Tinnitus Started While Sitting in an Office

[Jaka]

Hello

First a short summary:
Start: 22.11.2019
Cause: Unknown, got it while sitting in an office, maybe mild ear infection? Definitely no noise exposure, possibly lack of sleep, stress
Sound: High pitched metallic/electric noise (around 12-13khz), noise not constant, changing, but completely out of sync with heartbeat or anything else. Severity varies, changes while I sleep, usually 1 bad day 1 good day. Moves between ears, sometimes left, sometimes right, sometimes both
Hearing: Fine for my age (can actually hear higher frequencies than my tinnitus)
Tried: Vitamin B supplements, Ginko Biloba, CBD, Magnesium.
I also thought about notch music therapy, but music usually doesn't have audio content which is around 13khz
Looking into hyperbaric therapy also
Effect of possible irritants:
Noisy environment - no effect
Coffee - no effect (but I decreased my daily intake just in case)
Alcohol - helps (since it is known as a depressant of the nervous system, but I would rather steer clear of any such substances in order to not have additional problems)

And now the full sad long story...
On 22.11.2019 I was sitting in the office and suddenly I noticed a high pitched sound.
Ok, I thought that I can hear electronics coil while or something similar, since I could always hear these kind of noises.

After coming home I sent some emails on my computer and the high pitch noise was there again. I thought it was the computer, turned it off, which of course did not help, then I turned off the lights, went outside and finally realised that the high pitch noise is in my head.

I thought it would go away after 1 or 2 days, but it did not. Then during the week I noticed that my right ear felt kind of full, I wanted to book an appointment with my GP, who unfortunately had no free slots that week. But still I thought this will clear up and stop.

It did not. I also gradually got hyperacusis during that week. On Saturday I was a wreck. I kept waking up due to noises, so I phoned ER. They told me that I could get a sedative which I did not want. That time I solved the problem with a bit of alcohol. After drinking, it felt like tinnitus moved to the other room. But of course drinking is not the solution. I hoped next evening would be better... it wasn't, but I managed to fall asleep without taking anything.

On Monday I just went to the GP and said that this is an emergency. They took me in, looked at my ears, checked if my motor skills are fine, etc... and gave me a prescription for an ENT exam.

There are usually long waiting queues in our country, but fortunately I managed to get an appointment next day in another town.

The ENT checked my ears, nose, throat and found nothing unusual. Said that his ears are also ringing and that he does not give a damn, but that he knows that it was due to noise exposure. He said that I should learn to live with it and that after 1 year things get better and that no additional diagnostic procedures are necessary.
On the other hand I can hear just fine. I can still hear 15khz and then the attenuation starts to increase. But I was told that this is expected for my age.

Fortunately hyperacusis went away by that time, but the high pitched tinnitus was still there.
Not accepting ENT's decision for no additional diagnostics, I went back to my GP. She decided I that I should get my blood checked and also that I should get an ultrasound of my neck blood vessels. Now I am waiting for these appointments to take place.
From what I know after that, then the only thing left to do is MRI of my head, then there are no more "established modern medicine" procedures if no problems are found during those tests.

On the other hand I have to confess, that I have a sedentary job and that I was pushing myself too much for quite some time and not getting enough sleep. So this may also be the cause or at least it contributed to my tinnitus development.

After 1 week of tinnitus I changed my lifestyle, let's see if that helps. I also added vitamin B family, ginko biloba extracts and magnesium as supplements. I also started to take CBD.

Mentally this is all very difficult to cope with. Fortunately I can now sleep without help of any "substances". But I still suffer from anxiety and depression from this condition. Sometimes I just burst into tears. One day I was shouting angrily "Please stop, I can't take it anymore". The other day I was doing the same, but begging in tears. I am crying even as I write this rather long post.

The current state is that I believe that my tinnitus is improving very slowly (or I am getting used to it). The pattern is one bad day, one good day, etc... but the overall trend seems to go down.
I still hope every day that this will go away.

