I'm Going Crazy — Did Headphones Cause My Tinnitus?

[miodragdimic]

First I want to greet everybody since I'm a new member of this site.
I'm going to explain everything from the start so you could understand better and thanks for reading.

My tinnitus started at the start of this year, first week. I think the cause is because I used headphones too much. First couple of months were really exhausting, but fast forward till a 2 months before now I habituated to sound. While on my journey with tinnitus I experienced earaches a lot but I never knew why would I get them. I thought that TMJ was causing my tinnitus so the joints are causing the problem but I don't think that's true since the doc said it's ok. I never had a problem going to cinema or loud places but there were some noises that were irritating to me like sirens on fireman cars, buses, dropping gym weights in gym. When I heard those sounds I just wanted to cover my ears but I didn't get the pain in the ears when I heard a loud noise.
I kept on using headphones since they weren't making my tinnitus worse and I listening on understandable volume BUT a lot of times that I used headphones I would get pain in the ears, I didn't know why.

And now a week ago I went on a little one day trip, I put earphones in my ears, travelled 2 hours and I listened to music like 10 minutes, on low volume of course, but I experienced pain in the ears. Then after 10 hours I went home, again put earphones for like 10 mins AND AGAIN pain in the ears, which I experienced before but before nothing happened. I came home, put headphones on to talk with friend and play games. After that when I went to sleep my ears were different.

The sound of tinnitus changed, and I had fullness in my ears (WHICH IS CAUSING THIS PROBLEM), the fullness is not some strong or severe, more like mild but its still irritating because it makes me remember that I have tinnitus even at loud places. Now I have fullness, my tinnitus has changed and now I feel like at the start of the year with the new tinnitus again, and I need to habituate again or something. I know one thing, I went to the cinema while I had this, and I couldn't stand the loud scenes this time, like before I could. Is it possible that I damaged my ear or caused a bigger problem so I'm experiencing this now, nothing of this is severe, it's more of like a mild stuff but they are causing the problem.

Will the fullness in my ears ever go, will and can my ears heal back to before like this, does change in tinnitus have to do something with this and can you habituate to this if it doesn't change?

Thanks for reading and sorry for grammar mistakes and the long post.

 

[Bill Bauer]

Is it possible that I damaged my ear or caused a bigger problem so I'm experiencing this now, nothing of this is severe, it's more of like a mild stuff but they are causing the problem.

Every time you were feeling pain or ear fullness or discomfort, it was likely a sign from your body that what you were doing was not ok. If you begin hitting a wall with a hammer, it takes some time before you get to see the things on the other side of the wall. Consider taking those signs seriously. Stop using headphones, do what you can to avoid loud noises (so no more movie theaters, and anything else that doesn't feel right to you). If loud noises are hard to avoid, at least wear hearing proteciton around that noise.

Hopefully, eventually (about 1.5-2 years from now) you will heal and will become more resilient allowing you to expose yourself to more noises (as those noises will stop feeling too loud to you, and will stop resulting in pain). But it is probably a good idea to never use headphones or go to a movie theater again. Many people who took avoiding noise seriously have experienced their tinnitus fading.

Check out
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/learn-from-others-mistakes.29437/

Also, check out
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...eone-else-who-has-tinnitus.26850/#post-307822

and

I didn't read all the above comments, but did peruse a fair amount of it, and ran across many good points on both sides of the argument. What strikes me is there seems to be an underlying assumption (of course I may be wrong on this) that all brains and neurological systems are created equal. The way I see it, that's simply not the case, so everybody's way of dealing with tinnitus and/or hyperacusis is going to have to be highly individualized.

I read a book many years ago called "Adrenal Syndrome". A lot of the book touched on the residual resiliency of people's adrenal glands as they respond to life's stresses. Very low resiliency often resulted in months/years of chronic debilitating exhaustion following a stressful event(s) in their lives. Very high resiliency indicated essentially the opposite. The author broke this down into some rough numbers:

25% of people have low resiliency, meaning normal life stressors will often send them into some degree of a tailspin.
25% of people have high resiliency, meaning that no matter how severe a stressor comes into their lives, they will be able to cope without becoming debilitated to any degree.
50% of people fall somewhere inbetween.

