Friend's Noise-Induced Tinnitus Went Away Completely After 2 Years

Despite a hunger for indicators that noise-induced tinnitus can go away, reading the stories on Tinnitus Talk describing how someone's friend's tinnitus went away has left me feeling a bit desperate.

But now I have one of those stories to share, which I just heard from a musician friend of mine when I told him of my current struggle with tinnitus. I'm happy about this story because this friend of mine is not one to lie or exaggerate, and because ever since I've known him he has worn earplugs when we play music together -- suggesting to me that he is now careful to protect his ears because he knows the consequences that might occur if he does not.

The story goes: a few years ago, he was jamming with a few friends and the drummer was very heavy-handed on the cymbals. His tinnitus arose after the jam, and lasted for about 2 years. He has now reportedly been free of tinnitus for a number of years. Apparently his tinnitus eventually became something that occurred sporadically until it finally went away completely.

I'll just note that he tends to be very health-minded, eats plenty of fresh veggies, exercises regularly, meditates frequently, and keeps busy with things that he loves.

Hopefully we are all so lucky to have this go away completely eventually.

 

Thank you for sharing your friend's story. Totally made my evening better.

 

My noise induced tinnitus went away after 2 years as well. It definitely can happen.

I am back here because I suffered some mild SNHL in my left ear and it came back but I am managing.

 

What did it sound like?

Two years? Mine just sounds constantly the same day after day unless I take big bad meds.

 

@Forever hopeful, I'm also curious to know what yours sounded like, what caused it, and whether it disappeared abruptly or gradually.

Thanks for sharing your success, and I hope your current bout resolves more quickly this time.

 

Mine changed a lot. It was bilateral and came on about two days after a very loud AC/DC concert. Knowing what I know now, I am horrified that I went to any concert without earplugs but particularly AC/DC. But I, like many others, was very uneducated about the potential damage I could be doing to my hearing. Believe me none of us wore earplugs to a concert.

When I first noticed it, it sounded like a ring. You know, like a pure tone ring. Then as time went on it changed to the sound of a light saber in my ears. So I think it really vacillated between those two sounds. And I was a hot mess. I was so devastated. Particularly when I started researching tinnitus. But I was relieved to discover that I did not have any hearing loss. So I remained hopeful. I also went on an antidepressant to help me manage my anxiety, and I think that helped me cope a lot.

In terms of timing, honestly, people have asked me this a lot and it’s a difficult one for me to answer. It’s not like I woke up one day and was like “oh my ears aren’t ringing anymore”. I feel like as time went on I just kind of got bored with trying to cover it up all the time. Sound machines, sound pillows etc. So I know I slowly stopped using the sound machine and stopped using the sound pillow. I don’t even think I made a conscious effort to do it. It just sort of evolved as I was bothered less and less by the tinnitus. And I was someone who carried a sound machine around with me at the office so that whatever room I was in I would have it. Overtime it just occurred to me that I didn’t hear it anymore.

So I think I was tinnitus free for at least three years. Then this happened. You can imagine my devastation. Particularly since I got musicians earplugs and have been so careful with my ears since I first got tinnitus. I remember crying in my ENT‘s office saying I did everything right. How could this happen?

I don’t have any expectation at all that my tinnitus will resolve because it is due to SNHL and it is not coming back.

If yours is noise induced and you don’t have any hearing loss, I have lots of hope that it will resolve for you.

 

@Forever hopeful, thank you so much for sharing your story. It's comforting to know the details and that you, like me, have had a hard time emotionally with tinnitus. I had a similar shift in tone to what you described (from pure tone to cranial light-saber battles). The tinnitus sounds remain reactive to surrounding sound, but perhaps a little less-so than when this started for me about 2 months ago. I've read a number of studies that suggest that tinnitus recovery is very possible even when it is associated with noticeable SNHL, for example:

Characteristics and Spontaneous Recovery of Tinnitus Related to Idiopathic Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss; Prognostic Factors

...so it seems worth it to remain hopeful in your case. I will remain hopeful for you, at any rate.

