Will Growing Older Worsen Tinnitus?

Brianna, the data were collected from all patients 65 years of age and older who had tinnitus severe enough to cause them to make appointments at this particular university tinnitus center. I do not recall off-hand the exact number of patients who were studied longitudinally, but it was in the hundreds.

 

This is highly speculative, take it as you will:

Several sources indicate that the right anterior insula is involved in tinnitus distress (older source, somewhere I found a recent fMRI study which showed a clearly abnormal thinness in this brain area in tinnitus patients.)

At least one imaging study of long-term meditators concluded that daily meditation over a period of decades, was correlated with thicker sections in the right anterior insula.

What we don't have (and probably won't anytime soon) is a study that takes a large group of tinnitus patients, fMRI's them, then divides them into a control group and a meditator group, and then replicates the imaging 10 or 20 years later. If you could do that and show an increase in gray matter density in the right anterior insula in the meditator group only, and also show that the meditator group had shown more significant gains in tinnitus distress ratings, then you would have a very convincing set of data to show that specific kinds of neuroplasticity can help compensate for tinnitus-related brain deficits. But, it would be incredibly expensive to do a study like this, and since meditation is not something which you're going to get rich off of (unless you're Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, anyway), I don't know how you'd bankroll the research.

There are at least unblinded, non-imaging studies which have shown an improvement in tinnitus distress based on regular meditation, but that's pretty far from being convincing. My experience is that for me the shit works, but, I am not you.

 

So true and so scarry

 

I have never quite looked at it in those terms, but let us assume that TS is 100% correct. So if indeed you do have to "learn to live with it," I wonder why some learn to live with it in harmony ... while others learn to live with it in agony. I cannot speak for anyone else here - but if I had to learn to live with it, I would absolutely do everything in my power to learn to live with it in harmony.

 

So much to be taken from this line.

From perfectly healthy people, to people with issues. I think everyone could use a little more living in the moment and less being worried about the future. I know I can.

Retirement and making ends meet aside. Living in the moment is truly living. Being worried and scared today about what tomorrow might bring is just unhealthy.

When I get high spikes (currently have one) I can honestly say I have a hard time not thinking, what about tomorrow? Regardless of what tomorrow brings, I shouldn't care. I need to enjoy right now.

Honestly for me, the worst part of any stage of my T over the last 10+ years has been the "what ifs" Stupid way to think.

 

Not at all a stupid way to think. Indeed it is a very understandable human way to think. Looking back in hindsight, it may be counterproductive. But it is by no means stupid.

 

how long do they last?

 

if you have to 'do everything in your power' to live in harmony with it, that is analogous to living with a horrible neighbour who lives next to you that you have no choice but to put up with. A further analogy is that even if you choose to live your life with your spouse, and get married, that relationship will never be a perfect harmony. There will be good and bad days. Divorces can also happen. So even if TRT works, it can stop working at any time.

 

Maybe stupid is the wrong word, but it's something I've done as with most everyone else and in hindsight it causes stress that only makes things worse as a whole.

This is hard to say, currently I'm dealing with a whole new T that I've never dealt with before, its super high pitch and can't really be masked, its come and go and has a lot to do with my body, movement, mouth, neck, somatic like tinnitus. I believe it's from stress but I really don't know. Whole new world for me. So I'm not sure with this one.

In the past, spikes could be a few days to a week or so, long enough for my mind to slip from it and let it settle down.

 

I basically agree with you, but I'm not convinced that there might not be some minority of people who cannot learn to live with it in harmony, even if they do everything in their power to do so. Just as some people are able to adapt to becoming physically disabled and maintain a high quality of life, while other people with the same injuries, are not able to do so.

I do not think it necessarily reflects any failing on the part of the individual; consciousness is a reflection of brain/body state, and I deeply believe that consciousness is a feedback loop which gives us a limited degree of control over that brain/body state. But, there are limits. I have a degenerative connective tissue problem. There are exercises I can do which help to a degree, but I can't exercise the problem away, it's a result of the way that my body builds particular proteins, and the sort of genetic therapy that can fix that is pure sci-fi right now.

