Hi
@Steve10608 -
My pleasure, happy to help, where I can!
Generally (and I know this isn't a great answer here), especially when it comes to Tinnitus, the simplest explanation as to what happened to cause your Tinnitus is actually the one that is closest to the truth. The logical principle of Occam's Razor actually provides a great deal of comfort to many of us who have some pieces of the background information about the days and events leading up to the initial onset of our Tinnitus, as a way of conferring a sense of peace as to what has happened. In short, based upon your post earlier today, there are two likely scenarios (assuming the factors that are likely to have contributed to your Tinnitus were completely known and disclosed as per above):
- Either you fired a rifle without hearing protection, and this caused your Tinnitus (since it started immediately thereafter); OR,
- You fired your rifle without hearing protection and ringing started immediately thereafter, but instead, either a virus, or Eustachian Tube Dysfunction, or sinus infections, actually was responsible for your Tinnitus.
The second scenario isn't impossible - in fact, a lot of the research I've read suggests that the neural misfiring in the auditory nerve pathways of the brain routinely misfire for pretty much everyone, but just at very low and nearly undetectable rates. (Some people describe this as "incidental" or "transient Tinnitus.") So, it's possible you've been suffering from a low case of infection or ETD-aggravated Tinnitus, and the rifle fire without hearing protection happened to trigger a cascade reaction that amplified the secondary neuropathy responsible for producing your particular Tinnitus.
However, I don't think it's likely that this is what happened, unfortunately. I think your rifle encounter is the most likely explanation to have caused your Tinnitus, which is both good and bad.
Damage to hearing is the most likely cause of Tinnitus, and the most clearly understood. Unfortunately, it also is permanent and has no cure. So even though medical practitioners do know that permanent damage to hearing organs causes hearing loss and cochlear nerve damage that is irreparable, they don't really know why the brain is misfiring to create Tinnitus. One way of thinking about it is that Tinnitus itself is not the disease - it's just a symptom, and this is generally true no matter what caused your Tinnitus. In my case, my dysfunction is a chronic condition consisting of a spasming series of head and neck muscles aggravated through months (possibly years) of high stress, poor posture, and terrible sleep. Chronic conditions, however, don't represent the majority of Tinnitus cases, and most Tinnitus cases will ultimately be directly correlated to a loss in hearing.
The good news here, however, is that, sometimes (rarely) Tinnitus is
treatable when you know the cause. When people suffer from
pulsatile Tinnitus (which actually should be thought of as a vascular condition, rather than as a neurological one), there is hope that the underlying circulatory conflict can be corrected. With damage to hearing organs, while this damage tends to be permanent, the Tinnitus itself need not be. The Armed Forces have amassed decades of research connected to hearing loss and Tinnitus derived from hearing loss, and I am personally confident that solutions for veterans who suffer from Tinnitus (and by extension, to the general public who have had hearing-damage-caused Tinnitus) are just years away, not decades.
So there is hope here, and things you can do
right now to help yourself, and it comes in various forms:
- See an ENT, again.
Get a second opinion from an ENT specializing in hearing damage and Tinnitus as a side effect. You shouldn't give up on the medical profession because -- while it is true that Tinnitus is very poorly understood, and ENTs even disagree with neurologists as to what exactly is going on -- damage to hearing organs is, fortunately, treatable, but you need a thorough analysis first. Where have you lost your hearing? What conditions exacerbate your Tinnitus? Is the sound directly corresponding to the loss of frequency perception? There's a chance - however remote - that wearing a hearing aid or cochlear implant may cause the Tinnitus to go away, but only a doctor can advise you about the likelihood of that happening.
- Start Masking and Protecting.
If you're not masking already, you should. I've read that people who suffer from hearing damage can improve their habituation rates by masking. Additionally, you should be protecting your hearing so that further damage is not sustained. People who damage their hearing are more likely to suffer from additional hearing damage, even at lower amplifications, than people who have relatively undamaged hearing organs.
- Accelerate Habituation.
Habituation is inevitable for everyone - no matter how loud your Tinnitus or debilitating its effects. For the first 90 days, Tinnitus is an an "acute" phase (largely an arbitrary measure, but the American Tinnitus Association is using a few uniform standards derived from neuropsychology): firstly, this means that your mind doesn't know how to interpret this incorrect stimulus and the parasympathetic system is eliciting a "fight-or-flight" response which causes distress and panic -- this is entirely subconscious - and over time, as your body realizes that Tinnitus is not some mortal threat, it will begin to push its neurological response down into the sympathetic system (or the limbic) system, which will enable you to perceive the Tinnitus (and it will still be distracting) but you won't be sent into a state of horror by it. After you have exited the acute phase, you will start to notice considerable improvements in your ability to concentrate and focus beyond/past the Tinnitus. Over time (the average is 12-18 months), you will eventually be able to ignore the Tinnitus completely. There is no hard-and-fast rule for how long it takes people to become habituated, and in truth, it's not a "cure" because the Tinnitus is still there, it's just that you simply don't care. For some people, this happens very quickly; for others, it can take many months or even years. You can accelerate your body's natural pace at habituating by undergoing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (abbreviated as CBT on this forum). CBT, and the various psychological treatments associated with them, train you to stop obsessing with the Tinnitus and further amplifies non-obsessive and non-compulsive behaviors, which become preferred neural pathways. In time, you simply become habituated sooner.
So, like veterans of the armed forces, there is a chance that medical care can cure or resolve the Tinnitus caused by the deficit to your hearing as a result of firing your rifle without hearing protection. In fact, I've personally witnessed an in-law relative who has had Tinnitus since he fought in Vietnam discovering that by wearing advanced hearing aides that restore high frequency perception, the Tinnitus faded away to the point that he was disturbed by the silence for the first time in 40 years. You need not wait that long, if you're a candidate. That said, the use cases where hearing aides will cure Tinnitus are very rare and usually apply to very specific types of cochlear damage caused by over-exposure.
Your best bet is to accelerate habituation. It may seem like it's easier said than done, but it's actually easier done than said: habituation is less about trying to do something, and more about trying
not to do something; that is, habituation is the journey away from Tinnitus and back towards silence. There are numerous success stories on this site about how people have self-habituated mainly by approaching this cognitive behavioral mindset, and I would absolutely encourage you to follow in their footsteps. Since you've had Tinnitus now for a couple of months, and since you are starting to show some signs of improvement connected with your ear-popping, there's a good chance that your habituation might be commencing.
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