Hi,
I am new to these forums I briefly described my tinnitus back story in another post I wrote earlier (https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/hello-and-thank-you.26534/).
I am suffering from consistent ringing in my left ear predominantly and I feel I have increased sensitivity to sound (hyperacusis). It is difficult to know where to begin but I'm just looking for some direction in terms of management and treatment.
From the information I have garnered from these forums my approach for the last couple of days has been to protect myself from any potential harmful noise levels that may incur more damage to my poor ears. That has meant me staying in my apartment which is unfortunately located fairly centrally in a highly urbanised area. I have ordered both earmuffs and earplugs online and they should arrive in a couple of days. Until then I will protect my ears from more damage by not going outside where there are potentially harmful noise sources I have no control over.
Which brings me to my next issue, how do people balance between protecting their ears from harmful levels of noise without increasing their hyperacusis? From reading posts on these forums I am fully aware of the danger of overprotection which increasing your sensitivity to noise which poses problems in itself. So to counteract this I have been playing videos on YouTube of rainfall and waves at low levels as background noise. I have also attempted to do this at night while sleeping because I read that it can be bad to lie awake in a quiet room as this allows your brain to focus more on the ring.
The problem is that when I play these videos it seems to increase the volume of ringing by a good deal. I try to place the volume of the video to be just below the volume of ringing but it seems my ringing just gets louder. Is this a bad thing? What does it mean? Does an increase in ringing indicate damage to the ears? Or does it mean that the brain is playing tricks and just increasing the volume?
Because of this increased ringing, last night I did not play any sound during the night while going to sleep. But by not having any background noise is it potentially increasing my chances of exacerbating my hyperacusis?
It must be noted that I am using my phone to play these videos. Would I get better results if I used a white noise generator to create background sounds as opposed to using my phone?
I also have a few other random questions but just to be concise and to avoid waffling (as I tend to do
) I'll just list them out.
1) I'm going to a GP tomorrow, what questions should I ask what tests should I expect to indicate that the GP is competent with tinnitus.
2) because I am in the initial acute stage of tinnitus I've read here that it is useful to get steroid treatment (predinisone) and possibly HBOT sessions. I can get access to a hyperbaric chambers and I would definitely use them if it would improve my chances of healing. Is it recommended to do these treatments? And should i ask the GP about it tomorrow or should I just wait to see an ENT first? By waiting however I lose valuable time and from what I've read the earlier I use these treatments the better!
Sorry a lot of questions fired out there and I have loads more but that's enough for now. I'll continue to scour these forums for more answers and advice. There is so much to learn here!!!
Cheers,
Mike
I am new to these forums I briefly described my tinnitus back story in another post I wrote earlier (https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/hello-and-thank-you.26534/).
I am suffering from consistent ringing in my left ear predominantly and I feel I have increased sensitivity to sound (hyperacusis). It is difficult to know where to begin but I'm just looking for some direction in terms of management and treatment.
From the information I have garnered from these forums my approach for the last couple of days has been to protect myself from any potential harmful noise levels that may incur more damage to my poor ears. That has meant me staying in my apartment which is unfortunately located fairly centrally in a highly urbanised area. I have ordered both earmuffs and earplugs online and they should arrive in a couple of days. Until then I will protect my ears from more damage by not going outside where there are potentially harmful noise sources I have no control over.
Which brings me to my next issue, how do people balance between protecting their ears from harmful levels of noise without increasing their hyperacusis? From reading posts on these forums I am fully aware of the danger of overprotection which increasing your sensitivity to noise which poses problems in itself. So to counteract this I have been playing videos on YouTube of rainfall and waves at low levels as background noise. I have also attempted to do this at night while sleeping because I read that it can be bad to lie awake in a quiet room as this allows your brain to focus more on the ring.
The problem is that when I play these videos it seems to increase the volume of ringing by a good deal. I try to place the volume of the video to be just below the volume of ringing but it seems my ringing just gets louder. Is this a bad thing? What does it mean? Does an increase in ringing indicate damage to the ears? Or does it mean that the brain is playing tricks and just increasing the volume?
Because of this increased ringing, last night I did not play any sound during the night while going to sleep. But by not having any background noise is it potentially increasing my chances of exacerbating my hyperacusis?
It must be noted that I am using my phone to play these videos. Would I get better results if I used a white noise generator to create background sounds as opposed to using my phone?
I also have a few other random questions but just to be concise and to avoid waffling (as I tend to do
) I'll just list them out.1) I'm going to a GP tomorrow, what questions should I ask what tests should I expect to indicate that the GP is competent with tinnitus.
2) because I am in the initial acute stage of tinnitus I've read here that it is useful to get steroid treatment (predinisone) and possibly HBOT sessions. I can get access to a hyperbaric chambers and I would definitely use them if it would improve my chances of healing. Is it recommended to do these treatments? And should i ask the GP about it tomorrow or should I just wait to see an ENT first? By waiting however I lose valuable time and from what I've read the earlier I use these treatments the better!
Sorry a lot of questions fired out there and I have loads more but that's enough for now. I'll continue to scour these forums for more answers and advice. There is so much to learn here!!!
Cheers,
Mike
Member
