Mayo Clinic in the United States

I'm trying to find out if I still could have hearing loss in the ultra high frequencies (above 8000 Hz) 250hz-8000hz is where my two tests have been but I want to get to the bottom of this. I sent an email to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association cause I know that Americans have a broader tradition in high frequency testing than in Scandinavia where I live.

They replied to me and recommended Mayo Clinic
http://www.mayoclinic.org/departments-centers/audiology/overview


The other place they recommended were House Ear Institute.
http://www.houseearclinic.com/audiology

Anyone here that have been tested there or have any comments or input? Response would be greatly appreciated, although if it's just in context of ultra high frequency testing.

 

I live about 2 hours from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. When I went there to see a ENT doc about my ringing... about 2 years ago (guessing), they said there was nothing they could do about it. He said they get all the publications like everyone else. They said to see the U of Iowa Tinnitus Clinic or the MN Tinnitus Clinic in Edina. I can't remember if they did a audiogram or not, and have no idea if they do a ultra high frequency test. Best just to call or email them, I guess.

 

Strange going back to that post, it seems so old now although it's not that long time ago. I guess it feels old since its prior to my audiologist assessment. Also, short term memory loss is another side affect of my T&H. I really dunno what to think of this ultra high frequency test issue, I still disagree with your statement in that thread Markku, that 90% of everyone with T have some sort of hearing loss. I guess ALL people over a curtain age has SOME hearing loss as this is normal by age factor and heaps of them have no T at all. I have recently had a face-to-face chat with a girl that wears a hearing apparatus, she noticed my white noise generators and asked me about my situation. When I told her mine I asked her if she had T and she said no. She also told me that it's in the family and that she probably didn't have many micro hair cells left. Most medical staff or docs say that loss of inner micro hair cells will give T guaranteed it goes to show that these percentages and assumptions are barely guesswork.

My point is hidden hearing loss or not based on high frequency tests. I'm interested in mapping all frequencies to be sure instead of walking around in uncertainty, however I guess all tests can be wrong and I don't know if those ultra high tests are accurate at all.

As you can see I'm still battling the diagnostics in this. I'm torn between somatic T or hearing loss T. Acoustic trauma or mental trauma (or both) I also incorporate a chance of T by medicine consumption, although the latter I hold as the lesser chance, just by gut feeling. Today I also booked an appointment with a osteopathic physicians after having a meet and greet session so to speak, within those 15 minutes he pinpointed my problem areas in my body and he was extremely correct in his assumptions, to my huge surprise he says that they have people hurting with T issues coming in for treatment quite often. I just booked a double assessment right away cause he was close to where I now just recently has started to work. He strongly believe that lots of T cases are based on somatic things like severe stress, wrong body shape or behavior etc. It's a private clinic so I expect some extra bang for my buck.

 

@Per,

Years ago I worked for an audiologist. We often referred to House Ear Institute. It's very well known and has a fantastic reputation. The Mayo Clinic is also world class.

 

I had a high frequency hearing test at OHSU. My loss is around 13-14k, up to that it is fine and past that a little ways. However, it is within that gap that is probably the cause of my tinnitus.

 

I'm not certain what frequency range they test. I do remember though we'd refer our most difficult cases to House.

Here's a link to their website regarding tinnitus...

http://www.houseearclinic.com/eardisease/tinnitus

 

I'm headed to the Mayo Clinic later this month. It is not really for anything T related, but since my doctor mentioned to them that I had tinnitus in his referral info, they have evidently set up a hearing test me. I'll ask if they will do a high freq test.

I already had a high frequency hearing test at a local university before this latest onset of new T that just started last week due to an ear infection. Back then a normal hearing test for me revealed no significant hearing loss up to 8000 Hz. In fact, I was told it was highly rare for someone to have hearing as good as I did for my age. I later had a hearing test during a tinnitus consultation with an audiologist at a local medical school. I asked if she could test my hearing up to 15 kHz. She did and found clear loss in the range from 12.5 kHz to 14.5 kHz in my right ear, then a return to normal at 15 kHz. I measured my T frequency at 13.5 kHz before having the test. The biggest loss was in the 13-14 kHz range.

