve the stress that I feel
in my back from daily tunings. A technician friend of mine developed
creative skill at tuning with his Left hand; he decided to train himself to
be ambidextrous when he first began to tune so he could switch hands, which
would also balance the physical stress. I also will visit a massage
therapist from time to time, to relieve the bodily distortion that builds up
from many tunings over a short time period.

I wholeheartedly agree that ear protection is critical while tuning, for the
high dB levels (particularly in the mid to high treble) we are exposed to
during the process of tuning. Some most creative solutions have been had
through hearing aid professionals who can mold fitted hard plastic earplugs
specific to the individual ear for the highest rates of sound blocking, and
further, I understand these earplugs can be fitted with band-pass filters
for specific frequency ranges, to adjust those ranges for specific dB
levels. The earplugs of this nature aren't cheap; I believe to be more than
$100 per pair. My personal everyday preference is the foam earplug that is
cheap and available in nearly any drug store; and affords a 29-31 db level
of protection.

I don't pretend that a visit to an Osteopath will work for everyone, or even
anyone else. Yet we who make our livlng from the construction of sonic
structures may be fairly sensitive to this problem of tintinus. Ergonomics
in the generation of tintinus may be useful to consider, along with ear
protection and methods of reducing of personal mental stress.

I hope this has been of use, and greetings to the list.

Anthony Wright



From: "Gregor Weldert" <gregor_weldert@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: pianotech@ptg.org
Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 13:18:47 +0200
To: "pianotech mailinglist" <pianotech@ptg.org>
Subject: tinnitus and tuning?


Hi list,
 
i fear i got a tinnitus, but i hope it is not forever. I hear on both ears a
8 khz-tone with 6-8 db.
 
Is anybody in this list with the same problem? Which experience did you make
with it? Is it possible to keep on tuning pianos? I got it since 1 week and
i will wait until next week. Then i will see what problems will encounter
with tuning.
 
Gregor Weldert
Germany




---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/cf/32/f8/e3/attachment.htm

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--