My Tinnitus Is Almost Gone After 3 Years: It's Now a Faint Ringing — No Longer Hyperacusis Either

Thank you so much for sharing. As someone just short of 2 years into the tinnitus journey I've often wondered what the possibilities were of improving any further. You've given me hope.

 

As someone with hyperacusis this is good to hear.

How bad would you say your hyperacusis specifically was at the beginning? Did things like water faucets, door handles, or even your own voice/footsteps cause you pain?

Since you've recovered, have you been able to go back to listening to music, or perhaps playing (if you are musical?). It's interesting to me that you say you can tolerate screaming kids now, to me that seems unimaginable.

 

My hyperacusis took about 18 months before it began to subside. I was extremely grateful for that alone. The reduction in tinnitus at month 30 was the icing on the cake.

Hang in there and stay healthy. You will see improvements every 6-8 months.

 

I am also about 30 months out. After a lot of protection, a few setbacks, and avoidance of any loud places, I am at the quiet room stage of tinnitus as well.

 

Have you had improvements along the way?

 

Did you do anything else to help healing occur? Did you work outside the home during this time?

Thank you,
twa

 

Boy that is a heck of a tough question. I guess I would answer yes, but I'm really not sure how much. The real difference, and here I think there is a little chicken and the egg, has been my slow trend towards habituation.

I now spend an awful lot of time not actively aware of the tinnitus. I feel that habituation functionally makes it quieter as you can unconsciously start to ignore it more and more. As my limbic system has become generally chilled out I don't have much physiological response to the noise so it is kind of less painful. Perhaps the best part of this process is that when I am able to subconsciously ignore it I am not hearing the worst of the screeching that fluctuates against my background noises, so that many times even when I am actively aware of the sound I might not be actively aware of my worst sounds. Of course this all goes out the window on my bad days .

The flip side of this is I'm not sure when it is any quieter at all. I think it is quieter at times. Maybe I have more time with steady fuzz and less fluctuating sounds than I used to. But when I look at my objective benchmarks, can I hear it over the shower and can I hear it over traffic/noisy old jeep, basically I still hear it 24/7 over everything, I just have developed the ability to push it out of my mind a bit.

Or maybe the reason I'm doing better is that there has been a slight decrease in my symptoms. It is just so hard to judge from memory how loud something was almost 2 years ago, or even a month ago. I keep on waiting for it to start disappearing win the shower or in a noisy room, then I'll know my symptoms have actually improved.

 

@Vii thank you for sharing your story. Did you have any pain or Tonic Tensor Tympani spasms with your hyperacusis?

 

Yes, I continued work throughout. I used vigilant double protection when loud activity like vacuum or mow lawn. I was on Omega-3 500 mg daily for about a year. I sleep with foam earplugs daily which I think helped me the most.

I hope others can get better soon as well. I still remember how terrible it was when the tinnitus was raging, and determined not to go back to that.

 

Thanks for the response. The otologist told me to use sound enrichment and sleep with a sound pillow. That sounded like too much sound for me so I use a cell phone on water sounds by my bed. That's interesting that you slept in earplugs.

 

Hi, I know this question wasn’t for me but I had all of those!

My hypercausis gradually went away over about two years and my TTTS improved massively over the same amount of time. I still get little clicks in both my ears pretty much daily, but they really don’t concern me in the slightest. The worst for me was the constant thumping for hours and even days at at time when my TTTS really fired up. After I’d been in the car, if I went straight inside to silence I used to get a really low loud booming noise that would last until there was other sounds around me. All of this has improved to the point that none of it really happens anymore. Not sure if it was all part of inflammation or just that I was so anxious and tensing muscles I didn’t know I even had that triggered it. I also used to get the crackling paper bag sound in reaction to certain noises like dishes, cutlery clashing but that has stopped too.

Sorry to jump on but I just want people to know that generally things do start to improve, it just takes an awful long time!