I hail from a family of musicians and avid concert-goers... we're from Detroit... we can't help it I can sympathize when you say that no-one seems to think about wearing earplugs at concerts. Well, at least now we can warn others and hopefully save them from this experience. But some days are really difficult, and it's so hard to keep my thoughts about tinnitus from spiraling out of control. Anecdotes like yours are effective medicine for me during the hardest days, so thank you again. I wish you well.

 

Thank you so much for sharing the article. I was not aware that there could be spontaneous tinnitus recovery with ISSNHL.

Interestingly, I first experienced hearing loss the end of April, 2020. I was tipped off that something was wrong because I heard an echo in my left ear. Now I describe it as an echo but it’s probably more like a seashell echo / low roar. So I went to the ENT and I had a hearing test a week later. Of course, this is the middle of COVID-19 lockdown. Result of the audiogram was that one frequency decreased from around 10 dB to 30 dB. I had a short stint on steroids because my ENT is very conservative. I did not retest my hearing. But the tinnitus never went away. I got used to it and it didn’t bother me so much after several months of freaking out. And then just before Valentine’s Day, I heard more of a distinct pure tone ring in my ear and that was my tip off that something else was wrong. I was able to get in right away got a hearing test and the frequency at 30 dB was now down to 35 dB and another frequency had gone from 10 dB to 25 dB. I then got a much longer prescription for steroids. I retested and the frequency that had dropped to 25 dB was back up to 10 dB. But the one that’s actually in the mild loss range remained at 35 dB.

I think the ring is a little quieter, but the roar is still there. I hate the ring thing. I hate, hate, hate the pure tone ring.

What really gets me is that my hearing loss is soooo mild. My 2 ENTs and my Otologist said that for all intents and purposes, I have really, really good hearing in that ear still. However, for me, the slightest change in hearing and my tinnitus got worse. I am terrified for what the future will bring in terms tinnitus. One thing my ENT assured me of is that as I continue to age I will continue to lose hearing, as that is a normal part of aging and happens to pretty much everybody. So does that mean that I’m just going to end up with bilateral screaming loud tinnitus that just worsens year after year after year?

I asked my otologist if there was any relationship between the level of hearing loss and how bad one’s tinnitus is.

He said that there is no correlation between how you perform on your audiogram and how loud you experience your tinnitus to be. I’m not sure I believe him.

 

That consideration of whether the tinnitus gets louder as hearing naturally degrades is something I've thought about a fair bit lately. My stepfather told me he had bad tinnitus for about a year before it mellowed into a background noise he only notices in quiet places. Doesn't bother him now. And then I wonder about my father and grandfather, who were infantrymen in Vietnam and World War II, respectively, and both saw a lot of direct battle. I've read there was little to no consideration of hearing protection in either of those wars. Given that tinnitus is one of the primary combat-related disabilities, I can't believe that they didn't suffer from it and hearing loss, but they somehow found a way to continue living their lives fairly fearlessly (if maybe a bit recklessly).

My ENT recently told me that she has seen information that makes her believe that our ear's hair cells can spring back from damage, but that it takes quite a long time. Hopefully some combination of that innate regeneration, and drugs like FX-322 or OTO-313/OTO-314 or some other technology emerges soon to give us all a break. With research on such therapeutics and support for that research on the rise, it seems like there is good reason to expect real solutions to these problems before too long.

 

I am at the same phase. First year was very hard. Now after 17 months tinnitus "mellowed into a background noise I only notice in quiet places" (c). I dream about a day when I can start sleeping without masking. Only with a clock would be good enough for me. I hope after 2 years I will reach that phase. For me it would be almost like being tinnitus free again.

 

Tinnitus should not be masked. By this I mean covered up by another sound so it can't be heard. If you do this it will make it harder for your brain to habituate to the tinnitus. At night place a sound machine by the bedside. Nature sounds are much better than a clicking clock and set the sound below the tinnitus so it's not drawing attention to itself. Once you get used to using sound enrichment you will be unaware that it is there. You should always use sound enrichment especially at night. If you stop using it there is a risk of the tinnitus becoming louder even after you habituate. Silent rooms are one of the worst things for anyone that has tinnitus especially when it is noise induced, as it allows the brain to increase its background activity and over time there is a risk of the tinnitus increasing.

