Sudden Tinnitus! Need Advice on Action. Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy?

Hey all,
I am 27 male living in Quebec Canada.
Like many others I am a new victim of this terrible condition. I got tinnitus in both ears each with a different frequency being around 3 KHz in left and 1 KHz in right but the left ear is louder.
My Tinnitus started in the beginning of November 2012 I basically felt tightness in the ears as if water went into them and then boom the ringing started. So far I have not been able to tell the cause of my tinnitus I don’t not attend or work in noisy environments and I have not been exposed to any unusual loud sounds. Apart from the tinnitus I also have this vibration sensation in my left ear as if my ear drum is vibrating kind of feels like an electric shaver. The vibration seems to get triggered or more averaged when I hear noise, like microwave etc.
I have seen 4 ENTs and I have no infection or any visible causes like wax, I got 2 audio-grams which show I have normal hearing here is picture of one of them



List of suspected causes.

1. 1 Use of In-Ear/Earbud Headphones regularly although I do not put them too loud actually the ringing start while I was using them - I think.
2. 2 Excessive caffeine
3. 3 Use foam ear plugs, I have been using them all night for around 5 years since I used to work night shifts and my noise neighbors woke me up.

What have I tried so far?
1. 1 I am currently taking a multiple vitamins supplement “Centrum Select” and also I am taking Ginkgo biloba for a month now but this does not seems to be helping.
2. 2 Stopped consuming anything with caffeine.
3. 3 Two days ago I started doing Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy HBOT so far I have completed two sessions, I don’t think there is a noticeable difference or if there is, it is slight. I don’t know whether I should continue or not since this treatment - from what I read - seems to be effective for people that have tinnitus less than three months – which is my case - but is costing me $145 a session and the ENT doctor told me today that it wont help.

Questions for you

When tinnitus is considered chronic?
1. Is there anything recommend I should try?
2. Should I continue with HTOB?
3. What do you think the chances of there being a cure in my lifetime?
if If you need any more details let me know

 

Hello there Eric!

I am sorry to hear that you now need to fight with this dreaded condition. Since you have no hearing damage and as far as you know it wasn't caused by noise trauma or infection, finding a cause might be tricky. Are you allergic to anything? Congestion in sinuses can interfere with the middle ear aswell and cause what you described as "underwater" sound and tinnitus. Another thing is do you know in what condition is your spine? Spine problems can also lead to tinnitus and it is most likely the cause of mine. The last thing I can think of is ototoxic meds. Did you take anything lately? Most antibiotics are ototoxic, also blood pressure drugs may cause tinnitus, among others.

Regarding the Hyperbaric therapy, I don't know what is your situation exactly. It indeed is expensive, but if you can afford it, perhaps it is worth giving it a go...? If I had the chance to undergo this therapy during the onset of my T, I would do everything I can to try it.

Will the cure be invented eventually? I am sure it will! There are several independent teams working on it and making progress. Dr Dalton, for example. Our forum friend Karl could tell you everything about him ;-) Look, there are amazing scientific discoveries pretty much every day!

Diseases and conditions that were considered to be incurable can be effectively treated nowadays! Did you know that recently there was a drug invented for one particular type of multiple sclerosis? Children which were born deaf can now hear thanks to cochlear implants. We will have our cure too eventually!

Don't forget it may go away on it's own at some point, chronic tinnitus is said to persist for 6+ months, but then again there were reports of spontaneous remission after 2 years even. But if I should be honest, unless your T is very severe, you will no longer care in 2 years from now. I am almost 6 months in and I am well on my way to habituation. The only thing I worry about is that it doesn't get worse in the future. If it stays the way it is right now, I can cope. You too will.

 

Hi Eric,

HBO is one of the few things proven to help tinnitus if done early enough. There are also steroid injections into the middle ear. I am not 100% sure if these two are used only in the case of noise trauma (which is what I have).

You need to have at least 15 HBO sessions on consecutive days, you cant leave gaps. The oxygen is healing the tissues and this healing takes several sessions.

Please google HBO and Tinnitus, there's lots of evidence and support for this therapy.

There's a thread here where a few wrote up what can be done after onset...........https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...er-the-onset-of-tinnitus-acoustic-trauma.813/

I think any anti-inflammatory & anti-oxidants will help. Get them as strong as you can. NAC is a powerful anti-oxidant that people with T use.

