Can Tinnitus Lead to Meniere's Disease? Can Tinnitus Cause You to Lose Hearing Faster?

1. Can tinnitus lead to Meniere's disease? Especially, if your tone fluctuates.
2. Can tinnitus cause you to lose your hearing faster?

 

Menieres is a progressive disease and comes with lots of symptoms and tinnitus is one of them.
For me my Menieres symptoms came before tinnitus.
Vertigo
Motion sickness
Dizzy
Ear pain and pressure
Bouncy vission
Hearing loss
Tinnitus
Headaches
Balance problems etc

I would say Menieres causes tinnitus and not tinnitus causes Menieres in my view.
Tinnitus can make your hearing fluctuate with sound or sounds in one ear or both or head with no real hearing loss on tests.
Hearing loss itself can cause tinnitus.

Love glynis

 

The short answer is no and no.

Meniere's disease can cause tinnitus, not the other way around. Tinnitus can be a symptom of Meniere's. When it comes to fluctuations, the majority of those who experience that do not have Meniere's.

Noise induced tinnitus typically does not make you lose your hearing any faster than anyone else. But without proper protection in loud settings you're at risk of further damage, and that can cause hearing loss or louder tinnitus. However, this can damage can happen to anyone, both with or without tinnitus.

 

Tinnitus doesn't cause anything rather it is the effect of something.

 

Except anxiety. That's the only thing my tinnitus caused.

 

Actually, your anxiety more likely caused your tinnitus.

 

Not mine: severe hearing loss from a virus. I noticed my hearing loss and tinnitus at the exact same moment. My anxiety came weeks later when I learned just how much hearing I'd lost and that it was permanent.

But quite possible for others.

 

I was dx'd with endolymphatic hydrops.. (fluid in inner ear..pre MD). My understanding is that these symptoms that align with MD may or may not develop into progress to MD.

 

It is normal to have fluid in the inner ear: it's called endolymph & perilymph, and you want to have it there. EH is simply an abnormal fluctuation of the fluid.

 

Thanks for these questions, they've been on my mind as well. Glad to hear No and No. I do have T, dizziness, back of the head pressure after my sound injury, and I've been reading that it's brain rewiring. Hopefully so.

 

Wanted to mention that there is such a thing as Secondary Endolymphatic Hydrops. This is Menieres desease that is caused by an event, and has the same diagnosis. However, secondary has a good chance of resolving itself and is not as severe as primary Menieres. You can read about it here http://vestibular.org/secondary-endolymphatic-hydrops-seh

 

Dmitriy is quite correct, and very kind in not saying the truth: No and No is to put it flatly, not a complete answer. Why? Because the cause of your tinnitus can, under several different mechanisms, cause Meniere's disease. FYI at a recent presentation to the Meniere's Society in GB Philippa Thomason set forth an important distinction between Meniere's Disease and Meniere's Syndrome - if you know the cause it's called syndrome, if idiopathic then MD. =) Be glad to get you the peer reviewed primary literature if you've the capacity (*no insult, but if you don't like reading this junk it'd be a waste of time to link it!) to understand the medical terminology, probability and statistics, and the desire to investigate possible third party motivations of the researchers. Otherwise, just trust me.

 

Oh, and lest I forget to mention it - it's fairly easy for us to distinguish between tinnitus and MD or MS. If we just have ringing and not a debilitating dizziness/nausea that usually passes in under an hour, for example. For some people tinnitus can cause anxiety and MD has been linked to anxiety as well. For others, different kinds of foods. Heck, even brain swellings and tumors can do both! High blood pressure, sodium, alcohol, caffeine, smoking - name any vice and it's likely a possible precipitating factor for MD. Loud noise exposure and head trauma top the list for both.

For me the MD sounds much different than my normal tinnitus. That won't likely be the case for everyone as my hearing loss is high, and the MD cuts out the low tones. So, to me, the tinnitus sounds like I just got my bell rung and the MD sounds like I'm surrounded by an ocean roaring in. (Or more like I'm in a whirlpool.)

I've often considered which is worse. Tinnitus or MD. You'd think MD would be the easy answer - but it passes. Tinnitus does not. I'm reminded of the old saw: "Q: why do you keep hitting yourself in the head with that hammer? A: because it feels so good when I stop!" I've had the ringing so long now that I'd love to test that idea out!

I suppose we could test the converse. Take someone on the drunken barrel ride* - then clobber them and ask which felt worse. Then keep clobbering them and ask again. Hmm - I think I have my answer after all! It wouldn't take long for them to ask to go on the drunken barrel ride again.

I hope this new post on a very old topic provides some of us with a new perspective and perhaps a chuckle or two!!

*Note: I tried for a picture of the drunken barrel ride and kept getting the wrong one. I refer to the one that spins until you are stuck to the wall and then the floor drops out and spins as well so that all your visual cues are spinning.