 

My otologist started our appointment off by telling me that everybody who has hearing loss and tinnitus. I looked dead straight into his eyes and said surely that’s not true. My dad has occupational hearing loss of my mother has a hearing loss and neither one of them have tinnitus. He just grimaced at me.

Thing about what your ENT said, I guess the critical question is when are hair cells just damaged versus death? Sensory neural hearing loss they can’t always just be dead because people regain hearing after the use of Prednisone for example. So I guess it’s an interesting question to ponder. I was told by a physician who is the tinnitus expert that we lose .5% of our hair cells every year we age. That of course would be cell death.

I know there are many who have tinnitus and they do find a way to live full, happy lives and it doesn’t bother them even though they may experience it as being very loud and intrusive. My husband, for example, has bilateral tinnitus. Pure tone ring. He has had it since high school. He had it worse in college after multiple concussions playing football and lacrosse. He can hear it over everything including the TV. He normally doesn’t notice it at all and can be in a perfectly quiet room. He only notices it a lot more lately because of me.

A friend of a friend of mine had a brain tumor removed. They knew that she was going to end up with violent tinnitus in one ear. They called it the suicide ring. They offered her Gabapentin after the surgery but she refused. She is like the most amazing person; she runs marathons and is raising three kids. Managing better than I did on my best day prior to tinnitus. And I have to wonder how people do that. What I’ve noticed from reading posts on this site is that most people who come here and tell their stories acknowledge challenges with anxiety in particular, separate and distinct from tinnitus. Perhaps there’s a true neurological correlation between having generalized anxiety and related conditions like OCD and those who don’t in terms of how people experience tinnitus and cope. I know that when my anxiety is under better control, I am in a much better place to manage my tinnitus.

 

No, no. I never cover up my tinnitus completely. I just give my brain a chance to focus on something else. I actually use sound enrichment just like you've written in your post. I like how over time the volume of my tinnitus went down and how the volume of my sound enrichment went down with it and I continue to lower the volume I think every 4-6 months. I also have a clock in my room but it does not bother me. It mixes good with my sound enrichment. I've actually reached a point when I can be in a silent room and don't have an unpleasant headache with increased tinnitus but still I'm not comfortable to do that yet. So yeah, I always have some noise in the background.

 

Can I safely use laptop or iPad to listen to natural sounds from YouTube?

 

For most people with noise induced tinnitus, as mentioned on your avatar, listening to natural sounds on a laptop or iPad will be fine. However, you have not mentioned the reasons? If you intend to use these devices to play sound enrichment at night as mentioned in my post to Vassili, I do not recommend it. Instead use a table top sound machine and suggest buying the model S-650 from Oasis, although any brand of sound machine will suffice.

Listening to music or natural sounds while using the laptop or iPad should be safe, providing the volume isn't too loud.

 

I've read many stories of people improving with time, even in impossible situations. I'm doing everything I can to help the healing process by doing the AIP diet and protocol. I'm also taking vitamins and minerals. I think mild to moderate exercise is an undervalued component to healing from increasing blood flow to helping to eliminate free radicals in the system.

Health and healing
twa

 

That's wonderful it's fading for you. Man that makes me happy to hear, especially since both of our symptoms are noise-induced. I agree that having it fade to a point that it doesn't disrupt life would be about as good as it gets. Honestly, if tinnitus goes away I'll probably have some other concern fill my head in place of where there could be golden silence and peace. In an ideal world, I'd be a Zen monk and let myself experience true silence Hell, maybe that's what I'll do once I recover from this...

 

So, this post is equal parts (1) success-story-of-my-own, (2) recommendation-for-a-disgusting-smoothie, and (3) question for anyone here that might have recovered from their tinnitus:

The ear fullness, mild hyperacusis, and muffled sensation that was occurring worst in my ear that has tinnitus the worst have gone away and stayed that way for the past month. This past week, I've had some relatively quiet days, though the tinnitus is always "there" if I look for it and more often than not I don't have to look for it to notice it.