 

Maybe so. But how can you discover the answer to that question for yourself if your basic premise going in is that there is absolutely no way in the world you can possibly learn to live with it in harmony??!!

 

that's a catch-22 if I've ever heard one. The problem is, I don't really 'get' how other people think about this stuff. Maybe it was my obsession with Alice in wonderland when I was very small, maybe it was some of the more interesting chemicals I ingested when I was slightly older, or some of the more bizarre meditative and contemplative arts I've dabbled in since... but my whole view of reality is that my own ontology is unbelievably malleable, plastic and arbitrary. So, when confronted with a severe problem, part of my gut reaction involves assessing the degree to which I think I can make a mold of a person without that problem, and then somehow pour myself into that mold.

I don't actually know how feasible/true that is; I think it gives me a sort of whimsical and not very scientific view of reality. I don't know to what extent other people are like that, or not. Clearly there are limits, because I'm obviously not completely at peace with my tinnitus even this far along with it... but I've recognized that there are times when I am upset at the nature of the world, and at those times I am upset with my tinnitus. There are other times when I am in love with and amused by the world, and at those times, I am not upset with my tinnitus, I even have little songs that I sing to it when I find myself thinking about it, and the act of doing so makes me smile. So, this tells me that for me, tinnitus distress has to do with a whole ton of factors that don't have a lot to do with the tinnitus itself. And, again, I don't know that this is necessarily the case for everyone.

edit: I should also say, I am equally unsure how true the last paragraph would be, if my tinnitus suddenly increased 300% and was so loud that it drowned out music, people's voices, my cats purring, etc. Then I would be hearing impaired, which would put me in a different situation than I am in now.

On the other hand, I also know that when I'm really freaked out about my tinnitus, it gets louder, and even if this is "psychological" I'm fairly confident that a fMRI would show increased auditory activity compared to not being in that state. So, feedback loops in all things, yes, this is the nature of the universe, everything is the same thing if you keep cutting it into smaller bits.

 

Why? If your goal is get from New York City to London - but you flat out refuse to get on a plane or boat because you have predetermined that neither can possibly get you from New York City to London, then you are simply never going to achieve your goal. That's not a catch-22. It is common sense!

 

well, sure, but if you and I both need to get to London from NYC, even if I hate planes and you hate boats, we can look at a map and agree with certainty about where we are, and where we need to be.

Conversely, if you and I are both in a state of distress about our tinnitus, and we want to get to a state of tranquility.... we're not going to be moving through the same countryside, at all. Maybe I had a relatively easy upbringing and have a ton of good things in my life that give me a lot of pleasure, and you came from a severely abusive lower-class background which has made you suspicious of other people and made it difficult for you to be financially self-sufficient. These things might culminate to have you living alone in unpleasant circumstances without many things that you desire or look forward to.

None of that stuff has anything to do with tinnitus... and yet it might have everything to do with the ways in which we view and interact with our tinnitus and ourselves.

The best thing I have done, for my tinnitus, and for myself, is conscious meditation to try to cultivate more empathy for others. Why? How can I even say that? It's got nothing at all to do with tinnitus, and shouldn't make any sense at all to someone who is not me and doesn't have my particular set of values.

Again, I basically agree with you -- and I deeply respect your years of experience working with different tinnitus patients. But, I don't know that any one approach or analogy is going to make sense to all people. I suppose I do believe that for anyone suffering terribly with tinnitus there is probably some set of things they can do which will reduce their suffering, but I have no idea if there's anything that will work for everyone.

 

I have never insisted that one approach will work for all people. All I am saying is that if you predetermine that no approach can possibly work in your case, then you are really stacking the deck against your own best interests.

 

In your years of working with people, have you had any patients who simply never found anything that did work?

Assuming you have, do you think this is a result of these people doing something willfull/consciously incorrect, or is it just a result of the way their brains work that cannot adapt to the state of the world?