MemberThis is an idea that I haven't heard of and I think would contribute greatly to the study of tinnitus. If anyone is aware of this already pre-existing the please correct me.
I have days when my life is almost back to normal and my tinnitus is there but not intrusive and I can easily forget about it when I read, talk, watch a documentary, whatever. Other days it sounds like a high speed drill is in my brain destroying every thought that I have and I have to really struggle to focus at work. I've (maybe incorrectly) correlated this to my quality of sleep.
I'm wondering if when I'm having "good" days, that I can actually hear better, as in, the hearing mechanism is still intact and functioning but tinnitus is overriding those frequencies in the brain.
So my experiment would be thus:
Take an audiogram on a day when my tinnitus is going crazy and then another on days when it's not as bad and see if they match.
If the audiograms match then the hearing mechanism in the cochlea is probably damaged and the tinnitus fluctuations may be related to dopamine release (good sleep making more dopamine) and thus related to nervous system function.
If the audiograms don't match, then we could postulate that some forms tinnitus may not just be from hearing loss alone and some kind of nervous system damage/imbalance is at play here, which seems more likely to be treatable until they can regrow our cochlea sensory ear cells.
Feel free to point out any ignorance in this if you spot it. Since this is the characteristic of my tinnitus maybe I should do it.
I have days when my life is almost back to normal and my tinnitus is there but not intrusive and I can easily forget about it when I read, talk, watch a documentary, whatever. Other days it sounds like a high speed drill is in my brain destroying every thought that I have and I have to really struggle to focus at work. I've (maybe incorrectly) correlated this to my quality of sleep.
I'm wondering if when I'm having "good" days, that I can actually hear better, as in, the hearing mechanism is still intact and functioning but tinnitus is overriding those frequencies in the brain.
So my experiment would be thus:
Take an audiogram on a day when my tinnitus is going crazy and then another on days when it's not as bad and see if they match.
If the audiograms match then the hearing mechanism in the cochlea is probably damaged and the tinnitus fluctuations may be related to dopamine release (good sleep making more dopamine) and thus related to nervous system function.
If the audiograms don't match, then we could postulate that some forms tinnitus may not just be from hearing loss alone and some kind of nervous system damage/imbalance is at play here, which seems more likely to be treatable until they can regrow our cochlea sensory ear cells.
Feel free to point out any ignorance in this if you spot it. Since this is the characteristic of my tinnitus maybe I should do it.
