Woke Up to Tinnitus with Normal Hearing (Delayed Onset from Loud Music Through Headphones?)

I have read a lot in this forum the last few weeks and thought to share about my tinnitus. Maybe I'll find a friend or two who are in the same seat as me.

I got tinnitus about 4 months ago. The reason is unknown. I just woke up to it with a bad sleep of 3 hours but I suspect that it must be the music the week before I listened to with my headphones for 1 hour with super high volume.

I met an ear doctor 3 months after my tinnitus onset. He mostly just talked and looked in the ear, found no earwax or anything strange. I had to do a hearing test and I apparently had super good hearing. He told me not to think about the sounds in my ears and sent me away.

I have a roaring / bubbling very high pitched sound in the right ear, sometimes both ears, but usually the right ear. I experience that my ear tries to heal itself as I have 1 to 2 full days of silence a week. What remains is a small healing sound, a hum deep inside my brain, that I can only hear if I cover my ears.

For every day of silence I get, I get a full day of spiked tinnitus the next day, it is so high in volume and high pitched, about 13000 Hz, that nothing can mask it except a certain white noise. The high frequency sound then converts to bubbling/roaring after a few hours.

My tinnitus sound in my head competes with the sound of the TV or the music I listen to and it is almost nice to isolate myself in silence until it calms down. Then it stays in medium volume with small missile sounds, if I may call it that, as I hear flying past through my ears like pew pew I guess it's things flying past the nerves. There are times when the sound becomes so very difficult to cope with and I need to mask with white noise.

This process has repeated the past 4 months with no clear pattern. I sleep well after I bought my SleepBuds but I have lost a few kilos in the last few months due to worries that I might have to live with this for the rest of my life.

Is there anyone who has or had similar tinnitus who can share with me some tips and tricks and is there a possibility of full recovery from this type of tinnitus?

 

Hi Ken,

I’m not dealing with the same symptoms as you, but I’m sure others are. I do struggle with times that my tinnitus competes and I have to turn everything off to get so quiet. Hope you’re doing okay today.

 

Hey @Ken Dalen - My tinnitus doesn't have the sound characteristics that you describe, but I do have something in common. I get full days of silence and also full days of a loud hissing sound. The hissing takes on a different pitch on different days. But, for any given day, what I hear is consistent for the whole day. It's random for me whether I get a quiet day or a loud day.

Sometimes the hiss I hear is super high pitched. I can totally relate to not being able to mask it well. when I have a day like that, I usually try to mask it with a crickets video on YouTube, especially when I go to sleep.

Oh, and I too lost weight the first month, like almost 5 kg.

One thing I've been doing to help is sound therapy. I rarely sit in silence and always have some nature sound video playing on a home device in whichever room I'm in. I prefer fountain, rain, river, and cricket sounds.

 

Hey Ken, I have very similar tinnitus to yourself. I've spent days searching the Internet and other forums and found very few people with similar symptoms!

I to have no idea where it came from other than possible loud headphone use which I've stopped using since it started 2 and half months ago. I wake up to silence most days but the noise can start hours later or the second I turn the TV on. I've only had one silent day which was a few weeks back now but I get long periods in the day and Sunday I had silence for 6/7 hours and its been ringing almost constantly since then. When it does ring it competes with everything other than the shower, so I hear it driving, walking outside etc. Which is so frustrating as no escape! Seem to have been in the same circle for the whole time and not sure if there's been any improvements really!

I've seen two audiologist and both said my ears are clean, healthy and hearing is good for my age, yet to see an ent Dr as I live in the UK and there is a 7 month wait =/

The silent periods give me hope of fully healing but that hope is starting to fade but I'm far from accepting this is permanent atm!

 

Do you also sometimes feel a very bright electric sound far up in the center brain, super high pitch boiling sound, when you put your fingers close to the ear hole, then you hear the sound radiating almost from the sides of the skull and you feel like it's not coming out from the ears themselves?

Even if this becomes a permanent thing, you will get used to it. I'm pretty sure that a cure is on the way within 4-5 years. Do not let this phantom sound rule your life. The thing with the sound sensitivity will at least balance out, I notice an improvement but it is progressing super slowly.

 

Yeah sound therapy can be the only way when it is too much.

I try not to do sound therapy unless I have to. I think the more I listen to my tinnitus and face it, the faster the brain adapts and focuses away the sound. That's just my little theory at the moment. Hold on, there will be better times coming for us soon.

 

I can understand the rationale for avoiding sound therapy. For me, I find sound therapy to be soothing. Per the advice of others, I keep the sound therapy at a volume lower than my tinnitus so that I can habituate to my tinnitus. I'm putting my faith in this approach, as I think it to be beneficial.

 

Hey Ken,

Sorry for the long delay, I had been avoiding this place to try and help forget about my tinnitus but that hasn't really helped so far.

Yeah I get a very similar experience to the electrical sound as you describe and no signs of if slowing. In fact I've developed a new lower beeping tone on top of this too which is also reactive and sounds like a whine over everything. At first I thought there was a truck reversing near my house somewhere but nope, just a noise in my ear!

Have you had further improvements? I hope you're right about a cure but from what I've read most seem to fail so not holding out too much hope. I just don't want to put all my hopes on something that might not happen.