How Can Tinnitus Become So Loud?

Hello, I have been reading and posting here since a while, this forum is really great.

I have had tinnitus since 17 years now and last two years things became out of hand. I'm a musician and have always had IBS issues, chronic sinus infections, but also too much stress from work and also anxiety since I was young. I had a few very traumatic events in my life and have done everything to handle that, but this tinnitus is making things difficult.

I have several T sounds, some are only audible at night, but my oldest T which is a high pitched T (9500Hz) is very very loud (~9/10 most of the time, and can only be masked by going to a rock concert, I can hear it everywhere even in loud places and small concerts. I managed to calm it down at a few times, but I really wonder why T can become so loud ?

It's really hard to live with this condition, I don't know how I managed to do for such a long time and why suddenly since two years it's harder to cope with, but then I have gone through a burnout from overwork two years ago without really stopping working (I'm a freelance worker and most of our family income depends on me) and on top of it have sleep apneas for which I'll have a second surgery end this month, so sleep has been a major issue since more then ten years.

I tried everything, tons of supplements, and some did work at some degree, but the high pitch keeps making my life difficult, I have 3 children and have the impression that this condition is destroying a part of my life, which has already been very hard so far and sad enough I had to stop doing concerts which was my biggest passion.

A few people suggested to me to test hearing aids, which seems helps a lot with the high pitch T's, but what would you suggest?

I have 50% hearing loss above 6000Hz

Hope the new research will bring us a solution really soon.

Thanks and peace,

Hans

 

What caused your tinnitus in the first place?

 

It's hard to know Bobby B really, I remember I started my job as feerlance designer and composer but also played bands at that time, but when I check my hearing all was ok up to 12.000khz when my T started and had mild hearing loss above which was natural for my age. I think maybe my problem is acombination of stress, anxiety, hearing loss and IBS ...

 

Have you continued to do these things on a regular basis? Do you use ear protection at concerts and in loud bars?

If not, then I am afraid you may have answered your own question :-/ Even with hearing protection, shows over a certain volume will chew up your hearing over a long enough period of time.

 

Well yes I used ear protection most of the time, but indeed I used to play some louder concerts and always had the issues with my ears afterwards. But that doesn't answer the question why the T is so loud ? I have friends who have T but very mild, not anywhere what I have and they did much more gigs then I do ...

thanks,

Hans

 

I don't have too much issues with the hearing loss, in some cases I find it to be better then before, where high pitched noise actually would agress me more, so i'm ok with that, it's just the T that I have high pitched that is driving me nuts. And i'm not 100% sure it comes from the hearing damage or other things.

I forgot I also used a lot of Rhinadvil (with Ibuprofen) back when my high pitched T started, maybe that also can be the reason ?

 

Good question but nobody knows yet. Some people go to concerts for decades and no T. Others get hurt at their first concert.
Likewise, we still don't understand what determines if someone with hearing loss will have T or not.

 

In deed Greg, and the results from the poll from the forums confirms that actually a lot have T without really hearing loss ... what a mess

 

Take that result with a grain of salt: we don't have any tests that prove that one has no hearing loss. When people claim they have no hearing loss, it's generally because they came back from an audiologist with an audiogram that was "normal". But that doesn't mean the person doesn't have a damaged hearing apparatus: read/watch Charles Liberman's research @ Mass Eye & Ear to understand cochlear synaptopathy and why it doesn't show on an audiogram.

 

Maybe you're right, but some have done auditests beyond 8.000Hz without issues and still have T so there must be something else going on at the same time.

I don't believe it's just "hearing loss", I can be wrong, but with some many people having stress/anxiety/depression/ibs issues before there T started there must be maybe a multi factor reason why one develops T, what do you think ?

 

They could still suffer from hidden hearing loss, but I agree that not everyone suffering from tinnitus has hearing loss, though I personally believe the vast majority does.

 

I am not sure about this, even less since the results of the poll are in now ... but the hidding hearing loss is something hard to understand ....

On the other side how do you explain people with tons of stress, drinking coffee every day developing T and then when they stop and come back to a less stressful life they get rid of T ? I had a few friends who had T and it went away afterwards, and they have hearing issues from playing music, just don't have T, which is so strange.

 

I think that people who struggle with anxiety are more tuned into their perceptions, and therefore more likely to be anxiously tuned into their tinnitus. What this says for actual 'volume' is hard to say.

