Poll: How Long Was Your Longest Spike?

[Marcuso22]

Since I'm taking medications at night it's difficult to assess how long my spikes would have lasted, since the meds usually help me by the next day after a spike where it's back to its 'baseline' reactive oscillating tinnitus.

But some days are so debilitating that I become suicidal & then a day after that I can have a 'good' day where I'm not suicidal.

I don't know if this should count but the longest 'spike' would be from getting the COVID-19 vaccine, particularly the last one which was a booster shot. I don't really think this though should be considered a "spike" in real sense (hence the reason for the scare quotes) because it's more of a temporary change (the last time about a week in duration) in quality type of perception of the sound rather than perceived loudness alone.

 

[ZFire]

When you say reactive tinnitus, what do you mean?

Tinnitus that spikes widely as a result of the 1) food you eat, 2) the medications you take, 3) the noises around you, 4) any other provocations - dental work, household appliances like lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners, etc. (that transmit vibrations through bone conduction and directly affect the cochlear cells). Many foods spike mine (dairy, salt, etc.), many noises aggravate it and lead to long-lasting (3-4 month-long) spikes. Exercising (walking and cycling) led to semi-permanent spikes every time I do these activities. Also - toothpaste greatly aggravtes it (some brands are worse offenders than others). Besides, any dental work would likely spell the end for me and it's been quite hard finding dentists who have and can use laser to treat hard tissues (teeth). I cannot tolerate almost any medications or cosmetics - hand creams, for instance, as well as colognes or deodorants lead to noticeable spikes that last at least half a day. Believe me - living with tinnitus is difficult, but living with reactive tinnitus can take those difficulties to an entire new level...

One other observation: for those with reactive tinnitus, spikes can last very long - months and even more than a year. The problem is that once the spike begins, other daily aggressors (almost unavoidable) further and further aggravate it, making it very prolonged. I've been in one such for the past 7 months and it's gotten progressively worse and worse - started when a train horn blasted me from about 80-100 feet (I was wearing ear plugs and ear muffs but those were not enough to protect me from the 150+ dB sound) and has been going in the wrong direction ever since.

There's 2 known variations for reactive tinnitus. It's been well documented here.

Variation 1 is what @Chris S. just outlined, but it's usually tinnitus spiking easily after noise exposure.

The 2nd variation - Your tinnitus tone(s) or noise will increase in volume immediately when exposed to certain types of noise. Tinnitus will match the volume of the sound source that's triggering the reactivity, almost as if it were a competition to see which sound overwhelms your auditory system more. Once the source of sound is removed, the tinnitus that's reacting will immediately go back down to familiar baseline.

I have this variation above. Air conditioners trigger my reactivity. The higher the fan speed, the louder the tinnitus will be. When I turn off the AC, tinnitus goes back down to my familiar baseline.

It's possible to have both.