 

eric
louise makes a good point about NAC...and several other good points too) so, yeah if its not too late.... NAC, (n-acetyl-cysteine) can help and maybe melatonin

i dont know if these 'supplements" are over the counter where you are...you may have to take a trip south

as for when one should consider their T chronic....ive read that many find their tinnitus subsides in up to three months...and 20 years ago when i first got tinnitus, it all but went away several years later an i was doin great...but then after many years i got "hit" again, last year (ototoxic drugs, antibiotics and others

and you asked, will you see a cure in your lifetime, ..at your age i would bet absolutely yes but that may be 10 years away, more or less

but in fact you can kind of cure yourself by developing "habituation" (web search habituation and tinnitus and youll get a truck load of information)

the first step is to try, hard as it may be , to put tinnitus in perspective...you can, i presume, still walk and talk, and love, and enjoy food and go sight-seeing and swimming and .......you get the point, there is a lot of life left to live...so get on with it..i know its hard but FORCE yourself... with shift your focus off of tinnitus as much as you can....i know its not easy at first

also vry important and this goes with the above idea of shifting focus and staying involved in life...you must use positive self talk...say positive things to yourself about how this will turn out...avoid making cataclysmic statements to yourself

examples of positive self statements
i am stronger than tinnitus...im not going to let tinnitus ruine my life...tinnitus is just a sound...i will get better, but its going to take some time..i am not alone, a lot of famous people have tinnitus and they got better and go on with their lives

i guarantee you will get better, you are young and the odds are in your favor

i agree with louise, take a good helping of anti oxidant vitamins... and foods....dont go crazy and poison yourself with mega overdoses...talk to your doctor and wikipedia each supplement and stay within a small multiple of the RDA

here is my last and best advice...exercise...jog, bicycle, swim , downhill ski, snow shoe...but what ever you do make sure that some of the activities get your heart rate up, at least 3 times a week...exercise improves neurological function and calms the brain down

btw you mentioned tightness in the ear...that reminds me of hyperacusis...were you sensitive to loud high frequency sounds...even whn not loud do these sounds seem shrill , and feeling somewhat pailful...like if somebody banged to crystal glasss together the sound would be awful like a finger nail on a blackboard!?

sorry you got the dreaded T..the people here feel your pain...i mean it, really!

you are not alone

best wishes
mock turtle

 

Thanks all for your kind replies,

I will try to stay positive although this really sucks and I have to admin that the "S" word has been flying around my head a lot, I was in the prime of my life just got married and got a better position at work and then not more than two weeks later this happened.

In any case, I asked about steroid injections but the doctors told me that is for sudden hearing loss and my hearing has not changed as far as I know from before the onset.

Is NAC a prescription medication or a supplement? There seems to be so much stuff recommend for tinnitus.
As for hyperacusis no I don't think I have that I am not unusually sensitive to any noises my hearing is the same apart from the ringing.

As for the HBOT two Ent doctors say that it wont help as it is not even for that, also there are some potential side effects to it including damaging the ear. Apart from that some people say they got some reduction but it not clear if they really did or if it was the placebo effect. I might try one more session to see if there is any difference.

If there are any gaps will this completely ruin the therapy?? At best I can get it done 5 days in a row

There is one thing I read about something someone tried tried that worked for him

95% tinnitus cure: 2 x rheologic + supplements
http://www.dailystrength.org/c/Tinnitus/forum/14351845-95-tinnitus-cure-2-x
which suggests the use of Pentoxifylline and Piracetam

what do you think are these drugs dangerous?

 

Hi Eric,

have you had a hearing test to see if you do have any hearing loss? Bear in mind also that todays hearing tests can measure up to 8khz only and our hearing goes up to 22khz.

HBO is the number 1, agreed by the medical profession, treatment for tinnitus in Germany. Its what they do and Germans arent stupid. They have many chambers there and 80% of the users are for inner ear disorders. Get it googled and check the statistics - have a look. You have to do 15 sessions back to back minimum. You will be ok with a day at the weekend off. It really is only 3 weeks when you think about it and what you could gain is enormous. At onset you have a small window of opportunity to do something and there are very, very few things proven to work. HBO is top in my research. I know its confusing, there's so much out there, but I dont want you spending your window of opportunity digging about when you couldve been doing the thing that could help.

 

Thanks Louise,
I read on this from somewhere that you have tried it? How many sessions did you do? did it do anything?
The window is three months? I read at after 6 weeks success is limited.

 

No Eric its upto 3 months but definitely the sooner the better. Here is just one of the links I've read about it. It does talk of sensorineural hearing loss which you think you dont have, but have you been tested? Tinnitus often happens after a MINOR hearing loss.

http://www.tinnitusformula.com/library/hyperbaric-oxygen-therapy-for-tinnitus/

I have done it. But I was over 5 months after onset. I ended up doing 3 sessions each week over 3 weeks because I am extremely claustrophobic and so had to have Valium to get in there and stay in there . I didnt commit enough because I was too late. The stats on this link say after 3 months the success rate drops to 30%.

 

I have not been tested beyond 8k as shown above but i can hear up to 16k right ear on

Cool Hearing test

and little worse in the left ear around 15700 k not sure if that says anything. My left ear is definitively not as good as my right ear but I don't know if that is natural or not because my left eye is also not as good as the right.

 

How Eric wondering how is your condition now? Did you go for the HBOT?

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17159373

sorry but this study doesnt think it is a cure for tinnitus. It is not exactly promising.

 

@Eric N your case sounds a lot like mine. I have tinnitus since 3 weeks now and have been undertaking various things, to no great success yet. I am really curious how you are doing now. Could you give us an update?

 

sad seeing my first thread, I never knew back then the nightmare would last this long.