Elimination of Tinnitus With Dangerously Loud Noise

I started a discussion about tinnitus on a military forum, and a guy who had had tinnitus for as long as he can remember, got his tinnitus to completely disappear after being accidentally exposed to a rocket launcher shot without wearing protection.

Has anyone heard of similar cases? There are studies where listening to low frequency bass can give noticeable decrease to tinnitus, so could a more extreme version of this concept yield even better results?

 

i wouldn't try lol.

 

I wouldn't try either. Too risky. One ear with T is enough, don't need another. Seems extreme.

 

That's interesting and I've also read about that study, but the low freq. worked because of residual inhibition and then seems to be temporary (it doesn't reorganise the neuronal pathways in a permanent way.)

I think that maybe that guy got his t suppressed because the damage to his hearing could have been made "even", leveled by now, as a blast like that could kill a massive amount of hair cells in the inner ear. If his t was originated in the inner ear to begin with, is possible that the new acoustic trauma has killed completely all the hair cells that previously were just damaged, and his auditory cortex hasn't been reorganised again yet.

Sadly, if I'm right, this guy will have a hell of tinnitus as soon as his cortex gets decompensated trying to amplify all the frequencies of his new hearing loss.

I've just posted a thing that is a personal theory about environmental sounds and brain plasticity, maybe you could find it interesting, as I'm thinking about certain kinds of high frequencies as responsible for many tinnitus cases when there's also at least other contributing factor.

 

I also read something alike on another forum. A person with T who was accidentally exposed to a very loud noise, couldnt protect his hearing in time. He was afraid that this would increase his T but the contrary happened his T vanished!!!
The question is whether this remained or that the T has returned with a vengeance over time???

 

maybe tinnitus is just an in between state for the hair cells that we all unlucky folks here suffer from

 

I read a similar story online where the guy got tinnitus clubbing, then went clubbing again after a few months and it disappeared. I'm too scared to try!

 

Yes, i also read a story from a girl that had been suffering from tinnitus from a concert for a couple of years and then went to a rock concert. She was wearing ear plugs but when she came home her tinnitus still was much louder in bed but after she slept it was completely gone. But I would never try it, I know I'm not lucky with stuff like that, for me I know I would just end up with extremely loud and unbearable tinnitus....

 

Could be true. Dead hair cells are dead, struggling hair cells make tinnitus.

 

It's confusing to me how they say our brains are making up for the frequency of hearing loss, causing T. First off I can HEAR it, so where is the loss? And not all of us suffer from hearing loss. It gets more confusing the more I read. Do we need to destroy the rest of the hair cells to experience no more T? Maybe there is something to that loud noise therapy??? I now have more questions than before.

 

Erlend, this is something new for me? I thought that dead hair cells are the cause of T! Where did you read this?

 

Nonono I'm not sure, just psuedo scientific speculation from my side! Trying to make sense of the stories of people getting rid of T after a new loud BANG

 

I don't understand why it would get rid of the tinnitus, but I wouldn't want to try.

 

Looking for sound therapies I found one called "Sound Therapy International", the creator says precisely something among that lines, that auditory tinnitus is related to bent hair cells that are in an "in between" state, and supposedly that therapy "massages" the hair cells with the right frequencies at the right intensities to put them in an upwards position again.

I don't have much confidence that it works (or not for many people), and the brain plasticity is still involved in chronic cases, but the coincidence is interesting.

 

Anecdotal but something similar happened to me... I was traveling to NYC and back and had to bear the extremely loud subways and traffic... I had earplugs and just didn't use them. Stupid, I know, but I came home and went into my silent room expecting to hear blaring tinnitus from my escapades for the day... I ended up hearing silence for the initial 10 seconds and then my tinnitus was much, much lower once it "turned on" again. I don't know what the hell happened and I'm not sure if its permanently lower, but I haven't heard it as badly since that noise exposure.

I bet this is also why that acute tinnitus sound-therapy treatment that's 99% effective within the first couple hours works... probably kicks the hair cells up or down so they're not in an in-between state.

 

Interesting, how long ago after onset did you expose yourself to this sound therapy .
Not that I dare to try myself!

To which acute tinnitus sound-therapy you are referring?

 

University start-up spearheads tinnitus breakthrough

They have a website now and it looks like its another CR Neuromodulation variant but it's interesting what they've used it for nonetheless.

 

I think I read that article some time ago, but I was a bit thrown by their say they cure "99% of temporary tinnitus cases"....if the tinnitus is temporary, then it is by definition going to go away/be cured? I wonder what they did to make the 1% get permanent tinnitus?

As for the bent hair cell thing - it seems to make as much sense as anything else. No one really knows what is going on with tinnitus anyway. I think it's probably different for different people - some in the brain, some in the ear, some both. That's probably why some people's noise induced tinnitus can go away, or why when people used to have their nerves cut surgically (shiver) to try and stop the tinnitus, some people would get silence along with their deafness and some would still have tinnitus.

 

I'm digging up this old topic I'm not going to expose myself to any noise to check it out BUT the truth is..After only 2 weeks with T I went to an event with a very loud music. It was outside but the noise was such I could swear the ground was trembling. I had my earplugs and I covered my ears with my hands as tight as I could but it was obviously still loud. When I came back home the T was better.. :/ That was the first time I got a release.

 

Sounds like residual inhibition. How long did your relief last?

 

I experienced a reduction in T numerous times early on while wearing ear plugs in a loud environment, the reduction would last about 30-60 minutes, I never exposed myself to dangerous sound though. The first time was when I went to the Beatles cirque du soleil show in Vegas, I wore ear plugs, and couldn't believe how quiet my T was for about an hour after.

In the next couple of months it reached a point where I could hear the reduction occur since it was somewhat abrupt over the course of a minute, usually around the 35th minute. I haven't experienced it recently since my T has been slowly improving, today I'm left with a pulsating hiss in my left ear that comes and goes, and hissing in my right ear that is dependent on moving my head, or pushing on parts of my head. Early on I had more static and sound reactive T that produced ringing. The more aggravated my T was, the more effective the plugs/loud noise trick worked.

I always thought it was strange, I'm still not sure if it was RI or my auditory gain flexing its muscle.

I had an incident recently where I over protected my ears while mowing and my ears started ringing, I took the hearing protection off and they stopped ringing after 5", I even confirmed it was gone by plugging my ears. Now I where less, but adequate protection while mowing.