@Lever151, your allergies and sinus issues are, without a doubt, contributing to your Tinnitus (though they may not be exclusively responsible -- since you didn't have an episode before your infection, though, I'd say it's a good bet that there's a causal relationship between the two). The mechanism that very few ENTs actually understand, is that the sinuses when they become congested will actually cause inflammation in the openings of the Eustachian Tubes. The Eustachian Tubes allow pressure to be equalized between the middle ear and the outer vestibular airway passages. It's a tiny lumen - about the size of a hair follicle - so it's not meant for draining. But, that's where the problem starts: when there's inflammation in the Eustachian Tubes, middle and inner ear infections cannot properly resolve. It becomes a vicious cycle that can last for many months.
In all honesty, yes. My T has gotten much better since the initial onset. For me, on weeks 7 and 8, I started noticing a big difference, thanks in large part to the Prednisone + Amoxicillin I was taking. But like I said, this was generally short-lived. I got Tinnitus spikes the weeks afterwards, and because of how dangerous long-term prednisone can be, there really hasn't been much people can do for me other than just waiting out whatever is causing the inflammation to hopefully resolve. In some cases, if it's a neuromuscular conflict (like tightening of the Temporomandibular Jaw joint), there is no real resolution that is quick and it takes quite a bit of physical therapy.
In my case, I got over fight-or-flight around weeks 9 and 10. I have learned that what happens here is that the brain starts to train itself that Tinnitus is not an alarming situation, and it shouldn't amplify a heightened anxiety response. So Tinnitus starts evoking a response from the limbic system, and the body starts to shift tinnitus to a parasympathetic reaction mode. You know it's there, but it's not causing you serious alarm and you're not being driven into a state of anxiety or panic about it. I started moving in that direction around my third month of Tinnitus, back in January.
My Tinnitus is still here. It is often loud. It isn't causing me a lot of alarm, but it does continue to annoy me. I know how to influence it -- how to help with the inflammation, and that causes the Tinnitus volumes to go down.
I am going to share my perspectives of Tinnitus, in hopes that it will frame everything for you and grant you some serenity. So I apologize for the length:
This is really the important thing to accept (and it's not easy):
Tinnitus is not a disease; it is a symptom. Because it's a symptom, that means there's an underlying cause that is triggering the reaction. Unfortunately, the medical community -- even extremely experienced neurologists and ENTs -- knows very little about Tinnitus, because (when it's subjective) it's a highly personalized response. Different people have different neurological triggers that manifest as Tinnitus, and there is no one-size-fits-all response on how to treat it. Because of this, it's also very difficult to ever identify the root cause of Tinnitus and the most medical professionals can do is guess, wait and see, and then try again. There isn't a lot of patience for Tinnitus in the medical community for this -- it's often seen as a wild goose chase -- and so patients are rather dismissively told to just "learn to live with it."
The consensus in the medical community, which has grown to be accepted by those of us confronted with Tinnitus, is as follows, in my experience:
- Tinnitus changes very rapidly during the first 3-6 months. This means switching from one ear to the next, varying considerably from day to day, waxing and waning, and taking on and losing certain audiological characteristics. This is pretty normal. This is why most people generally say that, given time, your Tinnitus may hopefully resolve itself. This is pretty true: for most people who experience sensory trauma that have caused their tinnitus (like severe noise exposure), the body's natural healing and coping mechanisms can suppress and/or defeat Tinnitus. However, there's no uniform story as to how this resolves and there's no hard-and-fast timeline involved here. Some people will resolve within a few weeks, others it takes months. However, the consensus is clear: people who have Tinnitus for more than six months as a general rule tend to find their experience enduring, and it does not just spontaneously resolve, unfortunately.
- If it is objective (meaning, the doctor can also hear it when examining you), then there is hope that the cause can be identified. Cause here is usually circulatory or vascular in nature. If it is identified, medical science today may be able to treat it. This situation -- both identifying and treating it, if identified -- is extremely rare today. But this form of Tinnitus usually manifests as "pulsatile Tinnitus" -- a whooshing, clicking, thumping, hammering sound that is in sync with your heartbeat. High pitched Tinnitus does not ordinarily fall into this category.
