Newbie Finding Tentative Prednisone Success After 8-9/10 Dental-Induced Tinnitus

Perhaps this will help or encourage a future reader who is experiencing deafening tea kettle 14khz T at 8-9/10 for the first time in their life.

Warning: My encouraging results could still be premature.

I'm finding some partial and tentative success taking Prednisone 60 mg/day tapering off over 14 days.
Then following up sparingly with 1-2 days of 60 mg/day Prednisone as needed when spikes arise due to subsequent loud/acoustical trauma.

At Day 67 since Dental work (acoustical trauma) and day 60 since onset of 8-9/10 T at 14 khz, I'm finding T falling to 2-4/10 which is much easier to live with than 8-9/10 T at 14khz that is louder than my voice and others' voices.

However, I've also found that when I have partial and tentative T success, I have escalating sensitivity to sounds (Hyperacusis)

Finally, I've also observed that:

• Foods that spike/increase T: Salty foods, processed meats, caffeine, as little as 1 beer with a meal.
  
• wine spikes/increases T a little less.
  
• Whiskey and ginger ale (1 and no more than 2 drinks with/after a meal) on a day with 8-9/10 coincidentally sometimes reduces T the following day.

Here are the details:
- Day 1 Dental crown installed
- Day 2-6: Major radiating pain and numbness in face below nose, in jaw and unbearable headache pain.
- Day 7-8: Plugged Ear feeling
- Day 9: Intense 8-9/10 T at 14khz. My first life experience with 24/7 T that doesn't disappear after 1-2 hours.
(Note: Prior T experience limited to temporary 2 hour T at most a dozen times over almost 50 years).
- Day 10-19: Intense 8-9/10 T at 14khz. with one or two 4-8 hour remissions after not eating (due to stress)
- Day 20: Intense 8-9/10 T at 14khz. Go to ENT -- Hearing still in acceptable zone up to 8khz.
Start Prednisone 60/mg day that tapers down over 14 days.
Also taking multiple supplement cocktails per day total per day: 800-1200 mg ALCAR , 400-600 Alpha Lipoic Acid, 1 multi-vitamin, 1000mcg Vit B12 (methylcobalamin), 400 mcg Methyl Folate, 1.5 mg B6 (P5P), 5,000mcg Vit K2 (Menaquinone which is weaker version), 250mg-500mg of Niacin (NOT the non-flush type).
- Day 34-50: No Prednisone, but continue Supplemental cocktails with new base line T of 7/10 with fluctuations to 2/10 to 9/10.
- Day 51-56: Discontinue all Supplements. T at 8/10
- Day 57-59: Sleep for first time withOUT foam earplugs... have 1 whisky & ginger ale on day 59
- Day 60: 14 khz T at 2/10 ALL DAY!! with 400hz T at 3/10 celebrate with another 1 whisky & ginger ale
- Day 61: 14khz T at 2/10 ALL DAY!! with 400hz T at 3/10
- Day 62: 14khz T at 2/10 with 400hz T at 3/10 but then go to a public meeting in meeting room without noise absorbing material (no carpet, no curtains, no upholstery, nothing but hard surfaces to reflect sound. After the 3 hour meeting I have 8-9/10 T
- Day 63-64: 14 khz T at 8/10
- Day 65: 14 khz T at 8/10 then take 60 mg Prednisone in evening
- Day 66: Take 60 mg Prednisone in morning and get back to 14 khz T 2/10!! with 400hz T at 3/10
- Day 67 (today) - No Prednisone . Day starts at 2/10 but then shoots to 5/10 after going shopping at Retail Stores and having lunch at noisy restaurant (without any sound absorbing materials)
- Tomorrow (Day 68): I'll see what it is like when I wake up and decide whether to do two (2) days of 60 mg Prednisone again.

 

Damn! I thought that prednisone is useless a month or longer after onset. Looks like I was wrong. Too bad - I could have tried it, and it could have helped...

