Severe Chronic Subjective Idiopathic Tinnitus

Big title right?? I have been on TT for awhile, but not very active as of late. But wanted to share briefly here my experience, especially for newer members. Many, in fact most of you can attribute your T to some form of physiological damage to your inner ears. Concerts, explosions, infections, etc... Something that physically damaged your ears, triggering tinnitus.

I just wanted to share that there is another form of T, that maybe some of you are dealing with. The form that I have. I didn't experience any damage in any form to my ears. I simply woke up one morning outta the blue and had a 7500hz scream in my head

https://www.freesound.org/people/Timbre/sounds/83326/

There is absolutely nothing I can attribute it to! One day fine, next day this!

It's called severe chronic subjective idiopathic tinnitus. It's a short circuiting in the audio cortex of the brain. Something either electrically or chemically has gone wrong in my brain, and the keyboard in my auditory cortex has a key stuck. There is absolutely nothing wrong with my ears! Believe me, I have had that checked out to the limit. It's a brain thing, not an ear thing. It is certainly the most rare form of T. Lucky me!

But I just wanted to share in case there are others out there in TT world with a similar condition. You are not crazy and you are not alone!!! It's a thing! I invite any comments and or contacts if this is you!! Peace!!

Jeff

 

It's not really rare, many people on TT have this form of T; I myself do, and it's multiple tones for me. Low to high. I remember when this journey started, that afternoon some months ago. New tone has developed recently which has brought back deep anxiety and a feeling of hopelessness in my stomach. I have to avoid negative comments and just look at some positive ones. Just have to get through each day and hope for a better tomorrow. Deep breaths and a positive outlook, even if you don't feel it. No point looking too far ahead. Good luck!

 

Some of my T sounds (I have several sounds) is very similar to the audio example you linked to. So you are not alone

 

Hi Jeff,

It's hard to know what is causing tinnitus in most cases really. It's just not very well understood.

In your life time have you ever been exposed to any noise? Concerts, parties, power tools, guns, lawn mowers, industrial noise etc.

Have you ever taken any drugs that are ototoxic?

Have you ever been under any stress or been depressed?

Do you have high blood pressure or any allergies?

Have you ever had any sinus infections, and/or ear infections?

Tinnitus is elusive at the best of times, and a lot of people don't know what their cause is for certain. Most is attributed to noise damage. This however doesn't have to be obvious to you.

For example: you hear a loud bang, or go to a gig, and then have immediate ringing which doesn't stop.

Sometimes the noise damage is cumulative, so at some point, tinnitus just starts out of nowhere. This can also be said about drugs or stress. The biggest mystery is why some of us develop tinnitus, and some of us don't, even when damage is caused to the inner ear.

The fact that there are so many pathways towards acquiring tinnitus makes it extremely hard to precisely determine what's happening. Even the experts don't have a clear understanding of this process. The best we've got is that damage to either the cochlea or auditory nerve can cause the brain to turn the gain up. The noise is the somatic background sound we are not supposed to hear (the firing of nerves and such). One theory I've read, is that there is a failure to a particular part of our brain that acts like a gating mechanism, which normally filters this sound out of our consciousness.

There's a lot of theories, but not much cold hard fact. More research is needed but it's chronically underfunded unfortunately.

 

The gating mechanism is described here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26412095/

A lot of similarities have been drawn between chronic tinnitus and chronic pain. I subscribe to new scientist magazine, and a while back there was an interesting article on the subject of chronic pain. Because of the comparisons between the two afflictions I took a photo of the it and I'll post it below.

 

Good article Ed, 'pain' could be replaced with T in the article and it would make perfect sense.

@PatrickG , do you have T in both ears?

 

No only in my right ear

 

Try to get hold of this med, you may be in luck
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29712507

 

Clinical value of psychoacoustic characteristics in patients with idiopathic tinnitus
[Article in Chinese]
Li H1, Li M, Zhang JN.
Author information
1Department of Otolaryngology, Yueyang Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai, 200437, China.
Abstract
Objective:To analyze the relationship between psychological parameters and clinical severity score in patients with idiopathic tinnitus, and clarify the value of psychoacoustic testing in the severity of tinnitus and evaluation of curative effect.Method:A total of 165 patients with idiopathic tinnitus were collected. All patients received conventional audiological and psychoacoustic tests. Psychoacoustic tests include pitch matching (PM), loudness matching(LM), minimal masking levels (MMLs) and residual suppression(RI). Tinnitus handicap inventory (THI) and tinnitus evaluation questionnaire(TEQ) were used to evaluate the severity of tinnitus. SPSS 18.0 was used to analyze the relationship between the severity of tinnitus and psychosocial parameters by univariate analysis and multivariate Logistic regression analysis. Changes of patients psychological parameters were analyzed after five weeks of tinnitustherapy.Result:①Results of univariate analysis showed that there were significant difference with THI score: types of sound and loudness matching sensory level(LMSL) (P<0.05). There were also a significant correlations with TEQ score: the duration of tinnitus, tinnitus pitch matching(PM2) and loudness matching hearing level(LMHL)(P<0.05).②Multivariate analysis showed that PM2 and LMSL had significant correlation with THI(P<0.05), while patients with a single sound were less severe: with the increasing of LMSL, the severity of tinnitus was aggravated. There was also a significant correlation between LMHL and TEQ scores(P<0.05), and the greater the LMHL value, the more severe the tinnitus.③The statistically significant indicators are: LMSL, MMLs, MMLs difference, Feldman curve(P<0.05).Conclusion:The clinical severity of tinnitus is correlated with some psychological parameters of tinnitus. Tinnitus psychoacoustic tests help to assess the clinical severity of tinnitus.

KEYWORDS:
psychoacoustic tests; tinnitus; tinnitus evaluation questionnaire

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29798137

Questions:
- what was the tinnitus therapy mentioned in this article?
- what does loudness matching sensory level(LMSL) mean?
- what does loudness matching hearing level(LMHL) mean?