I believe there are some kind of corresponding numbers for a person's brain and neurological resiliency as well, which can greatly affect the ability to cope with tinnitus. (I believe adrenal resiliency also plays a major role in our ability to cope). -- Based on these assumptions, it's pretty easy for me to conclude that what may be overprotection for one person will be underprotection for another, and vice versa.

I think the main point to understand for someone new to tinnitus is that their path forward is going to be a lot of "testing the waters". Generally, IMHO, it's going to take a few weeks or months to get important insights that will help us achieve a healthy balance. In all likelihood, most people are going to learn from experience when their over-protecting or under-protecting.

I've come to believe however, that in those early months, if one is going to err in either direction, it should be toward overprotection. It just seems to me the consequences of underprotection (which could result in permanent injury) in those early times are much more dire than the consequences of overprotection--which as I understand, generally results in temporary setbacks.

Doing a number of things to better support the brain and neurological system and the body's stress response (adrenal glands) is quite high on my list of recommendations I would make to anybody with tinnitus. Doing so might even prevent phonophobia or OCD, etc., as we go through our learning curves -- Just my 2 cents worth.

Relative newbies to tinnitus are likely to find all the information/opinions above quite confusing. So here are a few common-sense rules to follow:

1. The best protection of all is avoidance. Even the best earplugs can't guarantee complete hearing protection so those relatively new to tinnitus are best advised to avoid prolonged loud noise exposure - especially amplified sound at for example live concerts and sports events. This may involve lifestyle changes.

2. When in doubt, use hearing protection. In the many tasks we all do through the week, some will inevitably involve exposure to noise - which may be at higher levels than we at first realise - so using hearing protection for many of these is only sensible.

3. Build quiet into your day. It's not a good idea to be wearing hearing protection all the time - so you need to give your ears a break by ensuring that there will be quieter times during your day when hearing protection isn't necessary.This may involve changing your routine. Use soft masking noise and light music (not using headphones) to avoid "silence" where tinnitus is most noticeable.

4. Don't stress about stress. Tinnitus newbies are forever being told that the thing which makes tinnitus worse is stress. But while it's true that how you are feeling at a particular moment can make tinnitus temporarily louder, it won't have a lasting effect. But prolonged loud noise exposure can make tinnitus permanently louder. So don't stress about stress - but do be concerned about noise.

 

[miodragdimic]

Every time you were feeling pain or ear fullness or discomfort, it was likely a sign from your body that what you were doing was not ok. If you begin hitting a wall with a hammer, it takes some time before you get to see the things on the other side of the wall. Consider taking those signs seriously. Stop using headphones, do what you can to avoid loud noises (so no more movie theaters, and anything else that doesn't feel right to you). If loud noises are hard to avoid, at least wear hearing proteciton around that noise.

Hopefully, eventually (about 1.5-2 years from now) you will heal and will become more resilient allowing you to expose yourself to more noises (as those noises will stop feeling too loud to you, and will stop resulting in pain). But it is probably a good idea to never use headphones or go to a movie theater again. Many people who took avoiding noise seriously have experienced their tinnitus fading.

Check out
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/learn-from-others-mistakes.29437/

Also, check out
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...eone-else-who-has-tinnitus.26850/#post-307822

and

Thank you for the reply, I wish I knew this a long ago, now I see that I have been hurting my ears more and I shouldn't even be surprised. I will try to stay away from loud noises as much as I can, I guess the best healer is time, thanks again

 

[Bill Bauer]

I see that I have been hurting my ears more

Hopefully you haven't done much damage, but it would appear that your actions certainly haven't promoted healing.

Another thing to keep in mind is to not overdo it. Stay away from the noises that don't feel right to you, but don't protect from All noises all of the time.

 

[Mathieulh]

You need to give your ears time to heal (by this I mean months at the very least) by constantly exposing yourself to noise or headphones you have been delaying the healing process, if not potentially worsen the condition of your inner ear, considering your symptoms, I can say with utmost certainty that your tinnitus is noise induced, protect your ears and the perceived tinnitus level may decrease if not fade away, depending on how much damage you have done and the extent of it, I won't lie to you though, given how you have been mistreating your ears, this, should it happen, will likely take years.