The relationship between digestive disorders and psychiatric problems is clearly real, and the subject of a ton of ongoing research, but we're still in "no one really knows" territory.

 

Like I said, "perfect hearing tests" (this includes hearing tests that go above 8 kHz) are no indication that the hearing apparatus isn't damaged. Please read/watch Liberman's research on synaptopathy: it's unrelated to the 8 kHz cut-off on "standard" hearing tests.

I don't know. Nobody knows really, but when doctors don't know they often pin it on "stress": it's an easy conclusion because it's both unverifiable and unchallengeable. But there is one school of thought among the scientific community that claims that any T is somehow linked to some auditory damage somewhere.

I think it's possible that stress or other conditions somehow damage our hearing, but since it's not visible to the naked eye and it's not always visible through a hearing test either, we think that our T is caused by the initial condition rather than the hearing damage that could have come from that condition.

We are often fooled into thinking that correlation implies causation. The most frequent case of this that I find on this forum is people who have an ear infection and claim that their T came from the antibiotics they took, because shortly after they started their treatment, T started too. But somehow they don't seem to think that the nasty infection itself can be the culprit.

I don't have a hard time believing that some cases of T can be caused by other (non auditory) pathologies, but my guess is that they are a minority. I wish I could have more confidence around that statement, though.

 

You said you are a musician. Have you tried to quit being a musician?

It got loud because you ignored the signals from your body. If your back hurts because you are not using the right lifting technique, it is a good idea to stop doing whatever it is that is hurting your body. When one doesn't stop doing those things, the condition and the pain tend to get worse. If you don't stop doing things that hurt your ears now, it is possible that your T will keep getting louder and louder.

 

You're right on the relationship with digestive issues!

But something is also going on at night, I had some terrible sleep apneas this night and woke up with my T so loud it's almost impossible to deal with, also tons of pain in my shoulders and neck, so something makes my condition worse at night. End this month I'll have surgery for the sleep apneas so maybe that will also help to cope with it better afterwards, but I'm afraid that the anxiety and stress form the T sounds make things even worse, like a vicious circle.

 

Yo may be right Greg, I'm not sure anymore about anything, but it seems that my sleep apneas are making things worse. Loud T is one thing, but waking up with pain in shoulders, neck etc, while yesterday eve I was pretty relaxed, is not normal.

 

Hi Bill, I stopped playing a few years ago, so no gigs anymore, you probably are right about the fact I had to stop earlier, maybe 17 years ago when this started, but then my ENT told me that with ear protections I was ok, go figure ... I must admit it's hard to wake up like this morning with such a screaming T, makes me really sick, and at some moments I wonder how I will be able to continue this way, at some days the sound its just too loud.

Yesterday I had a talk with a guy who had a heart attack, and he developed T from that, so why ? If it was related to his hearing, why did he develop it right after his heart attack, quite a lot of cases show it's more complex then just the ears.

 

This is messed up...

 

Yeah what you say ...

I'll probably going to see how hearing aids could help me the time they find something better, because this is really becoming harder and harder to deal with.

That said, I wonder why I managed to calm the T down in some days ... I don't seem to be able to reproduce it.

 

This is true. Audiology deals with volumes and frequencies but it can't measure quality within those parameters. That can only be a subjective assessment. You can have a perfect audiogram and yet everything still sounds like sh....

 

A lot of people are speculating that hearing loss coupled with a stressful event can cause tinnitus. Many people on here said they went through a very stressful time and had a cold or, for example, recently went to a concert and then developed tinnitus. For many people, their tinnitus increases during stressful periods and feels less intrusive or is quieter when they are relaxed. So I can definitely see how stress coupled with hearing loss can cause tinnitus, but I'm wondering if tinnitus caused by stress alone is as prevalent as other people seem to think.

About hidden hearing loss:
"A hidden hearing loss doesn’t normally affect a person’s ability to hear quiet sounds, but it makes it harder to hear sounds when there is competing background noise."

And:
"A hidden hearing loss is a type of hearing loss that cannot be measured by the most common hearing tests and for people with hidden hearing loss, their audiogram looks as it does for someone with normal hearing."

