Will Nerve Damage in the Ear Get Repaired by Itself Over Time?

If there is nerve damage in the ear, the nerves connecting the ear to the brain, and in the hearing center in the brain, will they repair themselves over time?

I was told that nerves grow 1mm per month (unrelated injury). So if the damage does repair slowly, and if it was sounds that caused the damage, would total silence for a very long time aid in this healing?

If certain loud frequencies caused the damage, would listening to those frequencies at any volume hinder the damaged tissues from healing?

 

Where did you read or hear that nerves grow 1 mm per month? My understanding is that nerve cells (neurons) do not regenerate. There might be experimental treatments that can stimulate growth, but on their own I'm pretty sure nerves do not regenerate. That's why spinal cord injuries are usually permanent. How do you know your hearing loss is the result of nerve damage?

 

Well, there is a difference between the peripheral and the central nervous system. Also scar tissue plays a role.

Some nerves do heal, and indeed, promoting regeneration is what cold laser therapy aims to achieve in such cases (for instance, search literature on e.g. Bell's palsy). However, there is more to tinnitus than just worn out neurons.

 

I had a crushing injury years ago to my arm. There was numbness. Perhaps they said they heal 1mm per month, but I thought they said grow. Over the years I did regain most of the feeling in my arm, but some of it is still numb or has a different sense when touched or pressured.

I understand much of the auditory system works with nerves. The signals are captured by hairs and those vibrations are communicated to the brain by nerves, then the hearing center of the brain is comprised of different nerves that deal with the different frequencies.

I have a limited ability to communicate what I have read about the auditory system, but I did get a general idea. I have read that the nerves can be damaged or disconnected.

 

That's just one way to do it. This diagram shows the method used by Novartis with their drug CGF-166.

 

Is that treatment available now or is that experimental?

 

That looks like a perforated ear drum, not a nerve...

 

Couldn't agree more. Definitely not a picture of a "damaged ear nerve"... that's a damaged ear drum.

 

Prayer for a side effect of some drug is lowering tinnitus. Most of them cause tinnitus, WHY NOT THE OPPOSITE EFFECT?

 

That's what the caption for the photo said...

 

Dr. Thanos Tzounopoulos is working on one actually. D . Alexander Galazyuk is on another too.

 

Well he better hurry up, tell you what.

 

Definitely experimental. I don't think this is the drug you want either. They have to surgically remove your eardrum and then burn a hole into your cochlea to then inject the reprogrammed virus containing atoh1 into it. I'm pretty sure we would rather have something like FX-322 that can be simply injected into the middle ear and diffuse through the round window membrane.

 

@ChrisBoyMonkey Are you one of the military that had 3M defective ear plugs?

 

My ENT says that nerves can heal. I have nerve damage as well. I've had tinnitus for nearly 15 months. For the first 8 months there was no change and it was constant. Now it fluctuates between loud, moderate, and mild. My ear fullness and fluttering have disappeared. She takes this all as a sign of healing. I guess healing depends on the extent of the damage, and other individual factors. In taking a load of supplements, wear ear plugs, and avoid loud noise. I'm hoping I heal more in the coming months or years, but it's hard to predict.

 

Neurons in the brain and spine don't repair themselves, only in the Pheripheral does that happen, but im not sure if the hearing system is part of the CNS or PNS.

The cochlear nerve is a cranial nerve and is part of the PNS, so I suspect neurons will repair themselves. Even when everyone assumes they don't.

 

I hope that it can be done more than once. I would hate to be an early adopter and find out it was not a really good method, and then when the good method is out it won't work because I tried the earlier inferior method... But there must be a pile of support cells.

 

I'm confident within the next 5-10 years there will be methods to treat less severe forms of hearing damage, and help tinnitus.

The field has emerging competition and lots of research going on now, not a miracle cure but some bio-treatments that will help tinnitus, hearing loss and noise pain is not unimaginable.

 

Yes my service actually was during that time., and I recieved those earplugs in basic. I'm currently getting my paperwork for a VA claim and plan to join the lawsuit too.

 

Neurons do regenerate through BDNF (for which the production rate can be artificially increased through fasting), though that's hardly relevant when it comes to the auditory nerve.

As to whether or not it can regenerate, technically, yes, but that depends on the extent of the damage, typically the nerve inner structure itself can't heal, so if you damage it too much (let's say, cut it), the damage is done, for good.
That said, before the damage reaches the inner structure of the nerve, it damages the myelin sheath first (that's some kind of fat tissue surrounding your nerve) and that, can (albeit very slowly) regenerate through a process known as Remyelination, the process can take from months to years (or never happen) depending on the extent of the damage and the amount of nutrients you consume.

So, in the end, it all comes down to how much abuse you exposed your nerve to and what your diet is as to the speed of its recovery process (or lack thereof), it is likely however, that the cochlear is much easier to damage from noise exposure than the auditory nerve itself.

Of course chronic auditory nerve inflammation may have lasting, perhaps irreversible impacts to it.

There is unfortunately too much we don't know about the inner ear and the auditory mechanism, it is in fact one of the most unknown (and complex) physiological mechanism within the human body to this day.

 

Funny that you mention nerve inflammation. This has just been found to be another possible underlying cause of tinnitus (will need to be confirmed with humans, but looks very promising):

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-06/p-rbi061119.php

 

I have been experimenting with fasting because it reduces inflammation and found that it didn't help me, maybe cause I don't have hearing loss therefore no inflammation, then what the hell causes the tinnitus?

But I have found that sleeping really helps for me. And tinnitus get's worse the longer im awake.

I have also just recently experimented with low oxalate food for detoxing the brain and found it helping somewhat, but quit after a week, but plan on doing it more in the future.

 

Today my T was loud and hissy. No reason for it.

 

Hi! If you don’t mind me asking, how did they conclude that you had nerve damage? MRI?

 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378595516302507
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24198321

 

Thanks so much! Getting an MRI done today... hoping for some good news

 

Most MRI are extremely loud and could make tinnitus worse.

The tiny little nerves that attach to hair cells can die and probably won't even show up on the test.

 

Uh oh. Should I not do it? Now im contemplating but the Dr said they want to rule out nerve damage...

 

I mean: OF COURSE inflammation underlies tinnitus! What do people think happens when cells are damaged? There's pain, there's swelling, and there's recruitment of an immune system response. This is the textbook definition of inflammation!

As a neuroscientist, I have to say that the fact that it's taken till now for the scientific community to get to this point is embarrassing. And as a psychologist, the continued proliferation of the "tinnitus is all about your response to the tinnitus" is offensive.