 

to the extent that there's clinical data, the benefit really only exists in the first few hours (and that data is not well replicated). It's pretty impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions from anecdotes that were not blinded; in general tinnitus improves within 3-6 months of onset for a large number of people, so you always have to take that into account.

 

Are you aware of any studies that reported the fraction of patients who eventually get back to silence?

 

no, but I think "silence" is a kind of sketchy concept because most people when put into perfect silence will be able to hear something, and most adults I know who say they don't have tinnitus will become aware of some kind of hiss or ring or ping if they put earplugs in in a completely silent room. Likewise, most people who have told me they don't have visual snow or pallinopsia are able to discern trace amounts of that kind of visual glitch if they for instance walk from a bright room into a dark room.

The question of whether or not people are generally aware of such extra data while in normally stimulating environments seems more useful to me; our sense organs do not really seem to be organized towards detecting zero data. But, I am likewise not aware of hard numbers about what percentage of people who briefly have intrusive T who recover "completely" to the point that it's not intrusive.

Anecdotes are not that useful, but nearly everyone I know who spent any significant time at concerts, clubs or firearms ranges has at least one or two stories about some point where they overdid it and their ears rang for days/a week. Most people I know who were in bands, the military or who rode motorcycles for years without plugs have something they'd identify as tinnitus, though none of them seem especially bothered by it with one or two exceptions.

 

In my case, I have T in only one ear (which was the only ear subjected to an acoustic trauma). The other ear is pretty silent (even when I am in a silent room, wearing earplugs + Peltor muffs)...

If the doctors can't cure T, the least they can do is provide their patients with accurate data about what to expect...

 

What's "pretty silent"? I guess I'm biased by my own experience, I'm pretty certain that before I had "tinnitus", if I had plugged my ears in a silent room I would have been able to hear something besides my breath and heartbeat.

Doing large-sample size longitudinal studies is expensive and time consuming, but I think the (sort of unhelpful) conventional wisdom that "it goes away for some people and if not people usually adapt to it and are not too distressed by it" is reasonable based on the data we do have. Exact percentages don't actually seem that useful to me just because knowing that there's a 99% chance you'll recover doesn't actually do much good if you're in the other 1%. But, certainly I have known dozens of people with tinnitus in my day to day life; none of them have been disabled by it and generally they've been less distressed about it than I am. Some of that is definitely down to personality; my sister told me recently that she's had on-and-off but fairly constant ringing in one ear after a car accident this year, but she mentioned it almost coincidentally because she sees it as the least serious of her ongoing health problems.

 

When there are no external sounds, there are times when I can hear something, but most of the time I can't hear anything with that ear. This explains why I used to enjoy being in quiet rooms before the onset of T...

They could simply contact the patients who visited ENTs participating in a study at certain time intervals after their visit. It shouldn't be That difficult...

 

The OP's issue seems to be at first glance a musculoskeletal/nervous issue, thus the efficacy of steroids seems plausible.

 

I have had tinnitus for over a month now from an acoustic trauma. I also developed mild Eustachian tube dysfunction. My doctor prescribed me a small dose of prednisone for a week for the ETD, but last night I noticed that it helped with the volume of my tinnitus . I could barely hear it even in a quiet room. I've read on some forums that this is common and your tinnitus usually goes back to it's normal level after you stop taking it, but I am staying positive and hoping that my tinnitus continues to get better and that the prednisone is actually treating it. I still have a blocked feeling in my ears, but it's only day 2 of 7 so I hope that will get better also.

 

Update: Looks like my original post was pre-mature and too optimistic.

Day 68-72: No change... back to old 14khz 8/10 baseline. I'm in the middle of my second round of 60mg/14 tapering Prednisone treatment.

I don't know why I saw a reduction to 2/10 on Day 60-62 -- I stopped keeping detailed daily records and stopped methodically trying different supplements.

I do recall trying 750mg GABA and then twice 1.5 grams (2x750mg) GABA recently... perhaps it was then?
I recall stopping GABA because I read via Google that little GABA supplements pass the blood-brain-barrier and confusion on what the negative impacts might be of long term, excessive GABA supplements.