Bilateral Tinnitus May Be Hereditary

You can read the article in the Swedish Facebook group HRF: Tinnitus och ljudöverkänslighet.

 

I have had a lot of stress at work and in my private life. and my tinnitus didn't come after concert or something like that. My hearing test was fine.

 

@Niklas are you talking about the interview in Aftonbladet? have you been able to read it? I haven't been able to check if there hasn't been any exaggerations. Would love to get a copy.

 

@Samir - Nature journals had problems with the early release of some articles. You can now find it here:
http://rdcu.be/qkr1

Let me know if this works - will try to answer all your questions above as well when time permits

 

You seem to misunderstand the paper you are quoting. It isn't 515 patients. It's 515 papers. They also didn't gather information on patients, they used statistics reported in the papers they included in the analysis.

FWIW, Christopher R. Cederroth isn't an author of the paper you are quoting.

 

The number of patients in the original studies is irrelevant to the amount of work in a systematic review.

The authors of the paper did not collect the data, and the folks behind the twins registry are unlikely to administer hearing tests.

I must have missed the reference: what is the STOP study?

 

This is STOP
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/swedish-research-study-sign-up-fellow-swedes.13013/

 

Thanks. I missed that.

 

@CederrothCr

Yes, Aftonbladet. some one quoted it on FB, so I don't have a copy of the article. but I can post the quote to you in a private message.

 

I don't know really, it could be some help for you who suffer of Tinnitus. I see this notion of blaming and irritation when people think others or even themselves caused their tinnitus.

I guess you could start blaming your parents instead..

Well there is a study who says genetics is partly the reason.
In my case it is kinda of depressing because my mom has somewhat of a high tinnitus and I myself just have it from time to time due to my worthless sinuses.
But let us not making this to a pity competition.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170309120434.htm

 

@EddieMar since you are quite close to those in the know at Stanford. What do they eventually say. Will it be fixed within several years? It must be quite awful to have 8 to 10 patients a day and tell them you can't do anything.

 

Sorry, barely saw this. They didn't mention a timeline on curing T.

I saw another ENT from Sutter Gould, super old man, not sure why he's still working, it took him 5 minutes to sit down. Turns out he's one of the founding members of the American Tinnitus Association since before it was called that, or before it had a name, something like that. He said they are close to introducing a new drug approved by the FDA within 3-4 years but he had no information on it, or how it would work.

He said he sees a couple Tinnitus patients a week. An old war veteran came to see him for a reason other than Tinnitus. In talking, the veteran told him a grenade had exploded close to him causing his ears to ring and they just never stopped. He asked him, "do you have the ringing right now?" and the vet said, "hold on, give me a second," so he pauses for a bit, until he hears it and says, "yep, I still have it." - ---The ENT trying to tell me he had habituated to it and he no longer notices it. The goal he said is to treat it like elevator music.

I just saw an audiologist/counselor at UCSF Medical. They did another audiology test, this time they went up to frequency 20K, the others had only measured to 8k.

The results. My right ear was fine, within normal hearing range, I was able to hear up to 20K.

My left ear, which is my main problem ear, I had a bigger dip around the 3.5 and 4K area, but she said it was within normal range and would not consider it being worse than it was last year. She said she could test me that same day it could score better. Even though it's dipped, she said she would not consider it notched. It still bummed me out that it scored worse than last year. :/

On that same left ear, I was only able to hear up to 16k, I couldn't hear 18 or 20k frequencies.

She said that might help explain my Tinnitus but would still regard my audiogram as normal. There is hidden hearing loss that they cannot measure and that too can be the source of the Tinnitus.

She also said if my hairs are damaged, they can be damaged from the top or from the root. She said there was no way to measure that. Another ENT had mentioned this, he said if the damage was at the bottom, it can come to a point that the hair breaks off and in doing so, it can alleviate the ringing, if all damaged hairs die off I guess. He didn't specify.

She said, the UCSF counselor I saw today, for me, my main problem is my anxiety. If I can learn to control that, my Tinnitus would diminish or I would easily habituate to it. She recommend the obvious, Tinnitus Retraining Therapy using a sound generator and CBT. I tried a sound generator for the first time there and I really liked it. It's small, barely visible, fits good in the ear and it has holes so that external sounds can come in easily. They're $1,000 each and they recommend getting two, one for each ear because if we just use it for the bad ear, then the good ear gets stronger and they don't want that.

Other treatment she mentioned was Desyncra; CR Neuromodulation. They use a customized iPod device with custom designed earphones. The therapeutic tones are tailored the patients' exact tinnitus profile. Patients wear the devices 4-6 hours per day over a 36 week period. The tones are quiet yet audible, allowing patients to continue with everyday patient activities. Desyncra changes the patterns in neural tinnitus networks, showing reduced delta wave activity across neuronal networks. Patients report reduced loudness and reduced annoyance. As therapy progresses, the brain plasticity enables long term benefits beyond the therapy period. This technology was developed in Germany. The cost she said was $4,500.

She also advised trying www.mindfultinnitusrelief.com

They gave me a Tinnitus Home Packet, 48 pages, if anyone things it might help them, let me know and I can scan it and e-mail it. The quality isn't good as it seems they've made copies of copies of copies but if I scan it high quality, it should be fine.

The table of contents includes:

1. Tinnitus consultation recap
2. Anatomy and Physiology of the ear and hearing
3. Perception and evaluation diagram
4. Vicious-circle model of tinnitus
5. Definitions of cognitive distortions
6. Goals worksheet
7. Emotion cost-benefits analysis
8. Overcoming insomnia
9. Sleep tips
10. De-stressing-your way
11. Tinnitus device directory
12. Adverse herbal medicine reactions & Audiology practice
13. Adverse drug reactions and Audiology practice
14. References

I asked if a Cochlea implant cold be a solutions. She said NO. I'm not a candidate and to be a candidate, you'll need to be pretty much deaf at all ranges. She said, that only half of Cochlea recipients find the surgery helps with their tinnitus.

I asked, what if they cut the auditory nerve to that ear, you know, in a worse case scenario. She said that would make it worse!

I asked her, now that I have Tinnitus, would it be easier to cause more damage to my hearing vs someone that doesn't. She said no, but that everybody has different hearing sensitivities but having Tinnitus does not mean you are more prone to damaging your hearing easier.

I told her about a trip I took from California to Washington last month, 13 hours by car. The Sound Meter on my phone registered between 79 and 90 decibels all trip, averaging 83 decibels. She said long car trips at around 85-90 decibels can cause hearing damage. Cellphone meters are not accurate, they can be off by 2-5 db each way, so she recommended to wear ear protection on long trips, 2 hours off, 2 hours on, etc.

I showed my musician ear plugs I bought, which measure at 32 db. She said in reality, they might just be around 16 db. She said most earplugs commercial bought, their db rating is exaggerated as they don't test them in real life scenarios. In real life situations, they're just good for half their rating.

Custom molded earplugs through them are $300. They start off at 10db and cut off at 25db, and that's true 25db rating - maybe $300 is for the lowest rated ear plugs. I had just seen a video of the main singer of Cold Play who mentioned he had custom molded earplugs.

 

and clubs, playing gigs, etc