Possible Noise-Induced Tinnitus — Can Music Below 60 dB Cause Tinnitus?

Hello,

I'm a 27-year-old healthy male. As many of us, I'm currently working remotely from home (I work in research). I have some very noisy neighbours, and for the past few months while working I've often been listening to some relaxing sea wave sounds, which I usually play at about 40-50 dB (something I've checked a posteriori). I'm also a huge music fan (mostly classical music), and in the evenings I usually relaxed listening to some two-three solid hours of Beethoven, Brahms, etc. Again, never, to my judgement, loud enough to be dangerous, at most 60 dB (checked with a phone app on two different phones). I've followed this routine of sea waves while working + music at night especially since Christmas, that is, for about a month and a half.

Everything was OK (or seemed to be OK) until about two weeks ago, when I started to hear a quiet ringing in one of my ears, which I didn't give much importance to - I could only hear it in occasional, very quiet moments. However, the intensity of the ringing, now on both ears, has dramatically increased since Monday 15th February, and for about week now I can hear a constant very high-pitch ringing (about 8000-10000 Hz) on both ears, along with a very high-pitch intermittent cicada-like sound. Thinking in retrospect, before the ringing started some days I could hear a quiet hiss after switching off my music before going to sleep, but then I just assumed it was a subjective sensation from the sudden change from music to absolute silence.

I went to my GP last Thursday and she told me I had some mucus in my left ear, and prescribed me some corticoids. The intensity of the ringing has only kept increasing though, and the thought that it may be permanent noise-induced tinnitus is absolutely devastating, particularly given its intensity and its difficult-to-mask high frequency. I have an appointment with an ENT tomorrow, but I fear that I'm not going to get much from it.

What do you think about my case? Do you think that a couple of months of some daily 12 hours of sea waves + music below/around 60 dB can cause permanent tinnitus, or will it subside in the following weeks/months? Is there much hope in my case? I know that it's impossible to know for certain how my condition is going to evolve, but I would appreciate your opinions, especially if you've gone through a situation similar to mine.

Thanks.

 

Hello Tom137, have you got an history of exposure to loud noise? Concerts? Clubs? Also, did you play the music with speakers or headphones/earbuds? Unfortunately nobody will be able to give you the answer you are looking for. I personally refuse to believe that those sound intensities could provoke an irreversible damage but hey, I also believed that falling asleep with headphones and white noise was safe... and then I got tinnitus. Maybe you could ask to your ENT for a round of Prednisone, that seem to be the protocol in case of noise induced tinnitus.

Try to not dwell too much on the sound; your tinnitus is very fresh, the chances that it will disappear/fade in the next weeks or months are statistically quite high.

 

Hello buttercake,

Thank you for your quick and encouraging reply. I usually listen to music with headphones. I haven't got a history of exposure to loud noises, certainly not more than anyone with a "normal" life. I've always worked and studied in quiet environments (universities, basically), I've never lived in places with loud traffic, and I haven't clubbed much (not at all in the past year for obvious reasons), nor gone to any loud concerts (just classical music ones).

I am aware that no one can give me an answer with certainty, but I would really appreciate opinions of people who've gone through a similar situation, as I'm having a very difficult time at the moment.

Thanks again.

 

I think we have a quite similar history - same age, gender, no history of loud noise exposure, no loud neighborhoods, tinnitus came after prolonged use of headphones, very high frequency. In my case the volume of the tinnitus has been quite constant since the onset though, with very few oscillations.

My uneducated opinion is that those intensities are not enough to produce a long-lasting damage; I want to believe that your (and my) ears are only "shocked" and that they will eventually recover. Unfortunately my personal story is not very uplifting, my tinnitus is there, more or less unchanged, after almost 12 weeks :/ Of course this does not mean much. I might just be one among the unlucky ones

 

Thanks again for your kind reply. I do hope that my ears (and yours!) are also temporarily "shocked". In that regard I've been using earplugs all day long for a few days (fortunately the current situation makes that possible), which, although that makes the tinnitus much more noticeable, gives me hope that my ears may heal quicker (if at all) by making them "suffer" as little as possible.

Also, I can see you're a Riemann fan - big GR fan here, though more from the physics point of view! (I'm a cosmologist myself)

Take care

 

Update: I've just been to the ENT, and, as it seems to be the case for many other people here, everything is OK: my hearing is good (better than average, I've been told), I don't have any obvious damage, etc. Yet the tinnitus is obviously there. I've been prescribed a round of Prednisone and of Serc - will see how that goes.

