ENT Said If Tinnitus Doesn't Get Better in 3 Months, the Brain Memorizes It, and Never Gets Better

I already asked this in an other thread, and answers said that it's not true, but I'm wondering what are others' experiences.

So my ENT said that after a while (3 months) the brain memorizes the sound what tinnitus produces, so later on there is no chance for it to stop, alleviate, or get better. This 3 month time is considered to be the time when tinnitus is no longer acute, but chronic.

 

Yea, doctors and researchers are very confused on this topic. Some say after 3 months it's chronic, some after 6 months, some after a year... I've even once read 2 years.

Regardless, this whole "the brain memorizes tinnitus" thing is one of those things that I call bullshit on.

 

@Kriszti

You have T for more than three years.... Why do you care about the acute stage? Three months, six months, one year..... It does not matter. The more time you have it, the more likely that it becomes permanent. It simply the way your auditory system works after not recovering properly from some damage. Your ENT has probably ample experience that T usually does not go away when it has been around for a few months..... I am sure that there are cases that improves greatly over time, or even disappears, but the majority of cases are stuck in the same level forever, and indeed, there are cases that it gets worse over time as more damage accumulates. Welcome to hell on earth....

 

Because I don't think that I have tinnitus for 3 years. Or I have a very strange tinnitus. I had an onset in 2016, when it buzzed for like 2 weeks than it completely stopped, I didn't habituate to it, it went away. In 2017, I had this for a couple of days, maybe for a week. Now I've been hearing it for 1, 5 week, and during the time it stopped 2x1 day. I'm anxious about it now, because unlike the other two times, now I can't sleep at all, and the buzzing seems to be different and very, very loud.

 

The buzzing will calm down.

 

That's nonsense.. I think your ENT just made that up

 

Complete bullshit. Your ENT is a quack.

 

I've read stories of it going away after 4 years.

Going away before 2 years seems much more common than that though.

3 months definitely isn't 100% permanent.

No one knows the true figures for remission. I had a really good look at the academic literature when I first got this.

 

That's nonsense.

 

T is not constant. I should know as I have had it on and off since 1985. 3 months is quite arbitrary. Mine continues to improve, as last year it got really out of control as I could not sleep and it was waking me up multiple times a night, and a year later it is quiet room stage most days. Your ENT does not know this. Whether T ever truly completely goes away, or just fades into the background I do not know, but I can live with it and respect it at this point.

 

Thank you everyone, so basically there is always hope that it gets better.

 

I don’t know if tinnitus ever goes away for many... does it drift into the background where one needs to listen for it... yes.

That’s kind of where I was after the initial trauma... took about 4 years.

Now that it is back, I will look at a 4 years habituation, or “used to” as a blessing.

I’m guessing you are young (university) so be smart about protecting your ears, and I bet you will adapt. Just don’t concentrate on it... do what you can initially, get some sound generators and or fans... and move on.

Take a break from the boards in a few weeks, because it is easy to obsess over it initially (I’m looking in the mirror here).

Good luck.

 

Stories or fairytales?

When people read 'stories' - do they pay attention to the context and data?

Was the tinnitus minor, moderate or severe? I can believe minor tinnitus can fade, reduce or disappear but what are the chances of loud severe t doing that? Where are stories of that happening?

 

Realised after many years of a bunch of different conditions that consultants genuinely do this sometimes. Maybe due to the pressure of having to provide answers all the time. Or at least, some of what they are telling you is based on excellent evidence from RCTs or firmly on their own years of clinical experience................and other stuff is just a hunch they vaguely had or a hunch some guy presented at a conference they went to in 2008.

 

And that there is a remedy either already out there or in the works.

FYI go tell your ENT that he doesnt know what the word "memorizes" means.

 

Not to be all Michael Leigh but you could be a bit more polite when you speak to fellow sufferers.

 

Doctors sometimes hear stuff in conferences and they repeat it like parrots. Some of them lack real experience with patients, specially patients with severe hyperacusis. They prescribe tests that are really loud, and they just dont understand hyperacusis.

 

This statement does not explain why the tinnitus intensity varies between 1 and 9 in a large number of patients.

 

@Kriszti

Please do not pay any attention to what you have been told by your ENT doctor regarding tinnitus. He or She knows about the anatomy of the Ear, Nose and Throat and able to treat most underlying medical problems associated with them, either surgically or medically as this is their area of expertise. However, Tinnitus is an entirely different matter as most ENT doctors have never experienced it and therefore, know absolutely nothing about how it affects a person's mental and emotional wellbeing. Granted, they may have a lot of experience consulting with tinnitus patients but this does not make them tinnitus specialists.

I have been saying this for quite some time and evidence of this is what you have been told by your doctor. Tinnitus is a very common condition and many people habituate to it and carry on to lead a fulfilling life doing everything that they want to. Although it can be severe and debilitating for some people, it is not quite the doom and gloom that your ENT doctor portrays. With treatment a lot can be achieved. Unfortunately some people do not know as I and others do who are experienced with tinnitus, that ENT doctors are physicians not tinnitus experts.

No amount of medical qualifications and Phds will make them an expert in this condition for the reasons I've mentioned above. Too often they are given a reverence that they do not deserve and have this purely because they are medically qualified, but have no personal experience of living with tinnitus. Those that do probably have it mild nothing like what people experience in this forum. Therefore they still cannot understand how it can affect a person when it is severe.

