Studies Confirm Tinnitus Improves Over Time

Exactly there are so many self defeating people who just say oh it will get better blablabla and stuff like that won't find a cure with that bullshit.

 

Steve - just wanted to say that, right now, you've helped me a lot by posting this. I need some positivity right now. Thanks bud.

 

Not matter what they say is still a lie.

 

Waste of research time and effort if you ask me. My coping ability, my "depression", my irritation, my loss of concentration, are mine to deal or not deal with. I can change my reaction but my T does not change. Research dollars would be better spent on some real science that might actually physically HELP us. Remind me not to donate to that kind of crap.

 

Can anyone point me to the exact research? I'm guessing it only refers to getting better at putting up with it rather than sound diminishing...

What app out the BTA research in CBT's efficacy to help with lack of sleep...struggle to see the benefit on spending money on that, in fact it's rather disappointing.

 

I'm sure research also indicates that people get used to having their leg amputated over time, but that doesn't mean that they will magically be able to go snowboarding. I agree with @suze, this is at best a distraction and at worse a concession to just deal with it.

 

Exposure to loud noise is the most common cause of tinnitus. I believe if someone has noise induced tinnitus, it usually improves over time, providing the person doesn't suffer further noise trauma. Regarding tinnitus being caused by a medical condition, I'm unable to comment whether it would improve with time.
Michael

 

The Natural History of Subjective Tinnitus in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of No-Intervention Periods in Controlled Trials

INTRODUCTION
Part of the counseling provided to tinnitus patients by practitioners involves reassurance that both the perceived loudness of the tinnitus sounds and the emotional symptoms of tinnitus generally improve with time. Although this may be true, data to support the validity of this statement and to quantify any improvement in symptoms have been poorly presented in the literature. There are a small number of longitudinal studies of tinnitus, which give some support to the suggestion that tinnitus impact lessens with time.1–3 However, participants in these studies could access healthcare services for their symptom, and it is therefore difficult to ascertain whether any change is natural improvement with time or treatment effect. One technique used to study what happens to symptoms over time among people receiving no treatment is to examine the outcome of participants on a no-intervention or waiting-list control arm of clinical trials, and this methodology has a long pedigree of usage in the field of mental health.4–6 By amalgamating the control groups of multiple trials, metaanalysis of the outcome is viable. A limited study of what happens to patients with tinnitus while on a nointervention and waiting-list control group has previously been undertaken,7 but this was restricted to studies that had incorporated cognitive behavior therapy as the active arm of the trial. Restricting participants to those willing to embrace psychological therapies for their tinnitus potentially produces a study population that is not representative of the wider tinnitus population. The aim of the current study was to expand that original work by looking at people with tinnitus who had been allocated to a no-intervention or waiting-list control group in the context of a trial evaluating any form of tinnitus therapy.

The following research questions were posited:
1) During a period of no intervention or waiting list, what changes occur in self-reported measure of tinnitus?
2) During a period of no intervention or waiting list, what changes occur in self-reported measures of tinnitusrelated problems of mood and quality of life?
3) During a period of no-intervention waiting, what changes occur in perceived tinnitus loudness? The first research question was our primary outcome measure and our second and third research questions were our secondary outcome measures.

Full paper:

 

Glad to see this is finally out. There is already a thread about the work: https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/studies-confirm-tinnitus-improves-over-time.15863/

 

What a load of nonsense mine has become hellish after 25 years of habituation

 

Even if the sound gets louder over time, your tolerance WILL increase. People deal with deafening ringing for 15+ years and they dont give a single shit after a while. You will get used to it.

 

We'll just have to wait, won't we?

 

Well I wouldn't say after 15+ yers they don't give a shit about it. They just adapt to living with it like human beings do adapt to many different things. I can say that after 2 years of T I adapted to it, I accept it as a part of my life, but it still bothers me everyday and would give everything to get rid of it and be able to hear silence again, to have my sharp brain again, to be able to focus again etc. It's like with people wheel chair bound or blind or daef, they do move on with their lives and they adapt, but I bet all of them would give everything they own to be normal again. T is a disability like many others.

 

Besides that it is not reckognized as a disability.

 

It will not affect the people around you and nobody cares. We all know that, so Marlino is right.

 

It's hard to realize that that is the only possible "fix" now, even if your right. We can walk. That is a advantage. But i want have one day i can say "man, that T thing isn't so bad at all."

 

What about those where the T has come back? Or increased?

Studies like this really seem like it was done with the outcome already in mind. They wanted supporting info and so voila. What is bad though is then how many square pegs are going to get dismissed for not fitting in their round hole. Maybe it is my experience with ocd but I can foresee people getting labeled with other "disorders" for not habituating. Like you must be depressed too here's a pill.

