Hi there, My name a Rudy, a 26 year old physics student from the Netherlands. A lot of stress due to my study gave me a weird symptom: twitching muscle all over my body. It made me anxious and the anxiety resulted in having more weird symptoms (numb areas on the skin which did not seem to go away, stinging sensations on the skin, weak legs), which of course made my anxiety worse. After a big panick attack and a long talk with my parents, I had a breakthrough: I accepted that all symptoms were result of my anxiety. In stead of searching for a cause of all those weird symptoms (diseases like ALS, or MS), I accepted that I was ill in my head and that helped me a lot. I started feeling better mentally (way less anxious), but physically worse (perhaps because I did not fight the symptoms anymore). In time the symptoms became less pronounced and some even faded away. This gave me confidence and I started working on my study again after two months sitting at home. The first day was tiring, my collegues wanted to know what happend. I again used my energy reserves, as I was not fully 'healed' yet. Two days later the tinnitus started and my anxiety was there all over again... That was almost four weeks ago. Since then, I've had ups and downs. I find that my T is very much correlated with my anxiety level, my energy and stress. This gives me hope that it will subside to the background once I give my mind and body the rest that it needs. On a Dutch website I read about the so called Tinnitus syndrome: Tinnitus caused by stress, which gives stress and one lives in a vicious circle. Exactly what happened to me. Lately I've had much trouble sleeping due to the stress and the T, hence my appearance here. Kind regards, Rudy
Hi Rudy Your story looks like a cut and paste version of what i had. I live in holland too so maybe i can give some advice about what helped me. For the twitches : Magnesium AminoAlso did the trick for me. Vitamin b12 from b12.nu also helped a lot. Greetings Ron Den Haag
Hi Rudy, I too study physics and am 26 This juli I reserved some space at university to test new methods of diagnostics and a treatment, perhaps you would like to participate. I'll place a call for anyone that lives nearby when I'm ready. I had written quite a lot about stress and tinnitus here, you could look for 'stress' and 'glia' for more insight into the complications. There is a very good thread here on what tinnitus is that links to some very extensive literature if you're interested, https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/chapter-2-what-is-tinnitus.15681/. Stress alone though can only seriously weaken the auditory systems resilience to damage, there has to have been a catalyst, like an alternate glutamate metabolism such as is found in autism, or loud music, ototoxic drugs like ibuprofen, etc. The damage generally builds until you hear it. Where do you go to uni?
I study at the University of Twente. I must say that I find your message distressful: building up damage, what are you talking about? My hearing has been tested and it was better than average. I have eliminated all sources of stress, except for messages like yours. Maybe this isn't the best place for me to visit.
For those who suffer from tinnitus as a result of their anxiety disorder: it will go away once you have given your system plenty of rest. Multiple members of the anxietycenter.com forum (I am also a member) have reported that their tinnitus dissappeared in time. It is a very persistant anxiety symptom, it takes lots of time (can be weeks or months) for it to dissappear: but it WILL go away.
That's great news I should have said 'noise.' Noise can be caused by a plethora of things, some like biochemistry are not permanent and only require a change in lifestyle, like eating healthy, relaxing, and maybe a good look at any medication. Perhaps it's a good idea to discus it with your general practitioner. Let us know.
