Causes for Tinnitus Outside of Noise Blasts. Have One of These Things Happen?

Okay, so I found this out. But before you read it, it says "may" not "will". I have met people who got in car accidents whose tinnitus went away. I don't want anyone thinking their tinnitus will not go away or that it can't be lowered. Many people who have tinnitus can at least lower it.


"Glutamate is the most important afferent neurotransmitter within the inner ear. A massive glutamate release induced by cochlear damage may result in excitotoxicity and irrevocable cell death."

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17943261

Too much glutamate can also be released other ways. This can explain what excitotoxicity is:

Excitotoxicity is the pathological process by which nerve cells are damaged or killed by excessive stimulation by neurotransmitters such as glutamate and similar substances. This occurs when receptors for the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate (glutamate receptors) such as the NMDA receptor and AMPA receptor are overactivated by glutamatergic storm.

Now, notice all the things that can cause this:

Excitotoxicity may be involved in spinal cord injury, stroke, traumatic brain injury, hearing loss (through noise overexposure or ototoxicity), and in neurodegenerative diseases of the central nervous system (CNS) such asmultiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson's disease, alcoholism or alcohol withdrawal and especially over-rapid benzodiazepine withdrawal, and also Huntington's disease.[3][4] Other common conditions that cause excessive glutamate concentrations around neurons are hypoglycemia.

Source: Wikipedia

Anyone have any of these conditions?

I am also wondering if chronic stress can increase glutamate. If anyone knows this, please comment. Also, as far as damaged nerve cells, does anyone have any good ideas on how they can be repaired?

 

All I know with copious reading including this forum and others, chronic stress or a major stressful event in a person's life seems to be a single precipitating cause of tinnitus over and above loud noise exposure. I am sure there are others as well but if there is a common theme on this forum, tinnitus appears for many one day after a period of high stress. So I believe its safe to say there is linkage within the brain between emotional state and the mind creating an illusionary noise that doesn't exist.
The best I can surmise for myself for example is...the only thing I can assign as a cause for my tinnitus is a stressful event in my life. My hearing seems to be pretty good. My tinnitus goes up and down in volume. Moderate days and very low days and gradations in between.

Will say further, I applaud the effort of so many on this forum to try to piece together cause and effect of underlying contributors to tinnitus. Yes, we are trying to make some sense as to why in the hell all of a sudden we now have this noise in our head we can't turn off after decades of perfect hearing. The reality is, the layperson has virtually no chance to figure this out. The brightest minds from MIT haven't been able to solve tinnitus or make a discernible dent it in. Interaction between hearing, the perception of sound and the electrical and biochemistry of the brain is off the rails complex in its nature. Identifying a single neurotransmitter like Glutamate as a contributor for example I personally believe is ill founded. There are probably one hundred contributing factors to tinnitus in terms of brain chemistry that cause it. Likely a perfect storm of conditions which stress can influence. A long list of contributing factors that vary for each individual. For example it could be an interaction between serotonin and glutamate and different hormones in the body that bends of the arc of neuroplasticity to one day hear aka create a sound that doesn't exist. No question this safe will be unlocked one day but not after exhaustive trial and error with each lesson learned being a stepping stone toward solving this riddle.

 

I agree with a lot of what you said about it can't be reduced to something like glutamate and it is very complex with all the chemisty, interactions, and different hormones. Maybe if a supercomputer could be built to mimic the human body they could figure something out.