Hello, I am Lucas from Argentina

Hi Lucas!

I'm sorry to hear about your struggles with tinnitus. I know that the medical workers call it a symptom, but it feels like a disease nonetheless. Because it can affect a person in such a way. It is really difficult having to learn to live with something like this.

You say you got Corticoids from the ENT. Did you receive this on the same day? My understanding is that steroids need to be administered as soon as possible following a noise trauma, for them to have a therapeutic effect.

What you describe as trembling could be caused by one of the two muscles in the middle ear cavity. I have this myself, and while it can be bothersome, it's not nearly as bad as tinnitus itself. Sometimes, I think by misunderstanding, these muscle movements are also characterized as tinnitus. It's something they call objective tinnitus.

Personally, I feel like tinnitus should be defined as subjective by definition. If it's objective, then it's probably not tinnitus. Especially not if it's of muscular origin. If it's of vascular origin, a.k.a. "pulsatile tinnitus", then it's not really tinnitus. I feel like this word "tinnitus" is misused by unprofessional medical workers. If your symptoms are of muscular or vascular origin, they need to do thorough investigation. These forms of so called "tinnitus" are often treatable. If you get to the right doctor who does a proper investigation and finds the root cause of it.

Of course, sometimes, these things can be combined. I for example have tonal tinnitus, plus that muscular manifestation you described earlier. Both of which I believe are the result of a noise trauma.

I think the laterality of tinnitus is misleading. For me for example, it started out on the left side, and it felt like it was in the left ear. Several months later it now feels like it's central and inside the head. This does not mean that I have not had fleeting tinnitus on the right side, what felt like inside the right ear. Despite the fact that my left ear is the supposedly more damaged ear. Also, the damage is minimal at best, but I still have tinnitus.

As for sound therapies, you can check out notched music therapy, notched white noise therapy, amplitude modulation and neuromodulation. You will find detailed descriptions of these in the forums. I have had some success in suppressing tinnitus for a short period using primarily white noise. Right after listening to white noise I would not sense any tinnitus at all for a few seconds and it felt like heaven. I believe this is called lateral inhibition. But I caution you to not overuse this and be conservative with the volume level. For me for example, the white noise is no longer very successful at suppressing the tinnitus.

Lastly, welcome to Tinnitus Talk!

 

That might have been a bit too late. HBOT and corticosteroids within 48 hours! At least that's what the rich and privileged are getting after acoustic trauma. There is not much else on the menu I'm afraid. In most countries, and for most people, that's not even on the menu.

HBOT and corticoids is what the Belgian PM got recently. You can read all about it here if you're interested:
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/our-prime-minister-just-got-tinnitus-hearing-loss.21984/

Of course you could be having inflammation, but I fail to see how that would be related to the muscle twitches. Of course, I am not a doctor, but I like to think that I am well informed.

Do you hear clicks in either one of your ears? Or only a thumping kind of sound? My understanding is that thumping is caused by tensor tympani muscle contractions, while clicks are caused by stapedius muscle contractions.



You can see the two muscles pointed out on this image, relative to the eardrum and the ossicular bones and cochlea. My understanding is that clicking ears are often attributed to Eustachian tube dysfunction, even when it is not so. It should be fairly easy for a physician to see under a scope if the ear drum is vibrating. That should indicate a twitching tensor tympani. These muscles are nearly impossible to visualize directly.

Both of these muscles act to protect the inner ear from loud sounds, but the tensor tympani is the one that's pulling most the weight.

I remember quite clearly that I had a noticeable click when i was exposed to the noise trauma. It took nearly a year after the trauma for these clicks to come back again and start haunting me. I speculate it's due to some kind of cellular degradation inside the ear or the brain stem or both. It's interesting because it's around the same time that my tinnitus changed character from a hiss or static kind of noise to a tonal, almost pure tone quality. The sound stimuli of my noise trauma was pure tone like, and my tinnitus is pretty much the same frequency.

I wish I could be of more help to you, and that I could bring you more positive news. There may not be any real cure as of yet, but offering each other support and understanding goes a long way too. Just know that you are among friends here!

 

@Christophe_85, I think I can relate to that. I had hyperacusis in the beginning, and it felt like my whole brain was shivering. This was right after my tinnitus changed character from a hiss that I barely noticed to a tonal type of sound. My hyperacusis has improved since, but I can still get that sensation if I am around loud noises, and even people talking loudly can trigger it sometimes.

I hope you are able to cope with this, and I sincerely hope that your symptoms will improve as well. One key to this, I think... is not to become overprotective about the ears. You should not go to loud concerts without ear plugs, but neither should you use ear plugs in the kitchen at home. Ears need stimulation, as does the brain. You have to sort of desensitize them gradually, and that takes time.

@Lucas Dacunto, I can relate to that change of sound character from hiss to tonal. In fact I did not even think of it as tinnitus until it became tonal. Many people will tell you that they experience different kind of tinnitus sounds, and that their sound has changed character over time. Not only that, you will find that many of us can change the pitch or volume of the sound by jaw and neck movements. Everyone has had a different level of exposure to noise over the course of life. So everyone will have somewhat different experience with tinnitus, but there are also many similarities as well.

For what it's worth, my tinnitus pitch is at about 6000 Hz. I am pretty sure it was caused by an acoustic trauma about a year earlier. The average frequency of the trauma sound was at 5500 Hz. So there is almost a 1 on 1 correspondence between the trauma and the tinnitus pitch. It just took some time for it to become tonal.

I understand that it hurts Lucas. It's especially hurtful for someone who is a musician. Brian Johnson had to part from ACDC last year because of bad hearing. He has hearing loss and tinnitus. That must have been tough for him, the band, and the fans. But I think he made the right decision. As did you Lucas.

I am a music fan myself. For me, music was my life. It was my escape from reality, and a way to express myself. Music is one of those sweet things that make life worth living. I have not listened to my music in quite some time now. I no longer enjoy it as much as I used to. It's just not the same. I also want to preserve my hearing as much as possible so that I may be able to restore any damage that's causing tinnitus, and enjoy music as well as silence, one more time before I die.

It's unfortunate, but we don't seem to know what we have until we lose it. We never seem to learn from our mistakes either, and pass on the knowledge to the next generation so that they may not make the same mistakes. We just keep on making the same mistakes over and over again, and the history repeats itself. It's all part of the cycle of life.

Good luck on Tuesday, and I hope you find the answers you are looking for Lucas. I know I was desperate for answers when all this started happening with me. I turned to the Internet when the doctor failed to provide me the answers. I have found the answers to many of my questions. But what I have realized in the process is that I need to find a way to forgive myself. I was blaming myself for what happened to me. As a result, I have also had to make lifestyle changes. I had to process all that emotionally. I still have hearing loss, and I still have tinnitus. Some days it's better, some days it's worse. But overall, I am able to cope with it better now. I hope that you can find the same peace of mind.