Hearing Therapists and Audiologists that specialise in Tinnitus and Hyperacusis treatment and management, have more understanding about these conditions. Not surprisingly a lot of them have tinnitus and therefore, able to empathise with a tinnitus patient especially with counselling, which can help them to habituate.

Michael

 

Your ENT is a quack (unfortunately, most of them are). The brain does not "memorize" anything, that's not even how habituation works.

It is true however that the auditory cortex can become deregulated after years of chronic, repetitive sound exposure, while likely, whether or not the auditory cortex gets back to proper function after the source of said deregulation (the lesion in your cochlear or your auditory nerve for example) is fixed remains to be seen, as that has yet to be clinically demonstrated in humans, once regenerative drugs such as FX-322 hit the shelves, we will know soon enough.

 

What treatment? The only treatment currently available that shows any kind of result is CBT, that's 100% palliative care. Neuromodulation has yet to show any significant result/improvements since its been commercially available (that's assuming you can even get it, I am still currently waiting to get an appointment I inquired for 4 months ago.).

The main issue I have with tinnitus is the lack of treatment and/or answers whatsoever, not everyone is responsive to CBT either.

As a final note, habituation (which not everyone is responsive to either) is not a cure, it's just a way to have brain plasticity (with unknown side effects) to not trigger a fight or flight response in regards to tinnitus and lead a normal, albeit changed (usually for the worse) life.

Research has been stalled for decades by people who deemed habituation and CBT good enough and audioprothesists and therapists making a business off the tinnitus sufferers by selling overprotective hearing aids that, for the most part, brought no relief whatsoever.

We have known of the regenerative effects of gamma secretase inhibitors for decades with many successful studies done on rodent models, only now are we starting (very slow paced) research on human cohorts. Instead of tackling the root of the issue, health care providers were inclined to turn extra profits into "therapies" with the results we all know of.

Even the most advanced technology we have today, the cochlear implant, is dated from the late 50s and has never truly evolved since, with only the driver unit getting some fancy, yet useless updates like bluetooth connectivity. The amount of frequencies and tones reproduce never improved because no new money was spent into improving those! You can ear words? Well that's good enough for you, right? Who cares about music? Had research actually been done, we would likely be able to reproduce the entire hearing spectrum using CI today.

Of course considering the small target and invasive procedure, laboratories didn't want to spend more money that the strict minimum required, it's not like there is any competition and they aren't still enjoying the revenue from their patents.

 

@Mathieulh

You have answered your own question. There are many treatments for tinnitus that can help a person to have a better quality of life. However, treatment starts with helping yourself by not being angry and looking at the positive things in one's life and building on them. I speak as someone with many years experience with tinnitus, corresponding and counselling people with this condition. Shooting from the hip and going off at a tangent is the wrong approach. If you had shown more civility, I would have explained this at length.

Good day
Michael

 

"6 months" figure is what insurance companies use to classify a condition as chronic. It has no medical basis.

The fact that countless people report their tinnitus fading long after their 3 months anniversary proves that it makes sense for you to find another ENT.

 

@Mathieulh A long study on rodents - but the abstract section at top and the discussion section takes about 15 minutes to read. You may have already read this study as you appear to brace research.

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000307

 

I have friends that have tinnitus, and they used to get upset with me when I said I had years at a time without hearing any noise. I honestly never heard it for years at a time for around a ten year period. I was told that cant be because tinnitus does not leave you if you have hearing damage, which I do.

An ENT told me it just means you have habituated to the noise... because of that I would say I habituated to tinnitus when people asked me how mine was... I do not think this was correct, because I did not hear any noise at all and I used to try and hear it to see if they where right. I also used to hear it from time to time and this was usually when I was getting sick and then it would disappear.

Of course something changed over the next 8 year period and it became more intense and frequent, I think it had a hormonal component to it and unfortunately I started using what I was told was a safe treatment for reducing tinnitus, as you know it was not....

I was also told a treatment will be available within the next five years and that was 18 years ago. You are correct, not everyone will even be able to habituate to the noise, and I have nothing but compassion for everyone suffering on this forum, but I still live in hope for a cure, a safe one.

Truth be known I would be willing to grow a set of extra toes to get rid of my tinnitus, heck, make that even an extra head, as long as it did not involve making my tinnitus worse because the drug I took that was meant to be safe certainly took care of that

 

My first bout got better and nearly inaudible after 26 months or so. More than 2 years. So he is wrong.

The problem is that your ears become really weak after years of noise exposure and T can come back more easily.

Don't pay attention to regular doctors.

 

But when did you start to see the first improvements?

 

Hi, may I ask, what types of hormonal changes did you get that caused your T to come back? My tinnitus started after a rapid hormonal change, the worst I had ever been through in my life. I initially thought it was caused by paracetamol with codeine (that I was using for the pain from caused by hormones) but the ringing started straight after this severe hormonal event so I think it might have been causes by this.

 

Total B.S.

I can speak from experience with acoustic trauma tinnitus.
First time was 13 years ago, I had a very bad acoustic trauma, and had horrible screaming loud tinnitus. It faded to ZERO in 2 years.
Then 3 years ago I went to an outdoor loud concert, and again had screaming loud tinnitus. It has faded over 90%, and continues to slowly improve, even after 3 years!
Anyone who tells you it is permanent after 3 or 6 months is incorrect.

 

Mine came back severe after a concert, it´s noise induced, but at the same time I was suffering the worst part of the "post finasteride syndrome". More than two years later I´m still suffering hormonal changes and fluctuating libido. So maybe there is a hormonal component too.