S x

 

Hang in there. I was in denial at year 2, I couldn’t believe that it could last so long. I was ready to give up on life in general. I stopped traveling and socializing and gave up many outdoor hobbies.

I kept believing that my brain would adapt if I stayed healthy and exercised and ate well. The investment finally payed off as I’m now almost on the final stretch. The residual ringing now is a fraction of what I had in the first 2 years. The drop off at month 30 was startling and unexpected. You will be rewarded for being patient. The effort you put into learning how to cope with it now will put you in an excellent position when it begins to subside. Every small improvement will increase your confidence and optimism which is a self reinforcing feedback loop t your brain... and that will accelerate the final healing stage and habituation.

 

Hi, thank you so much for sharing. Any positive news is so good and I’m so happy to hear that it got better for you.

Did you ever experience any pain with your hyperacusis? Any menthol cooling sensations?

 

My hyperacusis was so bad I had to wear my earplugs to talk with anyone in my house even after asking them to lower their voice. Any normal volume sound was extreme torture. I stopped listening to most music because it was too painful. I had it worse than the average person. I would guess I had it worse than you. I wore earplugs nearly all day in my own house. And my house is in a quiet neighborhood.

That lasted for roughly 18 months. I ended up buying expensive earplugs that filters out the volume but still allows for audible speech so I could go to social events and actually hear what people were saying instead of using foam plugs and hearing nothing and feeling isolated.

I never imagined I would ever be able to tolerate a screaming baby AGAIN in my life time but now it’s possible. I just recently started listening to music on noise canceling headphones again at low volume with practically no discomfort. I hadn’t done that in 3 years.

Hang in there and stay healthy. You will make it to the promise land if you treat yourself well and avoid any more loud sounds. I had to give up a lot of normal activities to protect my ears. If you are a musician I would suggest you practice alone and at low volume. Do not inflict any more damage.

 

I don’t know what that means. Can you explain?

 

Thanks for sharing. Yes my hyperacusis was highly reactive to sounds. My tinnitus would spike at the slightest of sounds. It was awful. It made me paranoid to be around any environment with the potential for spontaneous noises.

 

Yes I did. Any noise wether it was the pitch of the noise or the loudness (I’m unsure which) would make me flinch with pain. It’s very hard to describe experiencing pain from a noise to people that have never experienced it, so none of my family understood, and looked at my blankly when I’d say a noise hurt. Sometimes it was a sharp stabbing pain right through into the depths of my ears, and other times it was a wave of warmth or coldness that would spread from my ear down my neck or into my cheeks and temples. It really was miserable.

The best thing I believe that I did for myself that scared the hell out of me at the time, was to not overprotect my ears, and try to remain calm around every day sounds such as dishes etc that had never bothered me before tinnitus. The mental part of all of this was the biggest thing to overcome for me. Once I started to conquer that, and take back control things really did start to get better fast. Dwelling and thinking about noise or sensations just seems to prohibit and hold you back from any form of recovery.

I do hope things are improving for you!

S x

 

My tinnitus used to spike if I watched tv. Not sure if it was giving off a certain pitch while it was on. It used to create what I can only describe as a high piercing sound so loud I could feel it in the centre of my head, and it would make me squint in pain. I couldn’t watch the tv without this happening for at least 9-10 months. It gradually stopped happening more and more until it stopped all together. It was horrific!

S x

 

Hi @Digital Doc -- I would like to see this supplement become part of a standardized starting point for tinnitus sufferers. Omega-3's can be so helpful to support optimal brain function, and is often used to treat depression. It can also be used (sometimes dramatically) to help repair damaged brains.

I take Omega-3 supplements based on fish oils, but I also incorporate a good amount of chia seeds in my daily smoothies. Chia seeds are the richest plant source of Omega-3's. When I started eating a lot of them, it had a very noticeable calming effect on my whole neurological system. -- Nettles tea can also has a very helpful calming effect, primarily because of its ability to support adrenal function, which is a major part of our body's stress response system.

