Does Noise-Induced Tinnitus Become Worse Over the Years?

I'm wondering how often noise-induced tinnitus gets worse.. is it inevitable? I've been wearing ear protection in risky environments and plan on doing so as much as possible. Thanks all!

 

Mine is noise induced and has remained the same....so far anyways. This site should help you out. dangerousdecibels.edu

 

stable from 1999-2010; worsened by acoustic trauma; more or less stable from 2010-present...

 

yes... specially if you keep espouser yourself to more noise (more noise induced hearing loss)

 

this info brought me some peace... hope it does the same for you.

noise induced T is almost always stable over time. (see link #1).

link #1: http://www.tinnitusjournal.com/detalhe_artigo.asp?id=125 "Stability Over Time
The vast majority of patients with noise trauma described their tinnitus as high-pitched and stable over time. We noted, however, that the few patients who described their tinnitus as fluctuating over time had generally had their tinnitus for a shorter period (2 ± 2 years versus 7.9 ± 11.9 years for stable tinnitus). This being the case, we propose two hypotheses: (1) Fluctuating tinnitus tends to stabilize after a certain length of time or (2) fluctuating tinnitus may disappear, whereas longstanding tinnitus is stable. Only a longitudinal study of tinnitus patients will allow us to clarify these hypotheses further."

also, it's not considered permanent until you've had it for two years. (see link #2).

link #2: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2686891/ "Natural course
Noise-induced tinnitus can be acute or chronic. Acute tinnitus can last from a few minutes to a few weeks after noise exposure.24 In some cases, tinnitus has a gradual onset and several years can pass before an intermittent, low-intensity tinnitus becomes bothersome.25 Spontaneous remission by natural habituation is experienced by more than three-quarters of sufferers. Habituation occurs within the CNS, whereas adaptation involves a peripheral sensory organ.8 For those in whom the condition worsens, the tinnitus intensity increases over time but its pitch tends to remain stable.22 If tinnitus persists for more than 2 years, it is considered permanent and irreversible.26 However, chronicity is not associated with a favorable response to treatment."

 

When the sound of tinnitus goes away for most people who had noise-induced tinnitus, that's either the neurons completely dying that were involved in the injury or the brain can adapt to this sound so the patient doesn't hear it as loudly as they did before. More likely the nuerons have died.

 

how do you know this?

 

@Nick Pyzik is it "bad" if the neurons died off? what is the effect for us?

 

There are articles which feature researchers claiming that such a thing happens.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...den-hearing-loss-risk-study-article-1.2230945

http://acoustics.org/pressroom/httpdocs/159th/liberman.htm

Studies have been held by a Dr. Liberman who explains what happens when the inner ear is introduced to loud noise. Headphones create loud noise even if at a moderate volume. It all matters about how intense the sound waves and airflow are moving through the ear canal and through the production line of the inner ear. When someone uses headphones over a period of months/years, they can easily be losing nerve fibers connected to hair cells without noticing any change in their mood, hearing, comprehension until it becomes an issue to the user themselves.


The brain adapts to tinnitus over time and this could even be due to loss of auditory functions in the auditory cortex of the brain. The brain begins to use more of the frontal lobe in relation to how much damage has been done with their tinnitus issues.
http://www.hearingreview.com/2016/01/counteract-tinnitus-brain-may-change-operates/


Look at how much of our brain is used when hearing sounds or what we call music. Do people think that hair cells are what allow each section of the brain to work with what it hears?




It's the neurons job to transfer this information to each different area of the brain. Now with that being said and how tinnitus causes the brain to change in response to the damages from loud noises, it's clearly first the loss of afferent/efferent nerve connections from the hair cells (causing loud ringing and also can cause hyperacusis) then the loss of spiral ganglion neurons and then retraction back into auditory area of the brain and from there the neurons eventually die (leading to no more ringing from that neurons pathway or not as loud)

As talked about in this article: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news...y_new_contributor_to_age_related_hearing_loss

New nerve fibers are sent out from the brain to take over for the soon to be or already dead neurons that were once in correlation with the cochlea's hair cells. I'm trying without the equipment and data like an actual researcher has to figure out where these new neurons sprout out from the brain. I have read that with tinnitus, the brain switches its emotional processing from the amygdala to the insula & parahippocampus. I'm still trying to understand with what portion of the brain these new nerves sprout out from because they don't act like the original neurons that functioned in the auditory region of the brain.

 

Well first off neurons that die as of scientifically now can't be brought back. Noise damages the nerve fibers connected to thousands of the hair like cells in a much more hidden way unlike the hair cells which damage can be seen through audiogram tests.