- Subjective tinnitus (meaning only you hear it) is, usually, not a caused by a single thing. Rather, there is a symphony of factors that accumulate over a long period of time that bring the brain to a period of stress where Tinnitus is manifest. The common stories are: periods of high stress, continued sleeplessness, poor diet and exercise, and finally, some precipitating health event or problem that becomes the "last straw that broke the camel's back." Because of this, most subjective tinnitus rarely has a single factor that needs to be resolved. This lesson was the hardest for me to learn, because since I am dealing with inflammation, I thought to myself, "surely, if I get this inflammation under control, my Tinnitus will resolve." It didn't entirely, and it comes and goes, waxes and wanes, over time. I have read that this is pretty typical of people who suffer from inflammatory and infectious conditions that push Tinnitus to the edge.
- Most Tinnitus is incurable. There are many remedies and treatments out there, but pretty much all of them are ineffective and tend to be successful only for people matching a very specific profile. Most of the research into Tinnitus being done today addresses damage to the hearing organs (specifically, the cilia of the cochlea) as the source of the neurological malfunction that expresses itself as Tinnitus. This is sensible, because the most common cause of Tinnitus is, in fact, hearing loss and in most cases, the high pitched sound that people hear coincides with a position in an audiological curve where hearing begins to be impacted. But it ultimately doesn't help people who are dealing with Tinnitus that is multi-factorial, and unfortunately, most Tinnitus is, in fact, multi-factorial and not purely audiological in origin.
- Tinnitus, as a symptom, is often joined by other symptoms -- like hyperacusis (extreme sensitivity to everyday loud sounds), dizziness (especially when congestion and inflammation of the vestibular system is a factor), feelings of fullness in the ears, and paresthesia (tingling sensations that come and go). Ultimately, these other symptoms are neurological manifestations of the body trying to deal with the unexpected nature of Tinnitus. Most of these symptoms resolve with time, even if the Tinnitus remains.
- The best "treatments" for Tinnitus are generally regarded as either Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (abbreviated TRT) or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (abbreviated as CBT). TRT and CBT accelerate the habituation process by teaching the mind to push its reaction to Tinnitus out of the limbic system and into the parasympathetic system, so that it doesn't cause you alarm. Even if people don't undergo one of these therapies, the human mind generally will habituate itself within 12-18 months (most people begin major steps in the habituating process at months 3 and 6, for what it's worth). Habituation ordinarily means that you don't know your Tinnitus is there because the mind has learned to tune it out, and you can enjoy a semblance of silence again. However, if you search for it -- and if it spikes -- you will hear it. This is an imperfect treatment, because the underlying neurological malfunction remains. But the body (and the mind) have learned to ignore it, so the end result is generally the same. The good news here is that habituation is possible for everyone, always. Some people will take longer than others; some people can habituate within a few months; for others, it takes years. There's a lot of theory crafting on this site about what helps/harms habituation, but again, don't read too much into this because everyone is different. Anxiety, however, does play a role in keeping Tinnitus' heightened response in the limbic system and some people here opine that remaining anxious about Tinnitus delays the habituation process. It's best not to obsess over this, because it will ultimately happen in time. But it requires patience.
The biggest hurdle in this process of confronting and overcoming Tinnitus tends to be denial. People, including myself, start their process by approaching this like any other acute circumstance: "Something awful has happened to me, so clearly, I need to do something dramatic to reverse this awful thing." Therein lies the problem -- Tinnitus is not an acute condition; it is a chronic symptom of a long-term and complex, enduring process. For some people, these are vascular and circulatory processes that cause pulsatile tinnitus; for other people, these are inflammatory and infectious conditions that have reached a breaking point; and, for even others still, it is an enduring consequence of trauma to the auditory system. None of these have quick fixes, though obviously, we hope and pray that people who are new to Tinnitus will find their symptoms spontaneously resolve. Even though much Tinnitus, when it is early, does resolve; most Tinnitus, because it's chronic, will endure. And so, our ability to defeat Tinnitus is derived from our capacity to control our body's response to it.
I will be keeping you in my thoughts!
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