Why some Tinnitus sufferers have a perfect hearing?

From my logic, in hearing tests, a tinnitus sufferer at least must have a difficulty of hearing in frequences close to their tinnitus sound.

 

The reason why people have T is diverse. Hearing loss is just one of them.

 

1°) Because some people get tinnitus without a hearing incident. A whiplash for example.

2°) Because hearing losses can be very discreet and invisible to most audiograms. The probed frequencies are usually 125 Hz, 250 Hz, 500 Hz, 750 Hz, 1000 Hz, 1500 Hz, 2000 Hz, 3000 Hz, 4000 Hz, 6000 Hz, 8000 Hz. If you have a big loss going from 200 to 6000 Hz the audiogram will see it. But if you get a more sneaky one let's say between 1040 and 1080 Hz the audiogram will see nothing.

It is a good tool to help audiologists to set up hearing aids but it is nearly worthless in most cases of tinnituses. Also, a human hearing can go up as far as 24 khz. But the audiologists are not interested because their hearing aid cannot correct so high.

Other techniques are more precise: You maintain a sound intensity and you sweep frequencies. It is the principle of the audioscan from essilor. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10736925

Unfortunately nobody is interested. ENT and audiologists are routine bound clinicians. Not intellectual investigators.

 

@daedalus,

Do you know how hearing tests can help audiologists in finding the right white noise for hyperacusis treatment? When I talked to the audiologist on the phone (my assessment will take place in medio Oct.) She told me that she would start treating my H before anything is done in regards to my T. As we all know less can be done in regards to "treating" T in the same manner but I'm curious to know how any hearing aid can help in regards to T? I thought the only physical aid in the world of T was plugs and protection? And of course all of those counter sound concepts but they don't seem to be very proven yet if u ask me.

Do you have any advice for my future appointment with the audiologist? Any key questions to be raised? She actually sounded very interested in both T and H, so that's a new and welcoming experience. Ps: My first hearing test result came out quite okay, preformed by an ENT doc and probably way too low in frequency range to identify any loss anyways - my T is very high pitched.

 

I am walking on eggshells here: All i know is often hyperacusis is treated by pink or brown noise. Sometimes brown noise centered around the main hearing loss of a person. Some people cannot stand white noise. White noise covers "all" frequencies.

I have heard about a lot of people "curing" their hyperacusis themselves by exposing themselves to barely uncomfortable levels of sounds. Sometimes aided by medication like lyrica (pregabalin). I am just repeating word of mouth here. I am not hyperacusic?

 

Hi Per, I think hearing aids act in the same manner as maskers, amplified environmental sounds help to drown tinnitus. The problem with very high pitched tinnitus is that there usually is not very much sound in say 10-20kHz range in normal environment amplified or not. That said, I have no personal experience on hearing aids.

I've understood that pink noise is often preferred in treatment of H, because its frequency distribution is close to 'natural' or 'pleasant'. From the memory in pink noise the acoustic energy decreases 6dB per octave. White noise contains all audio frequencies at the same level and sound more 'trebley'.

I also have 'old TV'-tinnitus (some days anyway) and my audiogram (up to 12 kHz) showed asynchronous hearing loss above 10kHz.