Is It True Tinnitus Caused by Hearing Loss Never Goes Away?

Hi all,

yesterday, I visited an audiologist, and she found that I have hearing loss in high frequency. She said that it will be permanent tinnitus.

As I have hearing loss which is very unlikely to get recovered, so is my tinnitus. I have tinnitus just for 1 month caused by testing a sub-woofer, I was extremely hoping that, within 3 months, it CAN go away.

I was never listening to music with high volume or with headphone regularly. My main way of listening music is driving time. I enjoy music mainly when I drive. I usually do not go club/bar very often. Maybe once or twice in a whole year.

So, I was thinking that my situation was better. Well, I know, no one can tell WHEN it will go away, but at least I thought, it is POSSIBLE that, within 2-3 months, it can go away. Now, based on my audiologist, It will NOT go away.

My audiologist said that she also have tinnitus for 15 years. Which is really scary!!

 

I think that is the worst thing about T that you know already that it will never go away anymore.

 

It can go away or at least improve over time.

What does your hearing test show??

I have tinnitus from exposure to a powerful burgler alarm external sounder.

 

I talked to a friend of mine said that her husband had T for 20 years and one morning he woke up and has never heard it again. He worked in a glass factory with the loud clanging of bottles and back then they didnt use ear protection. So there is always a possibility that your T will go away and in my case it doesnt seem as invasive than when I first got it. I have high frequency hearing loss too with a high pitch electrical like sound 24 /7 that I can hear over everything but the shower. Now that im 14 monthes in I dont hear it most of the time for your brain kind of blocks it out which they call habituation. When I do hear it most of the time it doesnt bother me anymore. Time heals most things.....

 

I wouldn't give up hope of it going away just yet, it's still very recent for you. If you've had it 6 months or so you better start getting used to it.
It's still possible to go away after that, but unlikely, and as time goes on the odds of it going away dwindle.

 

So I just had my hearing test done yesterday. It shows mild hearing loss bilaterally. Basically the conclusion that I got from the audiologist was that the tinnitus is from hearing loss. I understand that the two go hand in hand but my issue is that I don't know what has caused the hearing loss. The audiologist found no mechanical reason for hearing loss, there is no loud noise exposure (I work as a nurse and live in the country) and I haven't had any known infections so I found it interesting that she basically said she doesn't know what causes my hearing loss but I would qualify for hearing aids if I wanted them. So far I think I'm okay without them but I am wondering if hearing aids work like glasses where if you have a mild vision impairment, it is good to wear glasses to try to correct the problem or do I wait until I feel that I actually need hearing aids in order to function?

 

It can go away but not necessarily. Don't wait for that to happen.

 

It can go away depending on the frequency and severity of a noise injury, but it can take months.
In more severe cases the T may be permanent but it will go down in volume over a while, sometimes to manageable levels. My T from my original acoustic trauma 2 years ago no longer exists, and even when it hit, the T was not incredibly bothersome after a few days. I also had loads of T from using my headphones back 3 years ago and beyond; many of those tones have also disappeared, some lasting not much longer than 3 months!

There are zillions of posts about this here that you can use as a resource for greater knowledge.

 

@Coyotesheaven how long did that T from 2 years ago stick around? I have bothersome T for 3 weeks and don't expect it to go away though started prednisone treatment earlier this week (my delay was from bad advice/access). It helped but my hope is simply for the volume to reduce and for it to centralize in my head vice my ears.

 

@Jim51042

I don't know how long it stuck around,but probably for a couple of months. It was not too loud.
Of course, I had another set of noise injuries a few months down the road, and the T pitches from those likely replaced my original T tones.
But I would say that they always dissipated or came back on an episodic basis 2 months from the injury; and if they did come back for periods, they were at barely noticeable levels.

You might want to consider liopflavanoids, magnesium, alpha lypoic acid, and vitamins along with your steroid treatment to better aid in the recovery of your ears; all are supported by studies to have some therapeutic effect, even if it is really small.
Those alternatives are probably what led my ears to be somewhat resilient after my initial accident to further noise injury over a couple months. They can do wonders for T for some people as well.

Really sorry you are going through this put just know that these problems will get better given you give your body the time and nutrients needed to heal!

 

Thanks I had been taking mag Vit C and B complex prior, started taking NAC immediately after as well as acetyl-L-carnitine multi, ginko, and more recently alpha lipoic acid and Vit E. Thanks yea I hope to get better because prior to the prednisone it was pretty debilitating (high freq drill noise both ears).

 

No it's not true. My uncle is the living proof that it can go away even when it's related to a noise exposure + hearing loss

 

You forgot magnesium and vitamin A. An experiment was done where lab rats were exposed to loud noise for a long time and some were given A, C, E, and magnesium. The rats given high doses of those vitamins were able to later respond to sound of almost 30 dB less which represents a 1,000 times improvement. It's thought that additional hearing damage happens to the nervous system after acoustic events. Death to cells have been seen to happen up to 64 weeks later. It could explain why tinnitus can recover 1-3 months later. Not much you can do with cochlea hair cell damage though.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1950331/

I'm surprised that the medical community doesn't do more research on this. The study is right there for you to read.