I guess I'm not a believer in somatic tinnitus. I don't believe tinnitus is caused by anxiety in the sense that once your anxiety is in check, then the T goes away. However, I do think anxiety can cause hearing loss, and therefore tinnitus, but once the damage is done, its probably done (not reversible in today's world).

I do, however, think that there are many treatments that may help. Osteopathy had proven successful for many at least in anecdotal terms. What I mean by that is, even though there may not be a scholarly paper with data proving it helps, it most definitely helps some people. If someone says XYZ helped them, I believe it helped them. There is no better judge of what a patient feels than the patient.

mick

 

@mick,

Ive just booked a double assessments with an osteopath, we had a chat in the hallway between me and him and just by touching some vital parts of my body he could tell that things are not the way its supposed to be. I've been in and out an physiotherapist treatment for ages but my pain always returns. All the shoulder inflammation, capsulitis etc .are caused by something he wanted me to learn more about. It's a private clinic but in my mind the private conceded seems to be more up to it. We were talking about breathing techniques to settle down my chronic pain and stiffness in the facial area, the neck, shoulders and legs. He meant that I was running my car with no rubber on the wheels and that I must put some breaks on. He also told me that he treats T patients quite often with no hearing loss.

I had a skype session with specialist in somatic T in Sweden in December, I took the initiative to talk to here about somatic T cause she was in a scientific group of researches focusing their research on somatic T. The material they had developed the last 30 years or so was impressing and the session made me feel heard for the very first time. They went straight and honestly to the core issues, treating the underlying causes for T&H. As a matter of fact I'm gonna have an additional Skype chat with that therapist at the end of this month - I really believe there IS such things like somatic T and that I need to get well from it by altering my life in a more healthy direction.

 

Since clinical testing rarely goes over 10khz I doubt there is any reliable data on what your hearing should be like. There will be average information around for your age but I'm not sure that tells the whole story.

I bet many people that don't have T have dips or earlier limits than others above 12khz ....

But you don't need a special clinic or a prestigious hospital to test this, I am sure you can get this checked out locally in most countries. You can even do this at home with appropiate headphones and calibration, or easily detect asymmetry from one ear to the other.

You mean psychosomatic? somatic tinnitus refers to the modulation and interactions between the auditory pathways and other sensory-motor systems in the neck, head, even shoulders.... Muscular activity, stuff like that.

From Wiki: "subjective tinnitus: otic tinnitus, caused by disorders of the inner ear or the acoustic nerve, and somatic tinnitus, caused by disorders outside the ear and nerve, but still within the head or neck. It is further hypothesized somatic tinnitus may be due to "central crosstalk" within the brain, as certain head and neck nerves enter the brain near regions known to be involved in hearing.[38] It may be caused by increased neural activity in the auditory brainstem where the brain processes sounds, causing some auditory nerve cells to become overexcited. The basis of this theory is most people with tinnitus also have hearing loss,[9] and the frequencies they cannot hear are similar to the subjective frequencies of their tinnitus.[10] Models of hearing loss and the brain support the idea a homeostatic response of central dorsal cochlear nucleus neurons could result in them being hyperactive in a compensation process to the loss of hearing input"

but if you meant the whole anxiety thing, I don't believe in that either, but I think it can make it worse, but probably not a cause alone.

 

"may be caused by increased neural activity in the auditory brainstem where the brain processes sounds, causing some auditory nerve cells to become overexcited"

@Luca - Just curious...what do you use to suppress your tinnitus? benzos, seizure drugs, sound therapy, etc.

 

After reading the post on this thread I don't know what to think, this forum confuses me and informs me simultaneously but that's natural with diversity of opinions we have here. This hearing loss versus T drives me mad, there are so many sides to this and I can find as much support for it as I can against it. All this loss of micro hair cell talk has also made me think, cause when I was lucky enough to talk to a retired ENT that wrote a book about it he was not very fond of this "you have T and must have lost hair cell" thing. He said it was widely debated within the medical field and nothing more than a theory thats been in and out of popularity.

When it comes to high frequency testing I will surely have one done as soon as I'm able to get to a place that can perform this, however I'm getting more and more frustrated to IF a hight frequency hearing loss in fact IS the cause of my T or if I may have had that anyways like Luca is describing.

 

This scares me cause it doesn't support the anxiety and stress theory I'm holding on to. To me T caused by hearing loss seems worse than the other cause. Dunno if I'm entitled to believe so or not, it's just my perception.