 

[Yuuls]

Hello. How did your hyperacusis feel and how long did it take before it got better?

 

[Jaka]

I believe mine was not a particularity bad case.

My hyperacusis started to ramp up gradually. At first it felt discomforting when my better half raised her voice to the children. I also felt bothered by a noisy restaurant. Then this increased to a point where I could not stand being in a noisy place and I felt extreme discomfort when my family was being loud. But it got better when I removed myself from noise.

The peak was on the same day that I called ER for not being able to sleep due to tinnitus. At that time I felt extreme discomfort with loud sounds. It felt like I was unable to filter irrelevant sounds.

I was kind of like coming into a room where something smells funny and you are unable to ignore the smell even though you know it is harmless.

After that it ramped down much quicker than it started.

I can say that it lasted little bit more than a week.

 

[billie48]

The current state is that I believe that my tinnitus is improving very slowly (or I am getting used to it). The pattern is one bad day, one good day, etc... but the overall trend seems to go down.

Welcome to the forum. You have my empathy for the suffering you are going through. But your tinnitus is very new and so be patient. What you describe above is very encouraging. It hopefully will get better with time and TIME is a very important element of healing. Sometimes, despite the best strategies we learn, the body still need the time to slowly heal. No one is a super human. I took 3 years before I wrote my success story. Some may take months but other more severe case of intrusive tinnitus may take years. If you can already get used to your tinnitus, that is very positive. So hang in there and be hopeful. The less stress and anxious you are about T, the more likely your T can be perceived fading as your brain will slowly learn to not focus on T. Good luck in your recovery. God bless.

 

[Jaka]

An update for anyone interested comparing the progression of my case.

I believe that the overall volume is still decreasing slowly, but the most bothering parts of the sound are still there (but thinner if that is the correct way to put it)
A metallic-electric high pitch filtered white noise like sounds in the right ear and high pitched hissing sound in the left ear.
If those sounds go down in volume I can hear a faint "standard" eeee sound in my left ear.

I try not to put attention to these sounds as much asp possible, but since the hissing/electric sounds are intermittent they kind of try to draw my attention.

It also happened that the tinnitus sounds were close to being gone on few mornings when I woke up in bed, but started back up when I started walking around

The ultrasound of neck arteries revealed nothing out of the ordinary. It showed very mild beginning of arteriosclerosis, but nothing alarming for my age. I changed my diet and lifestyle to include a lot more physical activity and as long as I keep it this way there is no reason to worry.
A funny thing here was that as the doctor was probing my neck, I could hear some strange beeping sounds and my tinnitus vanished for the duration of the examination.

Extensive blood tests showed everything was fine except that I have elevated blood LDL (bad cholesterol) and almost no HDL. My diet change and exercise should fix this as well. On the other hand I found a study which suggests that lowering LDL levels helped some tinnitus patients
http://www.tinnitusjournal.com/arti...ts-with-noiseinduced-hearing-loss-and-hyp.pdf

One doctor specialising in treating chronic pain suggested that tinnitus can happen due to bad neck posture, which can cause nerve inflammation and suggested that I try swimming (breaststroke). He did not know that I am working with my notebook a lot and notebooks force people into unnatural posture.
Fortunately I trained swimming in primary school so it was easy to add this to my changed lifestyle. At first I thought that this theory is kind of far fetched, but to my amazement swimming brought the volume down (unfortunately it ramped back up few hours later).
I also discovered that swimming pool splashing water noise has high enough frequency content to mask my tinnitus.
The other thing I noticed is that if I submerge my head (even a little) I can hear underwater noises, but no tinnitus.
After a good month of swimming the effect on the volume has unfortunately lost its power, but swimming pool and submersed head still masks/silences tinnitus.

Running on the other hand sometimes spikes the hissing noise in my left ear, which subsides after the body reverts to resting state.

