Back After a Couple of Months with Thoughts on Nerve Repair...

Hello folks. I'm in a stable mood to gather my thoughts this morning so I thought I'd reach out in good spirits.

I've scoured this forum over the last three days to try and pull myself out again with good news after another "slump" when my left ear kicked up another notch on Thursday. Sleep has been...sparse. Playing rain tracks from YT worked for a while before that.

(this one specifically worked ok:

EPIC THUNDER & RAIN | Rainstorm Sounds For...

)

I first posted in Sept. and I can link my newbie post here: https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/ive-hit-a-rough-week.11112/

(I note that it isn't for those that are already in a rough mood so readers be forewarned.)

I didn't know where else to divulge on my thinking except here when it came to discussing personal views on research rather then "factual" lab work done by educated professionals. The one thing kept the gears turning as I spent most of my day off yesterday was just reading, reading, and reading some more until my eyeballs hurt. Perhaps it was the hope of finding new research, hope, and comfort from others to calm my fear and depression.

(Please bear with me as I know a lot of this can be totally wrong, but it's just rambling for kicks.)

What I see a lot of is that key areas of research is devoted to the three primary sensorineural areas of audio reception through the auditory nerve, the SGNs from the nerve and the actual hair cells themselves. From what I gather, this "railroad" is a loop going back to the brain with the message received from the signal originally sent. Due to deterioration of the nerve, loss of SGNs, and loss of hair cells, the signal deteriorates and to compensate, the brain pushes a stronger signal to receive as much or less of a signal back. When the brain crosses a threshold, excessive neuronal firing is included with the signal and is processed with the feed into the brain. This I get.

For me, my audiogram that was done less then two years back shows I have a 15db loss on one side (left) down somewhere at 500-1k and a 10db dip in spots for both sides all the way up to 12K+. Looking at that stumped the heck out of me. I thought there was a bigger problem somewhere with hearing capability, but the doc looked at it said I shouldn't have any problems hearing anything. A $50 trip for nothing.

The constant buzzing in my head clearly indicated otherwise.

After that, I've wondered if enough of the cochlear capability and SGN function remained intact, that the physical damage incurred in 2007 exacerbated BOTH sides of my head instead of just my right. With this in mind, I've read articles like this:

http://ata.org/news/news/new-stem-cell-transplantation-method-restores-damaged-auditory-pathways

with another like this:

http://www.tinnitus.org.uk/tinnitus-and-hidden-hearing-loss

...and considered if simple repair of the auditory nerve would be sufficient to restore the "railroad" to reduce tinnitus to pre-perceptible levels. I know for a fact that the T on my right is clearly attributed to neural stretching of the vagus nerve. I didn't have T on that side until two months after I went to the gun range and stretched it. Once in a while it will randomly burn, sting and ache without warning. The hyperacusis is clearly more prevalent in the right ear compared to the left when I listen to music or happen to have an ambulance scream by (just as I clasp my hands over my ears).

What I hope is that with existing technology of adenovirus injections to repair the nerve or perhaps older nerve grafting, it would be possible to simply repair the nerves to an improved condition on both sides to reduce the T or at least as an improvement on the right.

Thoughts?

 

@PRCRebel I'm very happy to see this post.

I really think that damage to the auditory nerves, loss of the nerve fibers in our ears, are a very underrated aspect looked at by people on this site and a little bit by researchers/pharmaceuticals. It's very likely that the symptoms you have are related to this issue. The term to research about on google is "hidden hearing loss". There are many articles talking about it and it also relates to Age-Related Hearing Loss.

I keep posting this article every where but it clearly states damage to the nerves in the ears are what can cause Tinnitus, not damage to the hair cells.
http://www.tinnitus.org.uk/tinnitus-and-hidden-hearing-loss

I really hope that maybe stem cells or any other type of drug treatment can be used to regrow the auditory nerves back into place. I actually just came across this article today talking about Decibel Therapeutics and how they want to come up with treatments for these nerves so that's good news.
http://medcitynews.com/2015/10/hearing-loss/

Here is another method although it uses cochlear implants to restore damaged auditory nerves
http://www.nature.com/news/regrown-nerves-boost-bionic-ears-1.15082