Curious How Tinnitus Resolves Itself After Months or Years...

I would love to know how tinnitus resolves itself after months or years. I've been told that once those hairs are burned out that it's permanent...so what happens in the ear that makes it go away, if it ever does? Thanks!

 

You’re correct that once auditory hair cells are gone, they’re gone. Regeneration is not yet possible. If tinnitus goes away, I think it might be a change in the brain. Maybe specifically the limbic system.

 

Nothing happens in the ear, tinnitus may start in the ear but the brain keeps it going. Death of overactive neurons after many years of perm t may explain why it can suddenly disappear

 

Once the damage to the ears are done, they are not reversible. Tinnitus either stays the same or your tinnitus could either fluctuate to a lower tone or a louder tone. There are no guarantees what happens. Doing your best to protect your ears is what you need to do. Even if you do protect/over protect the ears there is no guarantee, that your tinnitus volume will not get louder either.

Protection of the ears may help with protection of our hearing, but tinnitus can occur and get louder even if our hearing is perfectly ok. Taking it day by day is what we need to do and let tomorrow be tomorrow....

@Michael Leigh can chime in and share some good information as well...... He's a veteran of the tinnitus game as well and his advice is always respected.

Take care

 

The cochlear hair cells or any structure in the inner ear is not causing the tinnitus noise, it's the brain. Tinnitus is caused by the brain acting as an internal hearing aid to compensate for hearing damage and as a result it listens closer to damaged frequencies which causes hyper neuronal activity in the auditory cortex which were hear as tinnitus.

That's a good question about why tinnitus fades in some people, I don't think anyone knows what causes tinnitus to go away or reduce in volume in some individuals, perhaps certain mechanisms in the brain stops amplifying lost frequencies which would technically make hearing decline or the neurons settle down on their own without decreasing the central gain. You have to remember higher brain functions play a role in tinnitus that scientist do not yet have a good enough understanding of.

It is only a possibility that therapeutics towards hearing loss will reduce/cure tinnitus in cases of acoustic trauma. We will have to wait and see.

 

@Jiri The amygdala is linked to emotion processing, while the frontal lobe is associated with impulse control and decision making. Those who find it difficult to adjust with subjective tinnitus bypass their amygdala, but those who learn to cope use their frontal lobe to manage. What is needed is stimulation control to the amygdala and this will assign values to the upper bilateral hippocampus and the left caudate positive. The frontal gyrus left cingulate gyrus is negative with subjective tinnitus.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0144419

This is also discussed in Brain Regions Responsible for Tinnitus Distress and Loudness - under Research News here on TT.

With my first onset of T it was extremely loud and I became depressed. My neuro at my three year point changed by world by a stimulation control method by the above research group. It was simply to get involved with something; hobbies, games or whatever and make as many decisions as you can. Within months my conception of T volume dropped dramatically. I could go days and weeks without even thinking about my T. I can remember one day where I got up at six in the morning to trade low price bio tech stocks and later in the day I came to TT. I said they upgraded their site and I guess I have T. My T didn't brother me coming to TT, nor did it ever bother me from awareness when I placed my noise blocking headphones on to cut the grass or vacuum. My mind was just programed to use headphones around noise. No fear and flight was involved.

I now have very loud high pitched somatic T. My tension is high because I must have my dental implant removed and replaced on my lower jaw. Jaw dental whiplash caused my somatic T a year ago having this implant placed. I will get thru this.

 

My theory is that once our brain no longer sees it as a threat or realises it can’t do anything about it (old age) it turns down the ‘volume’ of it.

It does this with pain too. Pain and tinnitus are both warning responses which in nature are very important. However if we stay locked into that response (obsess about it) we get stuck in a vicious loop with it as the anxiety over amplifies the pain/tinnitus.

That’s why training our brain to focus on other things works for so many people. It takes time though!

 

But if they are dead, why does tinnitus come back after another maybe trauma? I think that there is some sort of healing going on if the tinnitus goes away... IT depends on the damage. In my opinion, if you have a tinnitus from acoustic trauma but no obvious hearing loss and no big hidden hearing damage, then chances of recobery are greater... If you' VE damaged both the synapses and hair cells, then the damage is still unfortunately not reversible :/ i really rely on the Frequency Therapeutics... If that fails ,then finding cure for this crap Will be even harder :/

 

Because there are more neurons that are triggered over active.

Also, once you damage the sensory hair cells there's no going back. The word is cumulative - you may think that after a night out and your ears ring for a few days and it stops you have recovered, but no, damage has been done - it's all cumulative.

the only hope for repairing this damage is through frequency, decibel etc but a damaged cochlear is never going to heal by itself.

 

Man, I hope you are correct on that Paul. -- That would be awesome.

You gave me some more hope with that thought.

Death to those overactive neurons!

 

Death to those neurons has a nice ring to it.

I really wonder about that, too. My grandfather had tinnitus from WWII. He worked with heavy machinery (without ear protection) his entire life. Despite that, he said he woke up one day and the ringing noise was gone.

 

Great point. My T has spiked after a few loud environments but how can that be if all the hair cells are laying down dead in there anyway?

Can it be my brain saying "Ok. You heard loudness again so I'm going to crank up the T on you for a couple weeks." -- I'm half kidding but maybe it is subliminal?

I have a spike now and was doing so well for about a year. -- I know it will go down but love the idea of it going away since I had my hearing tested since my loud T causing concert and my hearing is perfect..

T sure can be a mind f$#@ if you let it get to you..

 

Love that story too! -- My grandpa had horrible hearing but I don't think he had T.

Those guys were work horses back in the day and didn't let these 'inconveniences' get in there way. Ha ha.