I made a Turmeric + Ginger smoothie after a spike two weeks ago and it really helped to bring the volume down. I began doing that every morning, and I now add black pepper, because why the hell not I guess... and truly this seems to be doing good things for my symptoms so far.

Has anyone whose tinnitus has gone away also experienced these other symptoms subside prior to their tinnitus going away? Is this "a good sign"? Do you have a crystal ball from which you could please produce a favorable prognosis for me? @Bill Bauer I'm lookin' at you in particular because your "success story" posts have on numerous occasions kept me from letting despair get the better of me.

Cheers~

 

May I suggest setting a timer so that the playback stops within an hour or two when one is hopefully sleeping?

I have used this album (Sleeping Music) on the service Tidal to fall asleep with my tinnitus (a hum in head and a stuttered tone in the right ear) for several months, sometimes with headphones on low volume, but then I thought it's not a good idea to have the phones in ear all night I started using my iPhone in airplane mode on volume 3-4 steps up from zero, a bit away from my head in the bed.

However last Friday night, despite having a peace of paper in my left ear, and also the night before because I felt it needed some rest and it's the right ear I want to mask – I woke up from the ear making this high pitched, warped ”chirp” and after that I have a high pitched hiss and sometimes a mid level tone in this left ear that I've concluded was responsible for the hum (if I cover the ear the hum would somewhat go away), but otherwise it was fine

Really wish I'd thought of setting a timer sooner! Now, the audiologist I've talked to and another knowledgeable person when it comes to hearing don't really think I've managed to inflict the damage myself, but I just think it must have been ear fatigue. I mean the whooshing synth patterns in those tracks are really good at masking stuff, but sometimes they go a bit high in pitch – probably not something to let the ear listen to all night, so a timer it is!

I also now understand the idea is not to fully mask the tinnitus, so probably not listen to those tracks during bedtime anyway.

But for me it's too late, I'm afraid. Worked well while it lasted, but oh my what I've been regretting myself those days since I got the new tinnitus. I have a hard time sleeping now even using myNoise which lets you control each frequency of the sounds individually. Not even a week has gone by, so I'm hoping I'll recover.

 

I'm really sorry to hear you've developed the new symptoms, and I hope you are only experiencing a spike that will soon subside. I've read elsewhere on this forum that it is important to keep sound around us all night (even after we've fallen asleep), because our brain still processes sound when we are sleeping. I wonder if the problem you encountered is due to the volume of the masking noise you were using or due to the sheer presence of sound... but I will take an uneducated guess that it is due to the volume being too high. I'll be interested to hear what others think of this.

All the best.

 

Thank you!

Hope it at least eases off since I have big trouble sleeping now.

Maybe too loud. But still a bit strange to me the volume could be so high as to damage the ear. iPhone 12 Pro Max at maximum four steps up from zero on the volume meter (think just three) and the phone lying flat on the bed a feet (30 cm) from my head. I was sleeping on my right side with my paper protected (I know it doesn’t help much, but a little) left ear pointing up, i.e. away from the phone/speakers when I woke up and felt the warped chirp in my left ear.

And it’s been working fine for months wihtout any notable ear fattigue until this week.

It’s all really sad since I was habbitated to my previous tinnitus state pretty well even if that made me a bit depressed too.

 

My high pitched is much better now! I was finally able to sleep for more than an hour or so – got about five hours in a row, so feeling better about that.

Less happy about the high frequency hearing loss that I seem to have developed since my ear did its "high pitched warp" that I woke up from in the middle of the night. It's sad how there always seem to be advice about how you need to avoid loud noise to prevent hearing damage, but for a fatigued ear it seems much less is needed – at lest in my case. I mean I had even stuffed some paper in my ear.

Now some aspects of music – such as cymbals and other high pitched stuff – sound a tad bit different to me. Sad, and a bit hard to swallow, since I enjoy to both produce and listen to music.

