New Sufferer — Seeking the Cause and Treatment

Hello, my friends -
so glad there are support groups like this.

I am a 50-year-old, healthy and in-shape male - and my tinnitus came on rather suddenly but coincided with several other medications and life events - it's hard for me to pinpoint the cause.

It started in September 2018. I had been getting some anxiety and insomnia as well as ear ringing. Over the course of the next month or so - I found out that the anxiety and insomnia were from taking too much thyroid medication - (t3), which I had started about 6 weeks prior. I adjusted the dose and anxiety and insomnia are gone but not the tinnitus.

Incidentally - about a few months or so prior - I had also increased my lipitor dose from 10 mg every night to 20 mg. I came across this article attributing one case of hearing loss and tinnitus to Lipitor - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22392429
and found out that tinnitus is listed as 'other adverse reactions' from the clinical trial.
There is no published case of Tinnitus for thyroid meds- although Low and High thyroid can give this to a person.

The only other thing I was doing was listing to music on my iPhone - with volume around 80% or so - when I worked out a few days per week.

Hearing test 5 years ago showed a perfect score. Recently - the doc said I had a 20-decibel loss in high frequencies in my left ear (which has the most ringing).

So... I'm at a loss - was it the meds, age-related, something else? I stopped the Lipitor but still have tinnitus - and it's driving me crazy. did anyone have similar experiences and think it was medication-related?

Also - yesterday I gave blood and my tinnitus today is worse than ever - so I may have to check Iron levels.

I'll start combing through the forums to see if there is anything better than just white noise when sleeping - even that gets troublesome - it's like I can never have silence again.

Thank you all for reading. I will be posting back with any insights of my own that I can offer as I begin this journey.

Best,
-Jim