Any thoughts about my situation? Given that my tinnitus appeared about two weeks ago (a very mild one), only to increase dramatically about a week ago, having been constant ever since, do you think there's a chance that Prednisone and Serc will work? I've just had what's arguably been the worst week of my life, so any comments, especially hopeful ones, would be appreciated.

Thank you.

 

Hello everyone,

First of all, apologies if this is not the right place for this post. I'm a 27-year-old male and I've been suffering from tinnitus for about two weeks now, most likely produced for listening to loud(ish) music on my headphones for longer than I should have, especially over the last month or so.

I had an appointment with an ENT yesterday, who prescribed a round of Prednisone, which I've been taking since yesterday. This morning I've experienced, for the first time, a significant reduction in the loudness of my high-pitch, electric-like tinnitus (placebo? Prednisone doing its job?), but now (evening) I seem to be back to what I fear will be my (very annoying) baseline level.

I've been having the worst days of my life, and I'm desperately wondering whether there are any treatments that might prevent my "fresh" tinnitus from chronifying, however weak the evidence that they work might be. I haven't found much around here, other than the a couple of posts about the "Heidelberg model", which doesn't seem to be a thing any more (if it ever was). I would most sincerely appreciate any useful input from you folks.

Thanks

 

You're already on Prednisone, which is the first line treatment to prevent tinnitus from becoming chronic.

There's not much else to try. Maybe Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy? And definitely take NAC (N-Acetyl-Cysteine).

 

Thank you, ajc, for your suggestions. I'm still on Prednisone, already tapering off, and also taking Serc - may start taking NAC too.

Here's an update. Since the first day after I started taking Prednisone, exactly one week ago, the ringing on my right ear disappeared, and has become a gentle white-noise-like hiss. Fingers crossed it stays like that. The ringing on my left ear also disappeared, only to come back three days later, but as a quieter teapot kind of noise. I do hope that it may somehow get more like a hiss with time .

What is really annoying (and, well, depressing) me at the moment is that on my left ear I also have an electric-shock kind of noise, very syncopated, like every 1 second, which gives the impression that it propagates throughout my head, and which is impossible to mask with a moderate sound (except with running water). It seems to be reactive to noises, especially vibration-like low-frequency ones. Last weekend I went on an hour and a half car ride on a highway and, despite using earplugs and noise cancelling headphones while in the car (I wasn't driving), this electric-shock tinnitus really spiked (whereas the other, teapot-like didn't). It also seems to react to how active I am (maybe to my heartbeat?). I've seen a few posts about this kind of tinnitus around here - are there any success stories though?

This electric-like tinnitus started a few days after my (most probably) noise-induced single-tone tinnitus, when, thinking that was due to wax, applied a wax-removing saline spray on my ear. I became very dizzy immediately for about 10 mins (and, well, no wax came out), so didn't apply it on my right ear (which is free form this electric-like pain). Do you think the spray may be to blame? My ENT disagrees, but I would really appreciate your input, folks If so, do you have a hint of what might work?

Thanks!

 

Hi. How is it now with taking the steroid?

 

Hey @Tom137, how is it going?

 

When masking my other tinnitus, it seems I have last Friday night damaged my left ear that was working perfectly fine by listening to this many nights since December:

Sleeping Music (maybe rename it Ear Damage Music?)
https://tidal.com/album/77525403

I did use headphones a lot in the beginning, and it was very soothing and made me sleep well. Then I understood it’s probably not a good idea to use headphones all night (could just have set a timer so the music stopped after an hour!) and I started having my phone in airplane mode next to me a bit away from my head.

On Thursday evening I felt a bit stuffed in my left ear and decided to put some paper in to give it some rest. That worked fine for one night, but during Thursday night I woke up to my ear doing this high-pitched chirp, and since then the ear has been whooshing and ringing with a high pitch.

Seems I also got some hearing damage on the left ear according to a hearing test I finally got to do at the ENT after waiting two months for an appointment.

Funny thing is that the audiologist and another knowledgeable hearinng person I’ve been speaking with don’t think it’s me who has caused it by listening to music during night. But I’m pretty certain it’s the ear that got too much of the whooshing synth sounds. Interesting that it has worked well for so many months (still, haven’t listened to it every night, I also have another masking sound, but that music works best for both ears) without any warning until last week.

