Tinnitus and Fuzzy Night Vision?

Hello, I have suffered Tinnitus for 2 - 3 years and have tried everything and had a random thought this morning about my Tinnitus and wondered how many other people out there who suffer Tinnitus have fuzzy vision in the dark?

What is that?
In a darkened room, particularly first thing in the morning or in complete darkness, you see random speckled dots making up your field of vision, not associated with any loss of vision or vision problems.

You see it occurred to me, that people who see these patterns in their vision are seeing "white noise", exactly the same thing you are hearing as tinnitus. Could it be that what we consider as "ototoxic" chemicals or drugs are actually brain-toxic and something in the brain chemistry like serotonin or whatever is causing you to see and hear white noise.

If there are any research students out there looking for a topic, what about a scientific survey of Tinnitus sufferers and see how many can see vision fog in darkness.

Just edited to add, to those of you who don't see any of these visual effects, they actually continue through the day, but the effect is greatly increased in darkness just as is Tinnitus by silence at the same times of day.

 

I got tinnitus as part of Visual Snow Syndrome, a disease characterized by the symptom cluster of visual snow, tinnitus, palinopsia (increased afterimages), halos around lights, increased blue field entoptic phenomenon, and more.

Here's a video simulation showing how I see (and hear)

Snowy Vision (Visual Snow)

The simulation part starts at around 42 seconds in.

I see visual snow in all light conditions, even broad daylight. Your snow sounds milder, but I'm just letting you know it's almost a certainty that whatever causes your snow in the dark is the same thing causing your tinnitus.

 

OMG. It has a name? And it is connected when for me it was just a random thought that they could be as a remote possibility?


Until recently when I noticed it getting worse I thought everyone had visual snow to some extent.

 

Yes it has a name, and it's been on the news too.

visual snow

Pretty much everyone who has visual snow bad enough to be bothersome also has tinnitus. Tinnitus was actually my first symptom, it started out so faint I could only hear it in complete silence and wondered if I was imagining it. Then the snow came, and both the visual snow and tinnitus got worse together over the following years. I also have palinopsia, floaters, giant halos around lights, and increased BFEP.

 

I have had visual snow most of my life but I wouldn't describe it as chronic as I said in the original post, it's worse at night and in the evenings. The tinnitus started 2 or 3 years ago and I think is quite severe. Separate to this I have various things which are related to auto-immune problems including psoriasis of the skin and nails, allergies with nasal and eye irritation, asthmatic reaction to colds, and I suffer fatigue which had me labelled at one point as having ME although I never liked this diagnosis.

 

One of the theories about visual snow syndrome is that it's an autoimmune disease. This would explain the rarity (as the vast majority of auto-immune diseases are rare) as well as the fact that a lot of people with visual snow syndrome have known autoimmune issues, and having one autoimmune disease increases the likelyhood you'll get another. But as I say this is just one of the theories at the moment and nothing is known for sure. Dr. Schanken's findings from the UCSF research should be released sometime in the next few months after they've been peer reviewed.

 

I feel a bit foolish barging in here with my first post about this and anyone reading this has witnessed someone discovering for the first time they've got a condition, albeit another one to add to my long list of non-life threatening but annoying anomalies. Thanks to you all for your help on this and identifying it for me.

 

I am a touring cyclist, and I developed tinnitus after riding through some very windy conditions. I learned to plug my ears when riding in strong wind, because I believed the wind was the cause. A few months later, I watched a solar eclipse through several layers of aluminized foil. The protection was insufficient, and I experienced the symptoms of solar retinopathy for some time afterwards (after-images, para-central stomata, some visual noise in shadows). I took lots of vitamin C and the effects lessened until insignificant.

Visual noise (green in colour), however, seemed to flare up recently, and the tinnitus never went away. I thought it was odd that both these two should arise within a few months, and that they were both sensory noise effects. My theory of the cause (high wind and solar-viewing) was falling short.

Now I am beginning to understand that it is an autoimmune condition. In a way I am greatly relieved, and I can stop berating myself for having caused it through foolishness. I hope all of you can learn to deal with it harmoniously, and that we may be philosophical about our affected senses.

Edit: I have also had hayfever all my life, and my mother has arthritis.

 

Some amount of visual snow is "normal", everyone I've described my visual symptoms to can relate to some extent to "seeing pink and green static moving on surfaces in dark rooms". So, it's some kind of basic artifacting in the visual system; it seems reasonable to assume that the physical brain structures which are "supposed" to suppress this and keep it from becoming a conscious percept might be related to the structures that do the same thing for audio.

I think we need to be careful throwing around "auto-immune", that has the very specific meaning of implying a process by which the immune system is attack ones own, otherwise healthy, cells. If that's the case, then drugs which suppress the immune system would be expected to reduce these symptoms, and I've never seen any suggestion anywhere that immunosuppressants are useful for treating tinnitus or visual snow. In fact, one common class of drugs that (incidentally) suppress the immune system is opiates, which often get a bad rap for increasing tinnitus.

I'm a lot more suspicious of viruses and bacterial pathogens than I am of true autoimmune problems. There seems to be some connection between HSV and tinnitus, and Lyme Disease is known to cause all these symptoms and more.

 

Out of curiousity, have you used any drugs that target the 5-HT2a receptor at all, at any point? This includes all the SSRIs, all the psychedelic illicit drugs, and all of the older antihistamines. All these symptoms started for me within a few years of relatively heavy use of 5-HT2a modulating drugs... though also within several months of contracting a virus, and several other things, so it's pretty hard to have any certainty.

edit: also, have your symptoms continued to get worse, or did they sort of plateau at some point? I don't think my visual issues have changed in any way since I first developed them 15 years ago. My tinnitus got worse, but only following a severe panic episode after a significant acoustic trauma.