New to Tinnitus

Hi everyone.

I'm Guilherme. I got this unilateral tinnitus (right ear) for apparently no reason. It rings like a whistle all the time, 24/7. It's not too loud (in a scale, 2/10 during the day and 5/10 during the night) but enough to take off my nights of sleep. I used to wear headphones, but ocasionally, to play videogames and keyboard, but nothing massive, like for a pretty long time with loud volume. Sometimes or another I might have crossed the volume line, but it should be pretty, pretty occasional. My tinnitus started all of a sudden on June, 29th - I could notice it as soon as I woke up - along with an episode of sinusitis (I think so). We went to check it with an ENT and he prescribed the first exams: paranasal sinuses Xray, BERA and Audiometry, and - unfortunatelly, I wish there could be at least something to blame it for - they were all normal... I have no percentage of hearing loss and nothing is structurally wrong in my ear. Yesterday we proceeded with the MRI and keep on waiting for the report (which will be done in 3 days, I think). I'm currently taking Betahistine, which makes me think the ENT is kind of shooting in the dark, because it seems, for me, that I don't have Menière's Disease (he himself told me to chill out about this hypothesis because "I did not have all of the symptoms" for it.
P.S.: I'll make sure I will ask him next time I get to meet him about this kind of 'dizziness' I'm feeling: not sure if due to the medicine or if it's an associated symptom to the T. In many periods of the day my head feels like it's about to leave my neck, no weight and my neck starts to tremble a little bit.

I'm confused. It seems like no doctors in my area knows how to treat it. I'm afraid that my T may be healable but it's not actually being treated rightly; or maybe I'm doing something that triggers or makes it worse (like, bad posture, the current medication, I don't know... there are so many things that can generate this). Having read so little about complete reliefs/cures for T makes me sort of hopeless. I wish it could be temporary.

Thank you.

 

Hi, and welcome!

It seems like a great deal of us has got T for no apparent reason, and also have some facial pain and neck pain along with it.. In my case I think it has to do with my neck or shoulders.. Im just curious, did you experience any pain between your shoulder blades before the onset of T or have any tender spots there? Any weird headaches or weird sensations in your face? I too have somewhat of an ache in my first disks C0/C1 when turning my head around..

I believe the pain and T are related at least in my case.. Also, do you sit a lot with your shoulders bent forward?
You might want to have a look into TMJ as well.. If you are grinding teeth at night etc..

Im kind of trying to figure out some stuff myself

Thanks

 

Hey! Thank you.

Yes, I often get myself sit with my shoulders a little more bent forward than what they should be. Since all of this started I'm trying to avoid it, placing them backwards in a more appropriate way and stretching my back and shoulders a lot lately. I have always had migraines (it's a family case: my great-grandmother has it, my grandmother has it, my mom still has it and I do as well, at least 1/week). I've been also paying attetion to TMJ. Since I took off my braces and had my wisdom-teeth removal (1 and 1/2 year ago) I didn't follow up with this TMJ-ear-head matter (I never thought it would ever happen to me, I have never heard until then about this kind of episode happening to someone. I did not even know this T thing existed!). I'll try to meet a dentist in a week.

It's great to know that I'm not the only one trying to put up an investigation about what might be causing this to me (I was feeling sort of neurotic about it; I might be a little bit now lol) and I hope I can find out some more about my T. It really eases my pain to share this with other people.

 

I know exactly what you mean

I made myself a belt to strap around my shoulders and behind my back to keep my shoulders from being in a forward bent position, I did it yesterday, and I will use it for a while to see if it can have some effect.. But something is going on with my neck.. It hurts.. Hehe