5 Months of Tinnitus and Now I'm Here for Help

[R. David Case]

Yeah, but it just doesn't add up how I could have noise-induced tinnitus and nerve damage when I've protected my ears from dangerously loud environments my whole entire life, while at the same time everyone in my family, including siblings, have been exposed to mega loud environments way more than I have without any hearing protection and don't suffer from tinnitus or hearing loss. Unless I got some randomly bad gene and my inner ears are just dying for no reason. I can still hear frequencies much higher than most people.

To me it seems like there's damage caused by something else like my audiologist suggested. I just want to find the right help to figure out what and how I can address it if possible.

I might be able to help you, I eliminated my tinnitus and 440 other people with a weird mix of sounds I invented called Tinnitus Mix. You can download it free on my thread "I invented a sound that knocked out my tinnitus"

 

[Flyingsheep]

Well I got some interesting news. I went to see a chiropractor this morning that used practice on me in my teens and early 20s for some skateboard injuries. I've been to other chiropractors for my neck before since then every once and a while, and they were never as good as him. I haven't seen him for so long because I'm never in the area anymore. I mentioned tinnitus to him, and that my neck has been very bad the past few years. He adjusted my neck and holy cow, I haven't realized how locked up I've been and it was one of the biggest releases ever. Everyone else I've seen has been unable to adjust my neck like that because they say it's too tight. But he can still do it. Anyways, right after that my tinnitus was literally 98% better. Unfortunately about an hour later the buzzing noise gradually came back, mostly in my left ear. But now I'm wondering if it is a symptom of my neck, because how could everything go practically silent immediately after getting adjusted?

 

[Flyingsheep]

Just wanted to do an update. I've been doing consistently better lately, aside from one really bad spike that lasted 20 minutes. But since then I haven't had any (for about 3 days). I got those overpriced Eargasm ear plugs, which I know many people don't believe are very protective since they allow a lot of high frequencies to pass through, but I wanted to give them a try so I can continue doing things with friends and family in loud environments and still give my hearing a chance to hopefully heal/recover. So far they seem to work well and I've had zero sensitivity with them in. I used them at a roller rink for my sister's birthday party, which was very loud, and I was able to enjoy the whole night without worrying I was going to spike. Took them out when I got to my car and there was no spike or volume increase in tinnitus, whereas before if I did something like that without ear plugs there would be a substantial volume increase for a couple hours or the rest of the night. If I can get away with doing it like this I will be so much happier and present when spending time with people I love.

Maybe if I use these all the time I'll start to improve faster. Will see and I'm hoping for the best. Also I'm currently driving across the country and the road noise isn't really irritating tinnitus (which is pretty loud when driving at 80 mph). I'm not wearing earplugs while driving because it feels very dangerous, so that's good it's not making it worse. If I listen to music in the car it can make it a little worse, probably because I'm turning it up louder than the road noise.

 

[Nick M]

Just wanted to do an update. I've been doing consistently better lately, aside from one really bad spike that lasted 20 minutes. But since then I haven't had any (for about 3 days). I got those overpriced Eargasm ear plugs, which I know many people don't believe are very protective since they allow a lot of high frequencies to pass through, but I wanted to give them a try so I can continue doing things with friends and family in loud environments and still give my hearing a chance to hopefully heal/recover. So far they seem to work well and I've had zero sensitivity with them in. I used them at a roller rink for my sister's birthday party, which was very loud, and I was able to enjoy the whole night without worrying I was going to spike. Took them out when I got to my car and there was no spike or volume increase in tinnitus, whereas before if I did something like that without ear plugs there would be a substantial volume increase for a couple hours or the rest of the night. If I can get away with doing it like this I will be so much happier and present when spending time with people I love.

Maybe if I use these all the time I'll start to improve faster. Will see and I'm hoping for the best. Also I'm currently driving across the country and the road noise isn't really irritating tinnitus (which is pretty loud when driving at 80 mph). I'm not wearing earplugs while driving because it feels very dangerous, so that's good it's not making it worse. If I listen to music in the car it can make it a little worse, probably because I'm turning it up louder than the road noise.

Your T is identical to mine based on all you've wrote since. It constantly changes day to day. High pitched random fluctuations in the 13-15 khz range. Hyperacousis that gets better and worse along with the T. My T started on my left side due to an unknown inner ear infection/virus but since then has spread to both ears equally. In fact, sometimes I hear it more in my right ear now. Audio tests don't detect any hearing loss even high frequency range but I can sometimes feel like my left ear is like 5% weaker on days where I have almost no T so the infection has done some level of damage even if it's minor. What I've learned is that T and the severity of the damage have absolutely no correlation. There are people who are deaf in one or both ears with no T and there are people with no detectable hearing damage with insane T.

My advice to you is to try to get a MRI to see if there may be some tumor that's interfering with the nerves since you have no acoustic trauma or any infection that you have felt. Tinnitus is almost always associated with damage to some part of the hearing system. Either the ear, nerves or the brain. Good luck

 

[Flyingsheep]

It's getting worse and I'm at the 6 month mark now. Any of those times where I felt like there was improvement are meaningless. The white noise has gotten nasty now, it's so uncomfortable that it's almost like that feeling of nails on a chalkboard. How can anyone live like this? Holy shit. I can hardly mask it with any background noise. I think I'm beyond the point of it fading or settling down. I've noticed now that my hearing is becoming worse too. Things in higher frequencies sound like shit and dull. I can't hear people's voices very well when there is background noise and ask "what" all the time.

I'm sure I have hearing loss and damage. @Contrast is probably right on this. I don't know how or why, but I got the short end of the stick on this in life. I'm sure I'm past the window of possibility for it to improve and I'm not sure how long I can handle this.