Does the Nature of the Tinnitus Tone Reveal the Cause of One's Tinnitus?

[chaLLas]

Is there a connection between the nature of the tone and the cause of one's tinnitus?

Like if you have hearing loss, you get a constant pure tone, because the hair cells are dead and are not working anymore in any way.

Maybe you get a nervous, intermittent tone when the hair cells are not dead, but damaged because in that state, they are irritated.

Or you get an intermittent tone every time you get in false posture with jaw, neck or whatever.

I guess it is not that easy, but maybe there are some (recent?) scientific findings to it?

Sorry if this has already been discussed widely. I did not find any recent threads about it (shame on me if I did poor research).

 

[HeavyMantra]

Also curious about this. And also in general, how to know if it's noise induced or not if hearing tests show no hearing loss

 

[Bill Bauer]

A hiss means that you have less damage compared to if you were to have a high pitch tone. Alternatively, when a hiss replaces a high pitch tone, it means one has been healing.

 

[chaLLas]

Also curious about this. And also in general, how to know if it's noise induced or not if hearing tests show no hearing loss

You should look up hidden hearing loss. Yet I have often heard that noise exposure can be a "trigger" for tinnitus, and the tinnitus then persists because of other underlying issues (stress, diet, TMJ or whatever). I don't know what to think of that.

 

[chaLLas]

A hiss means that you have less damage compared to if you were to have a high pitch tone. Alternatively, when a hiss replaces a high pitch tone, it means one has been healing.

Thats not good. My first tone was a hiss (yet is was pretty loud), but the new tones I got in the past months are pure tones and high pitch intermittend ones (cricket style). It's really strange, my ears "sound" like I must have lost a lot of hearing ... but I am still hearing pretty good. I may be having a harder time understanding people in louder environments, but not that drastic, and I don't know if I did not have that before because I was of course not overanalysing it like I do now ... yet the difference seems very little.

 

[JohnAdams]

Also curious about this. And also in general, how to know if it's noise induced or not if hearing tests show no hearing loss

tonal hearing tests aren't equipped to reveal hidden hearing loss.

 

[Zeneth]

A hiss means that you have less damage compared to if you were to have a high pitch tone. Alternatively, when a hiss replaces a high pitch tone, it means one has been healing.

My ringing turned into a louder hiss so that doesn't make sense to me.

 

[Bill Bauer]

My ringing turned into a louder hiss so that doesn't make sense to me.

A hiss should be easier to ignore.