 

Nothing. I generally don't regard it as a problem that needs supressing. But if I did, there would be nothing there to supress it with.

On very bad days I take a long shower (i can't hear mine in the shower).

 

I certainly hope the stuff you're doing will help, Per. Keep us informed. I'm game for trying anything safe, and the kind of things an osteopath does generally seem safe to me. If you don't mind sharing the kind of insight or corrective actions the somatic T researcher has to offer, I'm sure all of us would love to hear it. When my original T started it was suggested to me that it was caused by anxiety. My feeling at the time was, "that's a relief, I can manage anxiety and once its gone, the T will disappear, too."

It is of course always a good idea to move in a healthy direction. It often seems harder to do than it is. Just as often the underlying health problems are the things that keep us from making healthy changes because those changes don't seem like they would return sufficient benefits to make the changes, or the changes are difficult because of the problems. For instance, back exercises for a person with back problem. Sometimes the pain of doing the exercise itself makes it very unattractive, but exercise may indeed be the be the best thing.

@Luca - thanks for the clarification re: somatic and psychosomatic. I had not really looked up what somatic meant. From the context of Per's post I was equating it with anxiety.

 

I tend to agree that the often accepted relationship between T and hearing loss is not ironclad. I've asked more than one hearing specialist if hearing loss causes T, or if perhaps the T simply masks sounds that appear as hearing lost (the person can't distinguish between the ringing or the real sound). Both said that the answer to that question was not completely resolved, but most believed the former explanation. I just had a hearing test today, and there is no question that there were a number of sounds I heard where I asked myself "was that just my ears ringing, or was that a real sound".

Both my original T and my new T are in the same frequencies as my hearing loss (about 12k-14kHz, and 3-4.5kHz). The high freq hearing loss is not noticeable to me in the slightest (though I remember commenting when it first started that some of the classical music with a lot of violins that I used to listen to sounded different). The new lower frequency loss is very noticeable to me at this time. Except for pure tones, everything sounds different to me now. Rock music that I am very familiar with no longer sounds like it used to. The missing middle frequencies are very noticeable.

 

@mick,

I'll make sure I share my experiences with treatment methods, right now the only tactile thing I'm doing is to wear a white noise generator to hopefully get my H a little better. You can do a local search on these posts. I believe becoming more "intact" with my stressed out physique can create some sort of T relief cause stress has caused alot of damage for me in my life. I'm not the kind of person to believe in sudden miracle cures so the osteopathy thing is really me trying to come to terms with my physical pain, and hopefully T relieve will follow as a consequence of that. What had me surprised was that the physical clinic had dealt with people with T before, I was surprised the guy had even heard of T cause I didn't expect that. Normally when I mention T in non audiological circuits I get the all so familiar camouflaged "whatever" response.

The relationship between Stress and Tinnitus and the way people respond to tinnitus is described in the enclosed info.

 

@Per,

Just to let you know, while I was at the Mayo Clinic last week I asked if they do high frequency hearing tests above 8000 Hz, and they said they do. They do them routinely for people who are taking ototoxic medications, and would probably do one on request. I did not have one while I was there since I've had one before. I did have a regular hearing test there.

So how are the osteopathy treatments working out?

mick

 

The actual cause of tinnitus has to be anywhere from the inner ear hair cells to the auditory cortex. Many things external to that system can worsen tinnitus but not cause it. Anxiety, muscle tension, fatigue, lack of sleep, etc. are all tinnitus amplifiers. I wish many of the tinnitus sufferers would stop spending every waking moment researching and trying to find a cure. That is simply excarbating the tinnitus by increasing its emotional importance and adding to the burden of distress. There are a few younger patients who can have a curable acute condition but that is typically for unilateral (one sided) tinnitus. The rest of us with chronic tinnitus have to (1) get educated (2) reduce anxiety (3) get adequate sleep, and (4) use sound techniques for retraining to encourage habituation.

I have chronic age-related (presbycusis) tinnitus and I refuse to let it rule my life. It is only tinnitus and it will not harm me. There is an argument that even particpiating too frequently on this site is not healthy for most tinnitus sufferers but I also understand that many people come here to get educated and support. Education is fine but the endless wringing of hands is not!! If you think I am trying to mix things up a bit, you are right.