Dust Allergy Induced Tinnitus?

Hi, I'm Victoria, I'm 42, and I've suffered from tinnitus and some hearing loss for about seven years. I finally plucked up the courage to see an ear specialist about it, which happened earlier today, and I'm not sure I saw the right person.

I think it's more of a dust thing. I've been living in a very dusty environment for many years, due to an unfortunate collision of circumstances (very little space, and too much stuff that's hard to dust around). The worsening of my tinnitus, which started gradually without an obvious cause, went hand in hand with irritation at the back of the nose, itchy ears, coughing and sneezing, and some hay feverlike symptoms (although grass and flowers seem not to affect me).

My partner and I have talked about decluttering tonight, and I really think it's going to happen this time. I love her to bits, but she does have a lot of useless, dusty stuff. She's been suffering from depression, and I'm probably dyspraxic, and useless at housework, so it hasn't been easy.

Things came to a head last month when we both caught a cold, and mine, as usual, left me with a seemingly permanently worsened state of nasal discomfort.

I've been told I need hearing aids, and that there's no connection between the hearing issues and the allergy (if it is an allergy) but I'm not convinced (I saw an ear specialist who didn't seem to know much about the nose side of things) I still hold out some hope that the tinnitus/hearing loss might be reversible if I could reverse the damage done by the dust, which not being in a dusty environment might achieve. Is that too optimistic? Maybe I've left it too late.

The longest I've been away from home in the last seven years was only four days, and I don't remember if things improved much at the time because I was concentrating more on the back injury I was suffering from.

So, I'm sitting here thinking, should I get a second opinion from someone who's a bit more ENT rather than just E, or should I just take the hearing aid option? The nasal irritation is getting to be as damaging to my quality of life as the tinnitus and hearing loss, and that's saying a lot from someone with as big a record collection as mine, so I'd have to go and see someone else anyway. These services are annoyingly compartmentalised where I live, it seems.

 

@Victoria76,
Dust and other allergy triggers cause extra mucous in your sinuses that goes down the back of your throat and in your eustachian tubes (post nasal drip) especially when sleeping and can cause or spike tinnitus.

Antihistamines can help as well as a steroid nasal spray.

love glynis

 

Thanks Glynis!

Funny how I just spent £355 to discover it's nothing to do with that and I should just try distraction therapy and/or hearing aids. Should I name and shame the guy I saw? I'm in England, incidentally, Warwickshire, so not all that far from you. I should get round to filling in my profile.

You've totally hit the nail on the head with the mucus thing, I get absolutely tons of it. Luckily I have an appointment tomorrow to discuss it with my GP. Fingers crossed!

 

@Victoria76,
Please let me know how you get on tomorrow, just put @ in front of my name so I get an alert.

love glynis

 

@glynis

I went to see my GP yesterday, and she was very sympathetic, being a hay fever sufferer herself, and she gave me a prescription for (and this is exactly what it says);

Fexofenadine
Chronic idiopathic urticaria, 180mg once daily.
Quantity: 180mg tabs, 30

and

Nasonex
Rhinitis, 2 sprays in each nostril once daily, increasing to 4 sprays in each nostril once daily if necessary. Reduce to 1 spray in each nostril once daily when controlled.
Quantity: 50 microgram per dose pump nasal spray, 140-dose unit

I'll let you know how I get on. Incidentally, that figure for the cost of seeing the ear specialist was £335, not £355, so at least that's not quite as bad as I thought (still pretty bad though).

Thanks for being there for me Glynis, it's really appreciated. If I ever get rich, not having any family other than my partner, I'll leave all my money to research into tinnitus and hearing loss, though I'd much rather these things were solved before then, of course. It definitely needs to be higher on society's list of priorities.

 

@Victoria76,
Thank you for your update!
I take both of them also.
The fexofenadine is a very strong antihistamine .
I was on 180mg but as I need take them all year round I reduced to 120mg.

love glynis

 

@glynis,

One week update - I noticed improvements from Day 1, and now I can breathe easily through my nose, my hearing has noticeably improved and my tinnitus has definitely reduced. Hoping for further improvements in the coming weeks, as my GP said it would take weeks rather than days. Smiling a lot more now!

 

@glynis,

Thanks for the hug! It means a lot. It's been a strange few weeks. My nasal symptoms cleared up amazingly quickly, and I can now eat a peach! However, the tinnitus, despite almost completely disappearing at one point during Week 2, has returned to pre-medication levels, and I still can't hear that swishing noise at 8'30" on 'Fool's Gold 9.53' by The Stone Roses, which was such a big part of my youth.

So it looks like hearing aids it is.

 

So, I've been playing around with the tone generator in Audacity, and it looks like my hearing tails off above about 10,500 hz. I think my brain is just trying to compensate. Going to see my GP again on Monday, so we'll see what happens.

 

Oh, I forgot to mention, I ate a peach the other day! With no ill effects! I ate another one a couple of days later, they were nice peaches. I'm not a particularly avid peach fan but it's nice to know I can eat them when I want to. Until recently, peaches would set off the itching behind the nose and in the ears something terrible, a very nasty experience.

So the peach thing has been thrown into reverse, why can't the hearing loss and tinnitus?

 

It does seem strange that only two weeks ago I was feeling that the tinnitus was going, it was almost non-existent, I was enjoying the hell out of it not being there, and yet now it's raging away again. What's changed? That's what I don't get.

 

I wonder if there's any way of working out the frequency range of that sound at 8'30" in 'Fool's Gold'. It's a well known enough song. There must be an easier way than tracking down John Leckie and asking him.

 

Victoria the hearing in my left ear is dead above 10.5khz also. Right ear is fine up to 12.5khz. I would guess that's a big part of me getting Tinnitus. Hearing on all the "normal" ranges is fine

 

Thanks foam, mine is the same for both ears. I've got another appointment with a hopefully better audiologist on 19th September, but I'm not holding out much hope. I doubt there's much they can do with hearing aids for those of us with very high frequency hearing loss.

Looks like it'll be the long game of waiting for a proper cure. I've lived with crippling uncertainty in every area of my life almost since it began. I'm too worn down to carry on much longer. At least I have a supportive partner. After my meltdown in the 'Suicidal' thread the other night, she's decided we're buying a caravan and I'm coming with her to her motorbike events. Obviously I will take ear protection.

She's also just getting started as an inventor, and we're hoping that her big idea will make us a lot of money, and she's agreed to donate 10% of it towards tinnitus and hearing loss research, so, fingers crossed. Which raises the question, if we did have a large amount of cash to donate, where would the best place be to put it?