The Hearing Loss / Tinnitus Conjecture

[MountainCreek]

Hearing loss that does not cause tinnitus is irreversible.

Hearing loss that does cause tinnitus is reversible. Silent environment (below 10 dB for 48 hours a day, everyday) is the key and then tinnitus is the healing process of the lost hearing. Without silence, tinnitus will remain an unsuccessful healing story. They body tries constantly to heal lost hearing, but without silence healing with be unsuccessful and tinnitus and hearing loss will remain.

 

[PaulBe]

I've seen this talked about before as a legit approach. Do you by chance have any references/papers for this? Is it demonstrated or is it largely anecdotal?

Maybe it explains why TRT fails badly in some people.

 

[MountainCreek]

I only have my own experience. Now I have had tinnitus since May and approached it in two steps. First the worst of it went away with a small remnant. I ignored the remnant for a long time, thought I could live with it. Lately I wanted to get rid of also that small remnant, despite doctors all tell me to do the opposite of that. Tinnitus is harmless, we see nothing wrong in your ear, you better adjust to it and try to not think on it.

Now finally I went against all that bullshit. Thought about my low tinnitus sound (a small mosquito about 2 meters away) nonstop and listened carefully to it in my silent bedroom nonstop for 5 days, and now finally tinnius (or the mosquito) went down (or flied away). Of course hyperacusis went up, but unlike tinnitus, hyperacusis is not a hard problem to resolve. It can be resolved in a matter of a couple of days once tinnitus is gone.

It is only when I go against common wisdom and listen to my own body signals, which are telling me to remain in silence, that my tinnitus can go down like this. Otherwise it doesn't, it remains forever, but I never get used to it.

Clearly common wisdom is crap and I am angry about how ignorant doctors are about this. I wish doctors could start viewing tinnitus as a real SERIOUS and PHYSICAL inner ear problem, instead of as a harmless mental problem, and emphasise the importance of silence more, by which I mean complete silence, to cure tinnitus (that was induced by noise). Of course this does not apply if tinnitus was not noise induced.

 

[MountainCreek]

My guess is that tinnitus is the attempt of nerve cells attached to a damaged hair cell to look for a new connection. It searches like a radio in between the radio stations where we hear only the white noise. If there is no real signal and only white noise, the search has to be amplified until a signal is found. Once a signal is found, the amplification can go down. That is, tinnitus can go down once the nerve can find a signal. To find a signal the nerve needs to be left undisturbed to be able to search well and not be distracted. That means silence. Only then then the nerve can succeed to locate the new place to be looking for a signal. If that theory is correct, then a dead hair cell does not necessarily mean tinnitus must forever remain. All it takes is for the nerve that lost connection with that hair cell, to find another place to look for a signal.

 

[Sebastians]

48 hours a day, that's quite a feat!

 

[MountainCreek]

Right, you better move to some other planet with no athmosphere and no sounds to succeed.

 

[PaulBe]

It interests me because the first thing most of us do when this strikes is seek silence. That is to me the innate survival instinct showing itself, and that instinct is usually there for an evolutionary reason. I don't think anyone here has gone actively looking for more noise. Then we get "experts" who truly don't know who direct us into various sound therapies and warn us away from silence. Its not for nothing that you don't get up and run on a broken leg but you do introduce activity progressively as bone remodeling allows. Why should the ear be different?

 

[MountainCreek]

It started out quite well. T got very low, and then lower. But then new sounds came in today and now I don't know what is happening. I think what happens in the brain is a big mystery and it may not be as simple as I thought. Maybe going near zero dB could also have negative effects? Not sure anymore. The other explanation for new sounds would be that I got sloppy maintaining below 20 dB but about that I am not so sure now. I need to check it out further. One sound maybe got lower and instead another sound came in and got louder. Net effect is things got worse. Maybe it is better tomorrow. Mornings are always better than evenings.

 

[PaulBe]

Maybe your nerves have started looking for sound again?

 

[Telis]

Yeah pretty interesting thread. A while back (before I had T) I watched a speacial on a famous hockey player who had concussion issues and ringing ears. I remember him saying that he had to stay in dead silence and a dark room for days until the ringing stopped. Why was this protocol in place for him years ago? And not others? I watch and play a lot of hockey, if you have ringing in the ears or sensitivity to noise after taking a hit in pro hockey you are taken to a quiet room immediately. Why does this happen for pro athletes but the average joe is told to get on with life?

 

[dan]

Yeah pretty interesting thread. A while back (before I had T) I watched a speacial on a famous hockey player who had concussion issues and ringing ears. I remember him saying that he had to stay in dead silence and a dark room for days until the ringing stopped. Why was this protocol in place for him years ago? And not others? I watch and play a lot of hockey, if you have ringing in the ears or sensitivity to noise after taking a hit in pro hockey you are taken to a quiet room immediately. Why does this happen for pro athletes but the average joe is told to get on with life?

...because their lives are worth more?

 

[MountainCreek]

My tinnitus is very low so I can allow myself doing experiments. My conclusions are:

1. Very much and intense silence lowers tinnitus, and this turned out to be an efficient method also after four months.
2. Eating two bananas and drinking one glass of milk every day does not make tinnitus worse, but not sure it make tinnitus better either.
3. Sleeping in a perfectly silent room at night does not make tinnitus worse the next day.
4. The same I can not say if airconditioner is running throughout the night, as this tended to make my tinnitus worse the next day.
5. If too much silence, then could brain psychology/physiology make tinnitus get worse? I have not found this myself so far. I am open minded and like to hear if anyone else has any experience on that. Myself has not found any connection so far. Seems human body can tolerate infinitely much silence, although that is counter intuitive, given that nature is never perfectly silent if one goes outdoors. So I am not sure here. But I haven't found that any harm has been made on me by silence so far. Also I can imagine there can be places outdoors which can be very quiet, like the Sahara desert maybe, although I never been there and listened. Humans came from Africa and some lived in the desert so maybe evolution has made us tolerant to absolute silence during a long period of time, or maybe not?

 

[PaulBe]

2. Eating two bananas and drinking one glass of milk every day does not make tinnitus worse, but not sure it make tinnitus better either.

Wine....same.

 

[MountainCreek]

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/what-i-have-used-to-help-me-with-my-tinnitus.3216/

 

[PaulBe]

The properly functioning body will always maintain potassium levels in a very tight band, no matter how much you supplement (within reason).

 

[MrBonk]

When my T was at it's worst in the beginning, low noise or near silence seemed to be the only thing to make it actually bearable.(Masking was impossible, noise from a sound system just made it more apparent. While noise from outside a window of distant highway traffic and bugs/animals did not) I felt like I had the biggest improvement ;in terms of environmental sound exposure; by having nothing on but a slightly cracked window.

It's not consistent though because my Tinnitus and the sounds I have are not consistent either. (Except for two sounds that are always there), so it's probably just placebo.