Interesting that our auditory hair cells don't regrow – I read they do in chickens.

 

@Forever hopeful, when you had your first bout of tinnitus that eventually went away, do you recall it being reactive and terrible in restaurants and other enclosed places?

When I work outside, my symptoms aren't so bad, but in public, omg it sucks so much.

 

I suspect the reason that auditory hair cells in fish and birds can regenerate is because of their adaptation to exposure to loud sound related to air or water passing over their ear canals. Wind can of course be loud... and birds in flight must experience extremely loud wind sounds. Probably the same for fish.

Hmmm, but then why don't cetaceans or bats (both mammals) have regenerating hair cells?

Life is so weird.

 

Let's hope the researches can find a way to fix damaged ears soon.

By the way, I tried to measure the volume of the music I was listening during night using an app called dB Meter – approximating the microphone to where I was having my ear on the pillow and the volume was 32 dB at max, averaging at 30 dB. Could this volume really have damaged my ear? I had even tucked some toilet paper in my left ear and the music isn’t even playing continuously since the tracks are about one and a half minutes long, then they fade out and there’s a few of seconds of silence before the next track starts.

Can't believe that level of sound was enough to damage my ear. But what else was it? I mean I could hear that warped ”chirp” in the ear for a couple of seconds before the new high pitched tinnitus started – I doubt that would have happened if I was lying in a quiet room.

 

It seems highly unlikely that your ears were damaged by your 30 dB music. It could have been something you encountered during the day or days prior to the new symptom beginning. Perhaps stress?

 

Yeah, maybe. It was a quite busy week when the incident happened (the night to Friday) – I was working at home Monday through Wednesday and the rest of my family was around because of the COVID-19 situation – one individual in my son's class at school got COVID-19 so everyone had to get tested before coming back.

Like I said my ears (especially the left where the trauma happened) was really ”full” and whooshing – that's why I decided to put that piece of toilet paper in, both the night while listening to music, both from Wednesday to Thursday (worked fine) and Thursday to Friday ( my ear ”chirped” and new tinnitus was triggered).

I will try to measure the music volume level again using more sensitive microphones and see. Not sure if the iPad from 2014 I used is a good representation of a human ear. Maybe it was louder than 32 dB. But like you say – stress might have been involved and maybe the music (albeit low volume) was just the last thing that pushed my ear over the edge.

I do remember that on Wednesday (before the Friday night trauma) I in my left ear got one of those ”tinnitus attacks” that I understand most people get a couple of times a year or so – those loud tones that goes usually away after a few seconds. When that happened I got kind of scared and quickly pressed the cartilage ”lid” next to the ear canal with my index finger a couple of times, and let go. Felt like the ”sound” was lingering longer than usual before it went away.

At the same time, I was outside in a sound wise calm environment almost the entire Thursday before the night of the trauma. The ears should have gotten a pretty good rest that time. Sill, I remember the ear was whooshing quite a lot when I went to bed. Should have just tried to skip the music.

 

OK, remeasured now. I'm probably exaggerating the volume I was listening to, because now when I measured it wasn't night time, so the surroundings had more noise than when I was sleeping that night.

I'll see if I can remeasure one more time during the night.

But let's say that the music I listened to for a few seconds here and there in a one and a half minute song was at times peaking at 40 dB, but mostly stayed around 35 dB or less. And a small ball of toilet paper plugged in the ear that should dampen things a little.

Still unlikely that it can make the ear ”chirp” like that, right?

What I guess I want you to say is that it's not really my fault that I broke my ear – I was trying to be careful and it happened anyway.

 

This story interests me. Even though that's not what caused my tinnitus, I had a sound trauma from the headphones.

Has your friend had hearing loss? Did he receive special treatment?

It's been almost a year for me, and it's still not gone. No ENT has found hearing loss in a normal audiogram.

 

I'm a little confused by this post as 30 dB is literally the volume of an average whisper.

The ambient sound inside of a library is ~ 40 dB, and normal average adult conversation runs ~ 50 dB.