 

I have those. In fact some days it is almost gone, though very rare. All it does it gives me hope and then the next day is back to hell and I feel even worse.

 

Maybe i'm not enough into the Game for that, but yeah, i can totally understand, that the "setback" is much harder.

 

I'm depressed since 10 Years. 3 Years before the T i was "healed" No Drugs, no bad days, only felt exhausted from time to time, but who doesn't? And then the T arrives and created my own little Hell. All Doctors being like "that's your depression, not the T." Yeah, right. Only on this board i've been taken seriously and got the support to stabilised myself.

 

Yeah, maybe for the lucky ones, like myself, up until last year, then it became continuaously worse and worse until I am at the stage where I don't feel happy to do much of anything for more than one day, maybe two at a push a week, it just drains me.

 

I think this is true with mild but not serve T. :/

 

Sorry to say this is BS, I have it for most my life and it only gets worse.

 

My personal prediction after a year in is misadventure is that we will learn to put up with it, like @Mentos said.
Often in the online press when I see a tinnitus related article I read the comments - these are people who've had it for years and are commenting in passing, probably not members of forums or people still searching for answers.
Comments vary from, you just put up with it but it's a nuisance, to I've learned to put this at the back of my mind, to it's a struggle.
The reality for many is that they will adapt and carry on, but can't imagine people aren't bothered by it over the years if it easily audible everywhere, all day long unless you are elderly and you become more philosophical - know this is the case with my friend's retired father in his eighties.
I also think youngsters seem to deal with it better and who knows it may be down to neuroplasticy.
Anyhow it's hard to know, it's the million dollar question, how do you get to that place where it does not bother you at all, i.e. habituation...does that place exist for everyone? Only time will tell.

 

My tinnitus severity has increased with time but so has my overall resilience.

 

I'm 19, it occured when I was 16 and I can tell you that mild tinnitus (mine) is easy to forget. The only thing who can make me remember about it is websites and all news with the word "tinnitus" inside.

There is tinnitus and tinnitus... I think more than 10 millions of people having T live a normal life without thinking about it, probably more.

The fact is places like this website is full of new sufferers over stressed and hard cases of T.
This is why you think T is a hard thing to handle, because you only see the worst part on the Internet. There is no good part here, maybe success stories but nothing else.

People having their T going away don't come back here saying "HEY GUYS I lost my T it's incredible !".

I can guarantee you that 90-95% of T sufferers did never come here and live a normal life. I can say that I know a big part of people coming here because it's always the same guys. It shows that here it's only the worst cases.

So why am I here ? Because sometimes I like coming see research news...

But next week I'll start to stop coming here and live a normal life till the moment I'll find news talking about a treatment available.

I lived 1 year without coming here, I'll do the same but during 2 years, yep I think 2 years is a good choice

 

@90's Kid Absolutely agree, should highlight that am talking about loud intrusive t.

Low t may be a strange sensation initially but most move on from it, life is too short. Know people like that in fact, for whom it is an occasional minor irritant. On the few occasions mine was lower, it was a total different ball game.

What am trying to figure out is To what extent do you adapt to loud, bothersome t...

 

Yep, that's why I totally understand the struggle for intrusive T

This is why sometimes when I hear mine and overthink about it I remember there are people really fighting with harder than mine and I stop focusing on it, I mustn't complain when sufferers with louder T than mine try to fight it everyday

 

And then you have the obvious question - is one persons loud another persons mild? And when someone who says my T has lessened, is it because the T has backed off, or they have adapted to the point that its backed off in the mind, but the T itself endures as it did when it first started? Psychologically, everyone has their own struggle, and I have read a lot on here and all over the internet about how ones t is louder than anothers, so its "different". Its all different. Yet the common thread is, if it isnt going anywhere fast because, as sad as it is, there are no cures, then what happens in the very next moment, and the tapestry of moments that unfold forward in time that is your future from here - how do you choose to respond to it?

We develop our own coping mechanisms, and we try techniques based on what we believe and our own psychology. And we can come here to commiserate and share and support each other, yet in the end it changes nothing - it is me that wakes up in the middle of the night and cannot fall back asleep, it is me who when the family is all talking, cannot hear shit because my T is so loud (ah, but how loud is loud? - and around we go). It is me who needs to escape to some semblance of silence, and feel isolated - or NOT! And thats ultimately my point. "Right, but you cant say that because you dont understand how bad mine really is." Agreed. I cannot, and nobody can ever have your experience...and all we have is the legacy of people who got taken down by life and then that event is all that defined them and who they became, and we have the legacy of people who become better and stronger versions of their former selves....and it is a choice. Suffering is a choice.

The Man in the Arena - Theodore Roosevelt

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. ​

mf