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Just another quick update to say that I've now been one week without any symptoms, and have begun sleeping again without any pink noise and have had no recurrence.

I made a point to constantly reiterate that I am not trying to make assumptions for others and I specifically said, again numerous times, that I am speaking to the people here who can relate to my situation, including the workup and the history of anxiety. If that's not you, please feel free to...

Hi Allen, sorry I am not expert enough to comment on your situation, all I know is that an ENT, a regular audiologist and a specialist in tinnitus and balance disorders all feel that my audiogram doesn’t significantly contribute to my tinnitus and certainly there was unlikely to have been any...

In fact no sooner had I spoke than today things are much worse again, but I am wondering if it’s not a coincidence that I’m super stressed and moving continents lol. I guess recovery isn’t linear and there’s a pretty obvious cause (stress/anxiety plus fatigue), so I’ll try not to let it get to...

Yeah I am prone to lack of patience and I understand that with tinnitus/hyperacusis, actively seeking a "cure" usually has the reverse effect. But I've learnt now how potentially reversible my issues are and how closely tied they are to stress levels and my ability to remain distracted. I'm...

Update: Switched from youtube pink noise videos to a pink noise generating app on my iPhone as I had a feeling that youtube encoding etc. was not a very accurate reproduction, and this way I could gradually increase the level of "whiteness" of the noise each day hoping to gradually desensitise...

Generally speaking neuroplasticity can occur both quickly and slowly and there is no real reason it shouldn't be reversible even when engrained for long periods of time, at least in adults, although I suppose nobody could predict for an individual how long that might takes as it's so incredibly...

All I can say is that you must have had extremely good filtering in the part of your brain that processes sound because no sensory organ is perfect including the cochlear and "noise" is always generated as part of the signal that goes to your brain. That can in most people with normal hearing be...

Above the age of 25 we know for sure that everyone has some degree of hearing loss as a result of damage to hair cells in the cochlear even without exposure to excessive sound, thereby producing tinnitus, and in reality the process probably it begins far younger. Put someone who never once...

Little update, still having ups and downs but generally better each day. The tinnitus in quiet environments or noisy environments without high pitch sounds is gone, or in other words, my brain has successfully gone back to fully filtering it out of my consciousness just like it did before all...

You have to balance all the possible reason tinnitus can become louder due to some physical problem, with the way your brain works in perceiving tinnitus. Everyone over the age of 25 has tinnitus, the vast majority of them are unaware of it because their brain filters it out. If you become...

A great success story because it highlights that for those of us with normal hearing and no disease, even if we had something (eg. ETD, a medication, muscle tension) previously exacerbate the underlying tinnitus that is present in all of us, the key is to stop searching for a cure and just focus...

The problem seems to be that these specialists charge huge amounts of money to give you this information :( I certainly don't want to do any harm, but I very specifically have an issue with "reactive tinnitus" or "mild hyperacusis" (there seems to be some dispute here about whether it's one or...

So I saw an ENT today, this will be the last I do see. He told me that my hearing is just as expected for someone my age, that I have very minor TMJ, very minor ETD, quite bad neck/shoulder tension/spasms but that the overall message is that nothing changed on the day I noticed my tinnitus...

The floaters I found very hard, they were undeniably physically there and like tinnitus you can go through a period of being terrified they are a sign of something worse. I suppose that I ended up habituated in the sense that someone with noise-induced permanent tinnitus might be - which is why...

I don't know if you have a history of health anxiety but this is a common trap to fall into, I have done it many times myself. See an ENT, get an audiogram, if advised get an MRI. If these are all normal and you are told you have idiopathic tinnitus then chances are it's psychosomatic. Don't...

I would always advise full workup of any symptoms including tinnitus and the GI symptoms associated with IBS. With my experience of IBS, I didn't fit the demographic nor had much of a clinical history to suggest celiac. However having health anxiety it was one of my concerns, although with HA I...

