Tinnitus for 10 Months. [Having Anxiety and Hearing Loss for a Long Time]

Hi all

I'm Akash from India. Age 24. Software Engineer.

My medical background:
1. I've hearing loss from 8+ years now in left year only around 40-60 db. Most probable cause was some nerve damage as per doctors.
2. I've problem of anxiety for last 5 years. Some times it is high and some time it is manageable.

Now coming to tinnitus:
My tinnitus started 10 months back. My anxiety was high and I was panic that day which had happened my times. But on that night my sleep broke with some sound and I realized it is from ears. The sound was of constant single frequency, not too loud. On diagnosis doctor told me it's Otosclerosis in middle ear, no medication required and will go in some time.

For next 3-4 months I rarely notice it. Only after the exposure of loud sound it increases for some days. But later it started to slowly increase and keep on increasing till now. T sound is now mix of many frequencies and sound keeps on changing time to time. ENT told me it is possibly cochlear otoscriolosis and they don't have nay proper treatment.

Factors affecting my T:
1. Loud sounds: it may be siren, cooker wistle or some time TV too even on normal volume, sound of ceiling FAN. All those and many more increase the T sound.
2. Anxiety: I find it T drops as I feel more relaxed and immediately increase if I got stressed out, panic or any other form of anxiety.
3. Random: Very few times T sound just spikes ups to the max without any visible reason.
4. Sleep: Some time after sleep it decrease and some times it increase.

Treatment
1. Using hearing aids with white noise(Zen) from 1 month. Helps me a bit, at least distract me from T sound if T is not so high. Helping me habituating but not reducing it.
2. Ayurvedic Treatment: Shirodhara, nasyam, karna pura were the treatment given to me for 1 week and 2 weeks and both times T reduce for some days but later increase.
3. Meditation(Vipassana) : It helps me a lot in habituation and I notice when I'm in very deep meditation and and relaxed the T reduce significantly but it always increase after some time.
4. YOGA: Recently I stared pranayam which relax my mind and make me less reactive to the T sound. Altough the T sound does not decrease.

My Questions:
1) I feel that whenever I feel relaxed T is lower and as anxiety increase it also increase. Is it possible that anxiety is the main culprit not my ears (i.e. cochlear otoscrolosis)?
2) If anxiety is the culprit, then if I settled my anxiety issue completely, will there any chance that my T would also stop?
3) Is there any specialist I should seek for my condition other than ENT and psychiatrist?
4) Is there any supplement that should I try ?

Please help me out here. Feel free to give your suggestions and guide me how to continue with my T. Please share if you have some informational links that shows relation between mental health and Tinnitus. Thanks in advance.

 

Hi de hi,
Sorry to hear about your condition. I know next to nothing about this T which we all seem to have in one form or another. At the moment mine is around 8 out of 10. I'm wondering how l can face yet another crap day of high pitched screaming... You have just got to wipe them tears away and focus on something positive..
You see a guy in a wheel chair.. Would you swap your T for a wheel chair ?.. And yet the wheelchair guy gets on with it... and so will we bud and so will we.
The advancement in Medicine is travelling at a thousand miles an hour.. It will soon be our turn to be cured. Meanwhile lets get up and shake the shit of and enjoy the day...

 

I believe that you made things worse by not listening to the signals your body was trying to send to you and by continuing to expose yourself to loud sounds.

You might want to try staying away even from moderate noises like that of a vacuum cleaner or a blender. Try it for 6 months and see whether this will help (or at least stop your T from getting worse).

Check out the thread below where I summarize everything (27 tips) I learned about managing tinnitus after reading the posts on this forum for the past year.
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...eone-else-who-has-tinnitus.26850/#post-307822