Question for Anyone Who Knows a Lot About Tinnitus and Hearing Loss

[Jkph75]

I have had T for the past 2 months. Sometimes it is a couple of tones. Other times I can hear up to 4 tones. It is pretty loud. I also hear swooshing and crackling sometimes. Sometimes, for a minute something sounds distorted. Sometimes I feel like I can't hear well yet my hearing is not reduced. I have had 5 hearing tests. All of them were normal. All I know for sure is that I have tinnitus and TMJ. I believe I am losing my hearing. It doesn't seem like I could possibly have T this loud or keep getting new tones without it. The occasional distorted sounds also make me believe this is the beginning of losing my hearing. So, I guess my question is this the beginning of losing my hearing or am I just not understanding what tinnitus is?

 

[Owen]

I think a lot of people with tinnitus go through similar experiences. I have suffered severe distortion and multiple tones coming and going, central noises and noises in just one ear. The perceived amplitude seems to go up and down as well. I too thought I was going deaf late last summer when I noticed that some sounds were really distorted - it almost sounded like people had speech impediments when talking as there were extra tones to their speech, so although most of the tinnitus tones are over 1 kHz, the distortion was clearly occurring much lower than that.

The distortion at least seems to have settled a lot though and although I still definitely have tinnitus, it has actually become intermittent and most days I have a couple of hours where it seems to go completely. I'm really hopeful in time that it will become longer and longer that I don't hear it, but based on progress so far, that will be many months yet, if ever...

More importantly, I no longer believe I am going to lose my hearing completely - not just yet anyway!

 

[Jkph75]

So, how do you know if you're losing your hearing? What is causing the sounds to change and increase if it's not hearing loss?

 

[NineNails]

What is causing the sounds to change and increase if it's not hearing loss?

Healing or deterioration.

 

[Jkph75]

I'm not healing, so it's deterioration, which means I will lose my hearing. Is that what you are saying?

 

[zombiechick]

@Jkph75 I would go get your hearing checked. There is no way to say of you're losing your hearing. My tinnitus can get so loud it distracts from hearing people properly. I do have a high frequency hearing loss but you really need to speak to a specialist (audiologis).

 

[Jkph75]

@zombiechick
I've had it checked 5 times in the past 2 months. I'm pretty sure they're not going to let me get it checked again for a while. If I could get it checked every day I would. Music is starting to sound distorted the past couple of days. I can't see any reason for this except losing my hearing, unless there is just something I'm not understanding about tinnitus.

 

[zombiechick]

@Jkph75 have you been to a neurologist? Had an mri? Could this be severe anxiety? If your hearing checked out, I'm sure it's fine and you're putting way too much into it. My hearing loss has been pretty consistent. Had it since I was 12.

 

[click]

I'm not healing, so it's deterioration, which means I will lose my hearing. Is that what you are saying?

Nine nails might indeed be saying that but it's not necessarily accurate. Many of us us have had periods when our T has got worse, louder, changed etc. and it has settled back down again - without any loss of hearing. My hearing is just fine but my T varies considerably.

Nobody fully understands tinnitus. Even the facts that have been established don't necessarily apply to all types of T.

Try not to be anxious about your hearing - hopefully the sound distortion will disappear.

 

[Owen]

@Jkph75 Perhaps I should have put a time frame on it, but my hearing was distorted for several weeks. Even now, 6 months on, I still have some distortion, but it is significantly less severe and most of the time I don't really notice it - I promise you though, it really was bad!

I personally think that it is caused by broad spectrum tinnitus (this is my naming convention), i.e. the brain is actually perceiving tinnitus at multiple frequencies. However, some are perceived as louder than others and these are the ones you notice more, possibly even masking the quieter ones. This could also mean that inputs could easily be stimulating at one frequency, but the brain is still perceiving inputs at another and getting inter-modulated frequencies - this is seen in RF electronics, so may also apply to hearing - this is speculation on my part, but the physics at least holds.

If you totally understood tinnitus, you would be considered a foremost authority on the subject. No-one and I mean no-one fully understands it. Anyway that claims to, understands far less than they thi9nk they do. If having it and talking to other people has taught me only thing, it is that every single person seems to experience it slightly differently. There are so many factors that affect it. These range from personality types, e.g., how you emotionally respond to situations, through to the exact nature of any physical damage, which maybe to the nerves, the blood vessels, or the auditory hairs, which in turn maybe permanent or temporary. Healing itself is also unpredictable. Sometimes you might cut yourself and the healing almost looks perfect, whilst at other times, you could scar quite badly from a similar cut - why would the healing of the auditory system be fundamentally different?

It is the unpredictability that makes it so scary to so many people - I include myself in this. I think the thing you have to give it more than anything is time. Even if it doesn't improve significantly in terms of any damage, the plasticity of the brain means that it will adapt.

 

[Jkph75]

@Owen

That makes a lot of sense. The strange thing is that it isn't all the time. It happened the day I wrote this and the day before. It has happened before but then only for a second. I thought that my hearing was going up and down. Then, after all of the hearing tests I realized that it is just my tinnitus getting louder and softer at times which seems strange also.

 

[Owen]

it is just my tinnitus getting louder and softer at times

I get exactly the same thing - even at its worst, it wasn't always distorted, just sometimes. I have posted a number of times about the fact that mine actually disappears completely sometimes. Tinnitus really is very odd.