It seems that most tinnitus regardless of cause (other than I think things like acoustic neuroma and menieres etc with very structural causes) are "somatic", like almost up to 85%? That may be as you say, a characteristic of "normal" human hearing that we just didn't notice before but our...

In quiet environments or in noisy environments without much high pitch sound my tinnitus has now more or less resolved. This is two weeks after it started, and I increasingly. Elusive I had a normal moment of "fleeting tinnitus" that my brain latch onto and made into the two week hell I have...

Today is the first day my tinnitus is clearly better than the day before it

The classic study would be this: "In 1953 Heller and Bergman performed an simple and classic experiment. They placed 80 tinnitus free individuals (university members) in a sound proofed room for 5 minutes each, asking them to report on any sounds that might be heard. The subjects thought they...

The problem is that tinnitus is a symptom and not a diagnosis. Just like diarrhoea is a symptom of IBS, itself caused by anxiety, it doesn't mean to say there aren't people with actual pathological processes going on in their bowels that cause diarrhoea. Habituation should be possible for most...

I have always suffered health anxiety and being a doctor myself has made that extra hard. Often knowing a little (ie. not being a specialist) is worse than nothing at all, because you're trained to know when to worry more than you are when not to worry. So we pick up on red flags. I tend not to...

Thanks for your reply Carly! I find my tinnitus comes and goes, the things that make it worse seem to be noise and movements/tension. I never realised I had a TMJ issue until my X-ray though, before then I thought I just had a bit of an issue with clenching when stressed. But I do have a long...

My tinnitus began 2 weeks ago suddenly. High pitch, varying frequency, varying volume. Worse with sound and greatly modified by neck and jaw movements. Sometimes in the last week it has actually disappeared for 5-10 minutes but it is usually brought back by movement or loud sounds. First ENT...

Yeah I think I just need to fight the urge to analyse it too hard, it just leads to over fixation. The ENT didn't think much of it, and I suppose that if there is pressure issues and mucous in the middle ear then it will affect how things are conducted so somewhere in there I guess you can find...

Yeah.. this is the main thing that's worrying me. It doesn't seem to fit with most ETD stories and it makes distractions very hard.

Thanks again for the replies guys. Since this all started I think things got worse and now are possibly getting better. For example in a quiet room it's possible for me to be tinnitus free for some time, but noises, movements and things like swallowing can kick things off again. I took a...

... does anyone even get better? At first I thought that a diagnosis of chronic mucous build up in the inner ear and a happy pat on the back from the ENT saying it would clear up in a few weeks was the end of the ordeal but the more I read about it the more it seems like basically nobody ever...

Thanks for the replies guys, the weird thing is (maybe you can relate) that whilst I always knew I was a nasally and bunged up person and had had a diagnosis of chronic allergic rhinitis with a post nasal drip since a teenager (and not made because of any emergency just part of general workup...

I posted recently about a sudden onset high pitch continuous tinnitus. I have health anxiety and basically had a melt down afraid I was stuck with this quite loud and very distracting tinnitus forever. I saw a GP who saw a lot of wax in the right ear, syringed it and took a cursory glance...

Maybe it's my anxiety speaking but I just have this horrible feeling that this is it, for whatever reason I instantly acquired tinnitus 3 days ago and I am stuck with it forever and will probably never know why. I mean.. I can recall the exact moment it started. I had been cleaning up the...

Never before but I notice that this ringing is worse when there are loud sounds around. But prior to this, no issues like that! I ave to say that my sinuses are becoming more and more blocked as the day goes on but they weren't particularly bad when this started 3-4 days ago. Quite odd. Its is...

Thanks for the replies guys, I guess tinnitus is one of those things that's too broad to generalise or predict for any one person but you guys are giving some good general advice. You are very right to pick up on the anxiety element because I have caused myself many somatic symptoms through...

Hi guys, So I think everyone from time to time experiences a little ringing in their ear with maybe some ear pressure and after a few seconds you ignore it and it goes away. Well I have been very anxious lately and noticed a ringing in my ears a few days ago but rather than ignoring it, I...