Been Living with Tinnitus for Some Years, and It Changes a Lot, Like Crazy! What'd Be Causing It?

Hi everyone. My Name is Thierry, I'm from Brazil, I'm 21, and I've been living with a mild case of tinnitus for some years now. Unfortunately I don't even know exactly when it started or what may have caused it. Actually, I'm gonna even try to explain my situation for you guys here and maybe someone with much knowledge could even help me. Not that I'm here to try to self diagnose or anything, but before finally going to see a doctor and eventually see if there's anything they could do to help me, maybe we could even find out what's causing it, right? or at least some hypothesis, I don't know. It's going to be kinda long, ok?

Well, some time during my adolescence it all started. But I had an bycicle accident when I was a kid, I don't remember exactly, I don't know if it could be the cause, but there was a time, I was, maybe, 10-12, I don't know, and I fall off the bike doing a stupid thing, hitting the side of my head, on a tree stump. I remember instantly getting up and realizing that something was wrong with my right ear. It felt clogged, I don't know. I thought I had gone deaf. In despair I came back home, and after keeping it low, because I was afraid my mother would get mad at me if I told her, I remember taking a bath and then lying down and falling asleep. When I woke up, I took my father's cellphone, it was one of those old Nokia, and put the earplugs on and tuned to the radio to see if I could still listen, and it was when I realized I hadn't gone deaf, because even though it was low, I could still hear.

I guess this is a tricky thing, because I don't remember being bothered by any kind of ringing during that time from then on. If I did, somehow I managed to ignore it for years, until, when I had grown up a little bit more, it finally started bothering me. That's why I don't know when it started or why. But, now going back to what I was going to say first, during some time in my adolescence, I started to be bothered by this ringing. Maybe I was 15-16, max. 17 that time. I don't know if it could have been caused by damage due to loud music, but that's more or less when I started to listen to music exclusively through headphones and earphones. But I wonder, isn't this kind of damaged cause by long term exposition? If that's the case, I may be making things even worse because when I started to get bothered by it, the method I found to help me deal with it was listening to even more music, because it would get me distracted from it, and eventually listen to it to fall asleep was extremely necessary. Years passed, I kind of got used to it, but every now and then I kind of loss the ability to ignore it, and recently it started to bother me again after my earplugs broke a few weeks ago and I had to sleep without listening to music.

But recently I noticed some things. I seem to have at least 3 types of ringing, and they change all the time. Unfortunately I don't know if it has always been like that (by this point you already noticed how shitty I am describing time and how blurry my mind is), but at the moment that's what happening, and only one of these ringings really bother me. And here's what's weird: It's not like, there's the ringing and it changes on its own (no, wait, sometimes it does), but some movements I may do with my jaws, like when I speak, eat, or if I sniff, or if I yawn, it all may change its volume/pitch. Sometimes it's only while doing it, but there are times it really changes it for some good time. Sometimes I even use it to ease the ringing. If the one that's ringing is the worse one, I would yawn and it would change to the one I can bear. I may also change according to the way I'm sleeping. What I mean is, this fucking thing changes a lot by a lot of reasons, and I would also like to know if there is such thing as an standard, most ocurred, common way of ringing, and if it is, like, a constant one, that doesn't change, it doesn't matter what you do (if you sniff, cough, hiccup, yawn, put earplugs on or off, etc), because that's how mine seems to be, and I was wondering what this inconsistency might mean, like, maybe it's not related to hearing loss (is this one constant, with no changes whatsoever?), what if it could be caused by other things, such as the nasal passage, ear canal, I don't know. I would be really happy if it could be something like because at least It would have cure wouldn't it? I read some people talking about, relationing, wondering if deviated septum could cause tinnitus, and I do have deviated septum. I've also seen some texts, some people discussing, kind of relationing malocclusion with it, and, again, I also do have it, due to the bad habit of sucking my thumb since I was a baby (even though I'm a grown up already, sometimes, like, when I'm tedious, especially if I'm lying down, I caught myself still doing it LMAO).

So, that's it, guys. It may be a little confusing, sorry. At the end of this year I'm going to visit a doctor, but I would like to discuss it here.

 

Welcome to the forum. It seems from your description that your T may be somatic in nature, as your T can be affected by muscle or jaw movement, and TMJ is one possibility because your jaw movement can affect your T. Do consult a specialist on TMJ to see if you have it. Good luck. God bless.

 

Hi Thierry. For a reasonable complete answer to your question of what causes T please refer to the following:-
The Pathophysiological Mechanism of Tinnitus. Jae Ho Chung and Seung Hwan. Lee Hamyang Medical Review 2016:36:81-85. This is in English and gives good references. It isn't very technical. You can also find other good reports under "Mechanisms of Tinnitus" on the net. The modern view about causes of T is that they start in the brain. It often follows physical damage to the inner ear and then becomes logically similar to the "phantom limb" pain experienced by amputees. If the stump is anaesthetised and the pain continues then it isn't caused by the nerves in the leg near the end of the stump.