Tinnitus from Some Kind of Infection? Inflammation? Look at My Tinnitus Loudness Chart

7 months ago, I woke up to vertigo, nausea, very loud ringing in my right ear, hyperacusis.
I went to the ER, they gave me something for nausea and taught me the Brandt-Daroff Exercise for Vertigo. Those symptoms cleared. The hyperacusis slowly stopped, after a few week. But the ringing persisted.

I saw 4 ENTs and they said they saw nothing wrong. One said there was an ear infection, the others saw no ear inflection. That was confusing. We "generally assumed" it was due to a sinus infection, but that's only a guess.

What I have learned since then is 3 things:
1. Certain noises (250 Hz, low frequencies) make my ringing louder. A desk fan, for example. Once the ringing volume increases, it stays loud for the rest of the day, until I wake up the next morning.
2. Certain foods (anti inflammatory) can help, occasionally.
3. The ringing (3 kHz, along with an 8 kHz overtone) has decreased in volume very, very slowly.

Things I wonder:
1. I cannot mask the ringing with a fan, or white noise, that just makes it worse. Which is weird to me, and I wonder how many other people have this characteristic: Worsening ringing volume that lasts throughout the day when exposed to noise, like people's voices. To counteract that, I wear hearing protection all day at work. When I wake up each morning, my ear has essentially reset to faint ringing, but quickly rises with noise exposure. "Goes up fast, comes down slow"

2. I take a LOT of supplements (for neuropathy and muscle fasciculation) and have started NMN and Resveratrol, also TMG (David Sinclair's anti aging protocol) specifically to attack my tinnitus. I've been doing taking the NMN nearly a month, and it does seem to help. The fluctuations in daily ringing volume are less pronounced. It has smoothed the curve to a more constant level. It may be reducing the ringing (hard to tell), but I think that will take more time. I will list the supplements that I take, attached to this post.

3. My onset was sudden, and severely loud. It decreases so slowly. I'll attach the chart to this message that shows how loud it is, I plot a point every day for the daily average. WHY SO SLOW PROGRESS. I basically cannot listen to music at all or be around people talking. Is there anyone else whose ringing started loud and decreased for many months? I assume it will either stop entirely, or become so faint I don't care. I am not habituating, I am measuring it.

4. The ringing volume increase with noise exposure is less severe than it was a few months ago, but not much improvement. I can go from a faint ringing to interfering with speech if I am not careful with my environment. I have just started to be able to hear Ss in conversation. That took 5 months. A few months ago, when I woke up it was about twice as loud as it is now. So the "baseline" ringing is decreasing. Avoid sound is a hassle.

In summary, it wasn't loud music or shooting a gun. I had some normal hearing loss before this really hit me, and it appears to be trying to reverse. So slowly.

 

Hi there,

Just want to say that your ringing scale looks really positive, keep up the good work
But you seem to be very affected by noise, if even voices are bad for you. I am sorry for you for that.

I am impressed by the number of supplements you can take every day, that is quite remarkable I have been taking many of them, and still are, but don't think it has helped that much sadly.