 

Tonic tensor tympani spasms are where you feel thumping or fluttering in your ear, either after sound or just randomly

Pain as in any stabbing, burning or acid sensations anywhere in or around your ear.

 

It does seem like we had a very similar experience. Dishes were the absolute worst as they generate sounds around the 11-15 kHz range, which is where most of the damage resides in the cochlea. It felt like someone was shoving an ice pick into my brain repeatedly with a residual fractal overtone on top of my base tinnitus.

Dishes no longer bother me at all. It’s nothing short of a miracle. My base tinnitus is no longer volatile... it’s just a mild hiss that doesn’t vary much. I used to also get lots of rapid phase shifts where it felt as if one ear completely lost all input while the opposite got extra gain, it was a trippy feeling but wouldn’t last more than a few seconds.

I’m looking forward to year 4 and 5. I think it will be a game changer for my life, given the first 3 were a living hell.

 

I do eat a lot of fish, so perhaps that was helpful in my recovery.

 

I tried sound enrichment at low level some nights with the white noise from an electric heater. I found that it would spike me, and I would wake up with ear fullness.

Out of desperation one night, and some hyperacusis that I was waking up from every little sound like a car passing I tried foam earplugs. I found that it reduced the tinnitus in a few minutes, and even more by morning. While at first I was not sure if it was Dumbo's magic feather, or a placebo effect, I figured it was ok as I was sleeping a lot better, and I was hastening the habituation as the tinnitus was getting better month after month. Besides, there was very little downside to the treatment in my estimation.

I still use the earplugs to sleep, and I am sure that it helps a lot. At the very least, I don't wake up with ear fullness, which is such a lousy feeling!

I hope this info helps fellow tinnitus sufferers.

 

On better days I seem to be able to reach an equilibrium with plugs in, like the noise all hangs there at a steady level and isn't reacting much. Would much prefer to just hear ambient sound, though.

 

Did anything else in your life happen like stress going down? Mine got quieter in the 1st year, but at 3.5 years it is worse than ever sadly.

 

Thank you so much for sharing your story and giving other hyperacusis sufferers hope!

May I ask, we’re you able to work during the time that your hyperacusis was severe? Also, did you have any setbacks during that time?

 

QUOTE="Vii, post: 578877, member: 43303"]It does seem like we had a very similar experience. Dishes were the absolute worst as they generate sounds around the 11-15 kHz range, which is where most of the damage resides in the cochlea. It felt like someone was shoving an ice pick into my brain repeatedly with a residual fractal overtone on top of my base tinnitus.

Dishes no longer bother me at all. It’s nothing short of a miracle. My base tinnitus is no longer volatile... it’s just a mild hiss that doesn’t vary much. I used to also get lots of rapid phase shifts where it felt as if one ear completely lost all input while the opposite got extra gain, it was a trippy feeling but wouldn’t last more than a few seconds.

I’m looking forward to year 4 and 5. I think it will be a game changer for my life, given the first 3 were a living hell.[/QUOTE]
Your post is encouraging. I've had the rapid phase shifts three times and it is very unnerving. I wonder what causes that, do you have any information on this? I'm 5 months in from an acoustic trauma. It's hard to tell what is more difficult the tinnitus or the hyperacusis.

 

I did work during that time frame and my job was very dependent on phone calls (sales). I would bear through it but I would be exhausted by the end of the day. Probably wasn’t the best for my recovery but had to work at that time so no choice.

The hyperacusis was the worst part of the whole journey. Once that subsided by month 18-20 the tinnitus was irritating and frustrating but at least I could function in noisy settings without constantly wearing ear protection. That was a big milestone.

 

Was there a cracking sound in your ears as you swallow?

 

Cracking sound when you swallow is normal @SadMan.

This has to do with jaw/joints. I actually asked my ENT regarding this last week.