All in all the lifestyle changes got down my slightly elevated blood pressure, probably significantly decreased chances of having a stroke and made me improve my breaststroke technique to the point that I can even outrun "lesser" swimmers swimming "front crawl"

My GP says that the only exam left to do is head MRI (with ear protection of course) but since I have no hearing loss or balance issues that will probably show up fine, but let's try anyway...

 

[Tybs]

At first I thought that this theory is kind of far fetched, but to my amazement swimming brought the volume down (unfortunately it ramped back up few hours later).

I can confirm that neck issues are a real cause when it comes to having T. My sounds emerged after a relatively small accident at home when falling down the stairs. I did not hit my head or something, but both my shoulder and neck received quite a hit.

Your symptoms seems to be similar to mine as well, especially the sounds differing in volume a lot. I've had quite some days where I woke up in silence for (apparently) no reason. Eventually I found out that my exact posture decides the composition of my sounds.

To give you some hope: I got a lot of relief from physiotherapy, doing a bunch of neck exercises daily. My sounds used to be around 8/10 on average, but these days they differentiate around 1/10. My T was reactive and active 24/7, but now the slightest sound masks it already, and reactiveness dropped with roughly 90%. Brushing my teeth (electric toothbrush) used to give me a spike for 10 minutes: now the spike is much smaller and fades in a few seconds already.

Come to think of it, my only real complaint at the moment is a lack of sleep: my T flares up when lying down. I usually fall asleep in a few minutes, but I always wake up after 4 hours as well, and then I'm not tired enough to get back to sleep anymore. Still, I'd say things improved a lot since I got this condition. Took a lot of work to get in this state though, and I'm still not done with it.

My GP says that the only exam left to do is head MRI (with ear protection of course) but since I have no hearing loss or balance issues that will probably show up fine, but let's try anyway...

MRI could help for diagnosis, but make sure to take a "silent" type. The default ones can go over 100 db, but there are machines available these days that won't get past 70 db. I've had an appointment at one of those, and I can really recommend it: no reason to risk hearing damage on top of the existing issues. Took me five hours extra to drive, and my GP thought it was completely unnecessary to waste a day for it, but I haven't regret it one bit.

 

[Jaka]

MRI could help for diagnosis, but make sure to take a "silent" type. The default ones can go over 100 db, but there are machines available these days that won't get past 70 db. I've had an appointment at one of those, and I can really recommend it: no reason to risk hearing damage on top of the existing issues. Took me five hours extra to drive, and my GP thought it was completely unnecessary to waste a day for it, but I haven't regret it one bit.

Well I could not really choose a silent MRI machine. I could only choose the magnetic field power
So I decided to to take a risk with the machine loudness, since noisy places have zero effect on my tinnitus. But I made extra sure that I had properly inserted earplugs.
I believe I was in the machine for about 40 minutes since they did an extra pass to get inner ear details.
Even if the machine was loud there was no difference to my tinnitus after the procedure and the following 3 days, I guess the ear plugs were sufficient, but it is kind of scary what might happen if your earplugs fall out or are not worn properly.

Today I also got the MRI results and apart from having a slightly deeper sella turcica with a slightly thinner pituitary gland and slight mucosal thickening on walls of both sinuses and in area of ethmoid air cells, there are no pathological changes present.

I will discuss all of the exam results with my GP on Friday, but I believe that I have unfortunately reached the end of the available diagnostic procedures. But I believe that it is good that I followed through everything since now I know that there is definitely no complicated condition that is causing my tinnitus.

 

[dingaling]

What is your office environment like - quiet, noisy? Have you ruled out electrical interference, e.g. from overhead fluorescent lights?

 

[Jaka]

What is your office environment like - quiet, noisy? Have you ruled out electrical interference, e.g. from overhead fluorescent lights?

Office environment noise level is pretty normal. People talking from other side of the office can be heard.
There are fluorescent lights and computers in the office. But there is nothing even remote loud enough to be able to cause hearing damage induced tinnitus.

And I refuse to believe that EM field or something similar triggered my tinnitus. Especially since being 40 minutes in the MRI machine had zero effect.