 

Good question, I must admit I'm a little bit lost, at one point when I see the poll results it gives me hope that it's not just hearing loss that gives you T and maybe there's a possibility to reverse it (if it's really stress related), but then when I read your posts about hidden hearing loss, well ... sigh no hope anymore

 

I'm so sorry, the last thing I want to do is to discourage someone suffering from tinnitus! I personally think it's easier to find a cure or treatment for hearing loss (whether hidden or not) than to find out all the mechanisms happening in the brain to develop tinnitus due to stress if that makes sense - but again, I'm not a researcher, just a person speculating. Also, several companies are working on finding ways to treat hearing loss! Companies working on medications for hidden hearing loss are for example Affichem, Otonomy or the Hough Ear Institute. And companies working on hair cell regeneration are for example Frequency Therapeutics, Otonomy, Hough Ear Institute or Audion. I'm truly sorry for my post, my intention was only to inform, but I can see now how other people could be affected by it.

 

@hans1 The number cause of physical tinnitus is forward head bending. It's also why many don't see improvement with physical tinnitus. Forward head bending can lead to all sorts of problems and it's not a friend with anyone with tinnitus.

Getting enough sleep, not on stomach and walking exercise is the number need for chronic pain and stress.

 

No worry it's a free forum and it's good to hear each others word on this, maybe I just try to hope that it's not just hearing loss, the complex thing of this is that I have read so many different stories of people who managed to reverse their T, that if it's really hearing related that must be impossible. Anyway, yes, I really hope one of those companies can come up soon with a solution, I bet this would make life better again for a lot of people.

 

Thanks Greg for the tip on forward head bending, that's indeed something I've been doing for years working in front of a computer and also playing guitar. Because of my sleep apneas, I can't sleep on my back, and sleep sometimes on stomach, this is really making things worse, but hopefully the surgery on 30th January will give me some better way to breath at night. Seems I have way too many issues that makes my T worse (IBS, too much stress and work and almost no time for myself, sleep apnea, food allergies).

 

this is completely anecdotal and it's not even my own anecdote, but it might be helpful. When I did a tinnitus research study at the University of Michigan a couple years ago, the clinician whom I mostly worked with told me that one of the other patients in the study also had longstanding, bothersome tinnitus. She said that this person also had dental problems that needed braces. I don't know much about braces but I guess it involves using little rubber bands to keep them in place / reposition the jaw.

What this person discovered was that they also had sleep apnea, and after one particular adjustment the rubber bands & braces temporarily corrected this, because it was keeping their jaw in a position that forced their airway to stay open. After a week or two of this, their tinnitus dramatically reduced -- it didn't go away, but became less intrusive. Then, that part of the orthodontic treatment was over and another adjustment was made; the sleep apnea became a problem again, and their tinnitus got worse.

I don't know a whole lot about sleep apnea, but I do know that CPAP is not the only option. I have a friend who's told me that he used to snore terribly, and he had a sleeps study done that led to him being fitted with a bite guard that covers both sets of teeth and has a knob that "locks it in place" and pulls his lower jaw forward. He said that as long as he sleeps with this, he doesn't snore. (He also has tinnitus, which sounds pretty bad to me from the way he describes the volume & pitch, but somehow it doesn't bother him very much and so he doesn't tend to think about it, bring it up, or think about things like 'has my tinnitus gotten better since I started using the bite guard').

Anyway -- if you've got sleep apnea I would definitely pursue some kind of treatment for that.

I'm pretty sure that my own tinnitus is down to some combination of hearing loss, drug exposure and possibly viral damage to the inner ear, but it definitely waxes and wanes depending on a number of factors including sleep, diet, stress level, etc.

 

Thanks for your input on this linearb, interesting about your friend's story and I also experienced that when my sleep apnea is better I can also cope better with my tinnitus during the day. The ENT who will do the surgery end this month said that T could probably go down a bit afterwards with better sleep. I also have bruxism on top of sleep apnea doe to tons of stress at work, and this makes it even worse. I have a little help from a mouth-guard for boxers (rubber) which has opening in the mouth so I can breath better and helps with the bruxism, but I'll have to wait end this month to really start breathing better at night. We tried CPAP last year, but it gives me terrible side effects and doesn't correct my type of sleep apnea very well. Anyway, I prefer to get the cause of it adressed in the hope this will also improve my T and overall well being.

And also think my T is coming from different sources, and this makes it so hard to get to the bottom of this.

Good luck to you and thanks for the input!

 

What? Everybody who is alive losses hearing slowly year by year, so it's literally impossible to have T without hearing loss, because everyboy has some degree of hearing loss.

The "T without hearing loss" is the biggest bullshit I have ever seen in the "T scene".