I’m really devastated and hope it clears up. Tomorrow it’s been a week…

Wanted to add – how can I fall asleep well to music that can damage the hearing? I think the brain should react more pro-actively on that.

 

I think this electric-like pulsing sound you are describing is the same thing I have going on. It's really hard to define and to understand what is going on with it. It started for me about one week into tinnitus. It continued for about a month until I suffered an acoustic shock from an acoustic reflex test during an audiogram. From there it started switching between ears until eventually going away after about 2 months. Since receiving the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, my tinnitus has worsened yet again and now that pulsing sound it back, louder than before and continues switching between ears. I'm hoping it goes away again.

It seems like it tends to follow along my heartbeat. If I bend over it immediately starts, and whenever I do anything strenuous it comes on strong. I cannot tell if it's reactive to sounds or not... I wear earplugs a lot as I'm terrified of my tinnitus getting worse... some good that has done so far...

Another note: I can recreate the sound by opening and closing my mouth really wide.

 

@Tom137, @buttercake, did your high pitched tinnitus start all of a sudden or was it gradual thing?

Like I wrote in my previous post above, mine started suddenly during music listening at night – my ear made a high pitched warped ”chirp” for a couple of seconds then the high pitched hiss was there. If I listen closely there is a little oscillation going on – a bit cicada like.

Like you I was also using a volume level that isn't considered harmful. Maybe 3-4 (maximum 5) steps up from zero on the speaker of an iPhone 12 Pro Max.

I just tried to measure the volume of the music I was listening during night using an app called dB Meter – approximating the microphone to where I was having my ear on the pillow the and the volume was 32 dB at max, averaging at 30 dB. Could this volume really have damaged my ear? I had even tucked some toilet paper in my left ear and the music isn’t even playing continuously since the tracks are about one and a half minutes long, then they fade out and there’s a few of seconds of silence before the next track starts.

The tinnitus I have I think is corresponding to the high hearing loss frequency I now seem to have. My tinnitus has been on for two weeks and a couple of days now, but I did perceive it as more loud in the beginning.

Really hope it will resolve itself.

 

I had a one-day-lasting bout of tinnitus a couple of weeks before my actual onset; both the onset and the one-day episode happened all of a sudden in the morning. Unfortunately I was idiot enough to persevere with the habit of falling asleep with headphones on... I was not even playing music, I was playing white noise to prevent to be waken up by my noisy flatmate. It was probably enough to shock my ears & synapses enough... so here I am after 6 months.

I do not know man, in my case I blame the prolonged usage throughout several nights. I stimulated my ears during night, when they were supposed to rest. That's the only logical explanation I could come up with. I could not even blame the bad genetics because there is no trace of tinnitus/hearing loss in my family, even at late stages of life.

 

This is why I don't think there are enough warnings about long term listening on low volumes. While there are some, most of the time the warnings are about exceeding a certain volume of sound/music and that this should be avoided.

So you were listening to that white noise for about 6 months before the tinnitus started? Sounds a bit like me – no problem listening to music the same way for four months – didn't feel anything in the ears in the mornings. But the few days before my new high pitch tinnitus I definitely did. I also feel like an idiot that I didn't let the ears rest from sound and music for a couple of days when they started to feel ”full” and ”hallow”. I even had a rather pronounced lower frequency hiss in the ear when going to bed that night – that's why I decided to put some toilet paper in. But that was obviously not enough.

This sucks so bad! I was already somewhat depressed because of my right ear tinnitus and hum/drone in my head. Now I just wish I could go back to dealing with only those two, since that was nothing compared to this new high pitched hiss in my left ear and the hearing loss in high frequencies on that ear.

The hum/drone is much less pronounced now – that's the only good thing about all this.

 

I could not agree more.

No, for about 2-3 weeks. Not every night, but maybe every second night. With "so here I am after 6 months" I meant that, unfortunately, my tinnitus has not disappeared or faded yet after 6 months since the onset (well, I am not completely sure about the "faded" part... in the beginning I had an additional louder electric sound in my left ear; that one seems to be mostly gone).

Yeah, I know. But it gets better. You will slowly build up mental resilience to cope with this s*it.