Will my tinnitus ever go away? This is a question I get asked frequently by people who learn that I have tinnitus. Having first experienced intermittent but gradually steady episodes of tinnitus since I was 15 years old, I can tell you that for me personally, it has not gone away and remains a permanent fixture in my life. Learning to cope and deal with tinnitus is another story better left for another day.
However, don’t let my sob story dismay you. In many cases, tinnitus has been known to go away as there are patients that tried treating this issue with sacurrent and have successfully gotten rid of it. In some, it can go away in a matter of hours. In others, it may take days, weeks, or months. The recovery period really depends on the amount of noise the ears were exposed to and for how long. Many children and teenagers are increasingly developing mild tinnitus in this day and age due to the use of earbuds with the music cranked up from their iPods much too loudly. Repeated exposure to this loud music eventually weakens the hairs in the ears that pick up sound and cause tinnitus to become permanent.
If you’ve noticed a ringing in your ears, ask yourself about the abuse your ears have taken, both long and short term. Do you listen to music through headphones? Do you like to go to loud music venues? Do you like the club scene where the DJ blasts music just a few feet from the dance floor? Exposing your ears to these harsh audio environments can cause tinnitus. If you are a chronic abuser, then don’t expect the ringing to stop any time soon.
In many situations, people are exposed to a loud noise like an explosion or gunshot. This usually causes temporary tinnitus when hearing seems muted and a high pitch frequency ringing develops. If it is an isolated incident like this one, then the tinnitus is temporary and may disappear after a few hours. Perhaps you’ve gone to a music concert where you listened to loud music for a few hours. In this case, it may take a day or even more to fully recover. If you constantly go clubbing, expect longer, and longer recovery periods.
Continual exposure to these loud noises will eventually cause permanent damage to your hearing and as a result, potentially permanent tinnitus that will not go away, ever. Since you are now onto the fact that a ringing in your ears has developed, simply take the appropriate measures to eliminate these exposures in order to save what’s left of your hearing.
Other causes of tinnitus include:
- Meniere’s disease
- Natural hearing loss due to aging
- Earwax build-up
- TMJ and nerve pressure
- Ear bone changes
- Certain types of medication
Depending on the cause of tinnitus (consult a doctor for tinnitus testing) and if the condition is curable or reversible, you also stand a chance of having your tinnitus magically go away. Obviously, age-related hearing loss is perfectly natural and unfortunately unavoidable. However, causes like TMJ can be corrected and may cause any ringing to go away. When taking certain medications, tinnitus may appear while using them, but go away after medication stops.
Want to know what it’s like with tinnitus? Imagine fearing the sound of an ambulance speeding by. Loud noises like this, taken for granted by people who don’t have tinnitus, can trigger severe episodes of high-frequency torture. Trust me on this, you do not want this happening to you. It can even affect your personality or destroy your life.
So to answer the question, will tinnitus go away? The answer is yes, it is possible, but it depends on your history.