 

THAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANKS a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT for the good news.

How long your uncle had Tinnitus ?

 

Thanks everyone for all of the positive news.

Audiologist found the hearing loss in both of my ears, around 6KHz area, about 50db.

 

Bingo.

I've heard of stories of it going away for numerous people after ridiculously long stretches (10, 16, and 20 years). On the contrary, my dad has it (and no hearing in his left ear) and he's had it for 25 years now. But he is as upbeat as they come even though it's not exactly left him.

Habituation is the key and then if you get lucky and it goes away, more power to you.

 

His tinnitus went away? :O

 

Yes Mario, it completely went away after some years

 

I know quiet some people who had T for a few months and recovered almost completely.
For me I can say I've been noticing improvements (and I might be habituating) almost 2 months in.

 

Forgot to mention had been taken Magainst prior and my multiple has near NIH limits on Vit A and I don't want to overdoses on that (turn orange lol). I also started taking Vit D because I read it helps nerve repair. Thanks guys

 

After how many years your uncle recovered?

 

He did not specify the number of years and strangely i did not have the curiosity to ask. I was just so amazed that it completely disappeared. He simply mentioned "years".
And what caused his T was handling chainsaws on a daily basis.

 

The fact is that a large part of the population eventually get hearing loss but don’t suffer from tinnitus. So there is no absolute link between hearing loss and T in the first place.

I believe it gets locked in by our emotional response to it. So if you are scared by people saying they have had it for 15 years, the anxiety and fixed mind set won’t help you get over it so you canmove on.

 

There is an absolute link between hearing loss and T: countless research proves it.

We may not understand yet why some people with T don't have "visible hearing loss" and some people with hearing loss don't have T, but there is enough scientific evidence (in very large amounts) to assert, with much assurance, that there is a strong correlation between hearing loss/impairment and tinnitus.

We often prove effectiveness (positive correlation in a measured outcome) without understanding the principle of action. This is true with drugs too: we know they are effective, but don't understand how they work.

We don't need perfect understanding to assess correlation.

 

Well said @GregCA

During the standard audiology tests I was told on several occasions my hearing was superb. But I still have t

I did do an online test at home that showed I had hearing loss at 15k in the ear where I first got the tinnitus relative to the other ear which I find suspicious

Did anyone else find their hearing is not just okay but really good on the standard tests?

 

The most likely link (where there is one), is that any ‘internally’ generated sounds will be more noticeable when there is hearing loss due to the reduced amount of masking from external sounds. That’s why hearing aids can help some.

A large number of people with hearing loss (which is just about everyone eventually) don’t complain about T. That’s a fact regardless of the way we interpret stats.

At the same time many people have what we all call T but never seek medical assistance. Those who have moved on from T don’t tend to report the success back to the medical profession. So how can you derive conclusions from stats when there is missing data from these 2 large groups of people?

What I’m really saying is that stats should be taken with a pinch of salt just like listening to the personal experiences of other T sufferers. Politicians are very good at manipulating stats and so are salesmen.

 

We know it's not only that: we've demonstrated (with imaging, fMRI in particular) that there are hyperactive neurons downstream from the cochlea. It's not like a "T hearing apparatus" is just like a healthy hearing apparatus but the hearing loss makes the patient hear the T. It has very different characteristics in terms of neuronal activity.

Certainly the inability to mask contributes to the discomfort since we can't "drown" the T, but it is not responsible for the genesis of the spurious sound. It just makes it stand out more.

It's very easy: you don't need a large sample to be statistically significant. We do that all the time with polling, and with sufficiently large samples we can reach confidence levels in the 95%+. This page lets you play with numbers so you can determine how many people you need to sample out of a population, given the population size, confidence level and confidence interval you want. If you input 95% CL, 3 CI, and 3M people (the rough estimate of the number of people severely bothered by T), you get a result sample size of about 1,000 people (which will accurately represent those 3 million people).

What's more annoying is the sampling bias derived from the selection of people who decide to get medical help.

 

To be honest I haven’t researched much of the scientific and medical evidence yet. That’s why I say people should also take personal experiences with a pinch of salt, including my own!

Having said that and having browsed through many of the success stories here I CAN see a direct correlation between some techniques and moving on from tinnitus. A picture is emerging here which seems to help many sufferers. The irony is that those who do move on probably don’t want to come back to tell us as they dun’t want to be reminded of the bad days.

I’m very interested in how data is collected though. Thanks for the link, I’ll have a look at that later.

 

My T started about May '2016. In early August, I had sudden hearing loss as shown by a hearing test, took prednisone for couple weeks and hearing came back. T continued until late 2017 and then went away. Even though yours may have been caused by hearing loss, I still think there's a chance it will go away.

 

It can, and it can improve a lot with time, and if every month that goes on you feel you are improving why should it stop ? The body is capable of amazing things