You have not listened to your body's own warnings and now you are suffering the consequences; take this as a lesson and make sure to treat your ears better, they have sustained damage, some of which is likely irreversible, which means that even if your tinnitus gets better or entirely fades, you are more likely to sustain further hearing damage than the average person, and will likely be for the rest of your days, this means you will need to keep protecting your ears and remain mindful that you are more susceptible to get damage from loud noises. I am not saying to avoid all noises, but loud environments are no longer for you.

 

[Candy]

My audiologist told me it's ok to listen to ear phones for short times at low volume to give you some relief so if you used them for a short time it's probably a coincidence that your tinnitus went up.

Lots of tinnitus sufferers use them to give themselves a break so I guess we'd know by now if they were that dangerous.

 

[Contrast]

You describe over exposure to headphones causing noise induced pain, tinnitus, and hyperacusis and ear fullness.

See a doctor and tell them that. They have to know it's noise related.

Why are you in denial of the obvious? You were injured by noise. A lot of people tell comforting lies to themself that it's not noise related, but those are the ones that get worse.

 

[Digital Doc]

The T, ear fullness, and ear pain, are all classic symptoms of an acoustic trauma. If this happened from the headphones, so be it, and don't use them again.

 

[ChrisBoyMonkey]

You should also check out the treatments threads. Lenire is the pretty much the first thing ever and it's rolling out now. Good success rate from their trials too.

 

[miodragdimic]

You describe over exposure to headphones causing noise induced pain, tinnitus, and hyperacusis and ear fullness.

See a doctor and tell them that. They have to know it's noise related.

Why are you in denial of the obvious? You were injured by noise. A lot of people tell comforting lies to themself that it's not noise related, but those are the ones that get worse.

It's really hard to accept that you are permanently damaged for a such a BS thing. I didn't want to accept it because I was scared and because I didn't have any hearing loss.

 

[Contrast]

It's really hard to accept that you are permanently damaged for a such a BS thing. I didn't want to accept it because I was scared and because I didn't have any hearing loss.

https://hyperacusisfocus.org/innerear/#hiddenloss

Hearing loss outside of vital human speech range is not tested on standard hearing test, one can experience muffled hearing in noisy environments and trouble recognizing music and be told that they have "perfect hearing".

I am one of those people. It took literally 4 ENT's for me to finally be diagnosed with 'hidden hearing loss. Overtime my HHL improved decently. But I do not expect my hearing to ever be as sharp as it was post acoustic injury.

 

[Juan]

It's really hard to accept that you are permanently damaged for a such a BS thing. I didn't want to accept it because I was scared and because I didn't have any hearing loss.

You may have hidden hearing loss.

 

[Sevv]

https://hyperacusisfocus.org/innerear/#hiddenloss

Hearing loss outside of vital human speech range is not tested on standard hearing test, one can experience muffled hearing in noisy environments and trouble recognizing music and be told that they have "perfect hearing".

I am one of those people. It took literally 4 ENT's for me to finally be diagnosed with 'hidden hearing loss. Overtime my HHL improved decently. But I do not expect my hearing to ever be as sharp as it was post acoustic injury.

Did you clearly experience hearing problems in noisy environments? Or how did they test that?

 

[Contrast]

Did you clearly experience hearing problems in noisy environments? Or how did they test that?

yes I do, they don't test it. That's the controversy. Most ENT's don't care about science they just stick with outdated protocol.

 

[Mathieulh]

My audiologist told me it's ok to listen to ear phones for short times at low volume to give you some relief so if you used them for a short time it's probably a coincidence that your tinnitus went up.

Lots of tinnitus sufferers use them to give themselves a break so I guess we'd know by now if they were that dangerous.

That's only true several months after the onset/trauma, before then you are in the acute phase your ears are more susceptible to damages and need as less stress as possible to promote their healing, this means that the use of headphones and being exposed to loud noises up to 6 months after trauma is very detrimental to a possible recovery and should be avoided.