As talked about in the article below, the auditory system of our brain is lined up through plasticity. These neurons located in the auditory portions of the brain follow a pathway through the auditory nerve and then connect to each specific location of the inner and outer hair cells. Nerve fibers can connect to one another and more than one can connect to outer hair cells and some to inner hair cells. Much more can connect to the outer than do to the inner.

http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2012/06/13479.html

The issue that comes to my mind with neurons of the auditory system dying, this being involved with the ringing in ours coming from noise-induced damage, and how our hearing seems to be routed all throughout the brain and not just in the auditory system, what does this do to the brain over time? Why does the brain have to reroute itself to produce new nerves to try and continue to function as a normal auditory processing system, and why does the brain have to change its emotional regions that were associated with our hearing in the first place.

I'm still trying to understand the consequences of tinnitus, the brains adaptation to this hearing change, and how it affects the brains ability to continue functioning everyday.

All I can say is that I don't think this adapting depending on the severity of the tinnitus is a good thing.

 

A lot of informations here thank you so much @Cyberdrink I didn't know that T was considered permanent after 2 years, I thought it was only after 6 months! Great news!

 

I have read that also in an article recently, they were calling that " hidden hearing loss" or something like that, that explains why so many of us have tinnitus with a " normal audiogram " but I thought that nerve fibers unlike hair cells could regenerate after a couple of months which is not the case for hair cells, am I right here or not? And also I still cannot understand why some people have great hearing loss but no tinnitus at all! Thank you so much @Nick Pyzik for your research and link!
(by the way I use a lot of google translate in order to make correct sentences in English and it's so exhausting for my nerves fibers! )

 

Yes, it can get worse if you fail to protect your hearing. Been there, done that, unfortunately.

 

Thanks for reaching out to me Genevieve. You're correct about the inner and outer hair cells. If damaged enough, they will not function properly or as I've seen in diagrams, there will be a retraction of the cell and spiral ganglion neurons associated with those hair cells until the process has reached the inner regions of the limbic system/auditory cortex and from there the neurons will begin to die if not fed Neurotrophic Factors like NT-3. The two most important parts of our hearing are the hair cells and the auditory nerve/spiral ganglion neurons. It's been found that as we age or most importantly, as we lose our outgoing auditory nerves from something like loud noise, New nerves do grow towards the hair cells of the cochlea again to make up for the lost input of the ingoing nerves, so you are correct about that. But unfortunately, these new nerves don't act at all like the previous ones. They act as faulty outgoing nerves that don't allow the brain to pick up sound correctly like the previous in going nerves did. That is why for example, the elderly still have issues with processing sounds they hear in noisy environments even with hearing aids in. Hearing aids only amplify noise which in turn will cause larger reactions of the hair cell bundles causing them to move more vigorously and create mechanical sound wave energy into electrical, but with these incorrect out going nerves, they are not allowing the brain to emotionally and fundamentally process the hair cell frequency it is associated with.

Here is a link to the study talking about these new outgoing nerves: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news...y_new_contributor_to_age_related_hearing_loss

Let me know if you have anymore questions.

 

I have mine for a year now. It stayed the same until recently when i got a cold. Since then it's been worse. I hoping it will go back to the way it was. I got over the cold about 3 weeks ago and still hasn't gone back. I do carry ear plugs with me and use them often.

 

My father in law has T and got it since his old Navy days. He's now 65 and although his hearing isn't the greatest, his T hasn't changed much---he said he just got used to it over the years.

 

Does an ABR test reveal anything new that you wouldn't see on an audiogram? I was going to have one but because of my noise sensitivity the audiologist called it off (there are loud noises involved in the test). She didn't want to make the condition worse as a result of the test, which is responsible.

I'm just not sure if it would reveal any useful information.

 

Hey Alue. I regret to say that there is a fault in the ABR test. I wouldn't be stating that there was a fault if my hearing test did not come out as negative with no signs of damage to my auditory nerve. As I learned that outgoing nerves form in place of the once ingoing nerves that were there before being damaged, the ABR test is not going to record any of those faulty signals. As long as you have a healthy set of inner/outer hair cells and enough nerves connecting the hair cells to auditory portion of your brain, there will be no signs of damage, even with all outgoing auditory nerve fibers. There is just no test to record such hidden changes in the neurons of our hearing.

You can get an ABR test done but I'm telling you, if it completely missed my hidden hearing damage then it'll do the same for everyone else. I also got an Otoacoustic Emissions test done which showed that my outer hair cells were functioning very well. My audiogram showed very little loss of decibels. That only means one thing. The drastic change in my hearing is connected to the change in my auditory nerve fibers. It's why I have a very difficult time now picking out noises from other loud noises going on. I lost my ability to pick out high frequencies too. The thing is, I can still hear basically from 20 hz - 20,000 khz.

Hope this helped. I like to ramble on a bit as you can tell.