Diving Keeps Re-Aggravating my TINNITUS!!

[PeterD1361]

Hello, Does anybody else have this issue? It seems that almost every time I go diving (a few times a year), I re-aggravate my tinnitus and it becomes very loud., then takes about 4-6 weeks to re-habituate? It's becoming unbearable and very frustrating every time this happens. I'm a perfectly normal, healthy 31 yr old, with tinnitus (have had it for about 7 years now). Why does this keep happening? I can assure you that there is no barotrauma happening. My ears feel fine and I'm equalizing normally. It's just after I'm done diving that I noticed my tinnitus has increased in volume, and takes a while to settle down. Am I doing further damage? Is there a depth after which I should not go below? Would love anyone's experience with this and insight! Please help!

Thank you so much! Sincerely, Peter

 

[rek_diver]

I would suggest not going below a depth where your tinnitus becomes aggravated.

 

[Duke Dive Medicine]

Peter,

I have been fighting this myself for over two years. I can offer you my own personal story with the caveat that it's my own, and nothing in it should be taken as a recommendation for any particular treatment.

I started associating my tinnitus with dives in the hyperbaric chamber about 2 1/2 years ago. The interesting thing was that it didn't get worse immediately afterwards, it was worse the next morning when I woke up. At first it was intermittent, and it slowly progressed to where it was happening after every dive. I never had any difficulty equalizing and inner ear DCS was ruled out. I was worked up extensively by our ENT and diving medicine physicians here at Duke and nobody could figure out why it was happening. It slowly progressed to the point where I can't even go 3 feet under water in a swimming pool without the symptoms getting significantly worse within 30-60 minutes. I've tried magnesium threonate (some evidence that it helps rats in the acute phase of tinnitus, long shot, didn't help) and I've been taking 240 mg of ginko biloba every morning for roughly 6 weeks (Navy diver lore).

The first time I had an aggravation of the tinnitus a number of years ago, I got a device called Neuromonics from our audiology department. It played a masking noise customized to my own hearing loss along with a musical track. I had a complete remission of symptoms while using it. The second time around it has not helped.

There is also a Neuromonics app that you can download, also adjustable to your own hearing loss, and it's about 1/20 the price of the device. You have to have earbuds with excellent high-frequency range; I use Bang and Olufsen 3i since those are what came with the original Neuromonics device. I've been using the app pretty regularly holding out some hope. Over the past couple of weeks the tinnitus seems to have gotten better, but I slept with a fan on last night and woke up with it much worse (white noise sometimes aggravates it). It tends to wax and wane like that, but this latest waning was my longest period of relative comfort in about a year.

There is some evidence that repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is helpful for severe tinnitus. It's off-label since rTMS is only FDA approved for severe depression, but our rTMS folks here have evaluated me and I'm hopeful.

If I had it to do again, I'd have stopped diving earlier. I have no evidence to support this, but I feel like the last couple of chamber dives really did me in. Again, nobody has been able to pin this on diving, but the close temporal association is hard to ignore.

I hope this helps. I would strongly recommend that you be evaluated by an ENT physician who is an otologist and who has experience in evaluating divers, if you haven't done so already.

Best regards,
Eric

 

[lowflyer]

Hello, Does anybody else have this issue? It seems that almost every time I go diving (a few times a year), I re-aggravate my tinnitus and it becomes very loud., then takes about 4-6 weeks to re-habituate? It's becoming unbearable and very frustrating every time this happens. I'm a perfectly normal, healthy 31 yr old, with tinnitus (have had it for about 7 years now). Why does this keep happening? I can assure you that there is no barotrauma happening. My ears feel fine and I'm equalizing normally. It's just after I'm done diving that I noticed my tinnitus has increased in volume, and takes a while to settle down. Am I doing further damage? Is there a depth after which I should not go below? Would love anyone's experience with this and insight! Please help!

Thank you so much! Sincerely, Peter

Some noises make my tinnitus worse. When I swim in a pool, the sound of the bubbles from my exhaling into the water aggravates it for hours. Maybe similar sounds of diving (of a certain frequency) , rather than the depth of the dive, are aggravating your tinnitus.
My ENT is stumped by the fact that jutting my lower jaw forward increases the volume of my tinnitus a lot. Could jaw position with a reg in the mouth aggravate tinnitus?
Maybe an ENT can comment.

Later addition. Eventhough I've had tinnitus for years, I've never tried this: I jut out my lower jaw, the tinnitus gets worse, but if I keep the jaw jutted out it starts to diminish and go away. I reset the jaw where it's supposed to be, and the tinnitus is less than before the experiment.
Weird, only posting this to see if the dive docs/ENTs have an explanation

 

[RayfromTX]

I try to evaluate and record a timeline of my symptoms but I can only definitively sat that loud noises like on my construction site for even short unprotected periods seem to make it worse and some really loud noises like my compressor seem to make it worse even protected. I suspect that it is coming through the bone I store my brain in.

I seldom hear it during or after diving but it comes back later so I'm listening with interest, so to speak.

 

[vam]

Mine is mild and I don’t usually notice it unless I think about it, but I have noticed that it is worse for a day or two after diving.

 

[horsediver1]

Have had this condition since childhood. Been diving since 1971. Mine is rather loud on any given day, doesn't get aggravated even with deeper 100 plus feet having said that if I focus on it I hear it louder, just a fact I have learned to live with. If you think yours may be aggravated by 2nd stage reg. Hook up with a dive shop and give a full face a try, I have both in my arsenal of dive equipment with no personal preference on which I use just depends on the type of diving I am doing that day. Good luck maybe an ENT can come up with an answer for you, mine I only got a shrug and sorry as there is no clear cause for mine.

 

[jluttichau]

Hello, Does anybody else have this issue? Would love anyone's experience with this and insight! Please help

Hey Pete,

I have the same condition my tinnitus also gets worse from diving, driving in mountains and going on air planes. But the greatest increase in tinnitus comes from diving. I have had a break from diving for 12 years and have recently had a dive and the effect is the same, an acute worsening of my tinnitus. My only solution is to not Scuba dive or save it for a few dives a year maybe.

Hope you find a solution to your condition, I can recommend mountain biking and kayaking

Regards
Jonas

 

[Duke Dive Medicine]

I noticed that this thread was revived and thought I'd post an update of my own experience. Again, this is my story, not medical advice of any sort, so please read with that in mind.

I did end up going through the rTMS, though my health insurance declined to pay so I got stuck with the bill, which was considerable. The good news is that it definitely mitigated the tinnitus; it still fluctuates, but I also have periods where I don't notice it. It also "rewired" my brain, for lack of a better word, so I can tolerate the tinnitus better when it does get bad, which ends up being a few times a week.

I did an elimination diet and found that gluten seemed to aggravate the tinnitus. I've been able to repeat this pretty reliably, so I now follow a gluten-free diet as best I can. When I've gone without for a long stretch (a week or so), it's definitely less noticeable. There is one other case report in the medical literature of a woman who had tinnitus related to a gluten sensitivity. She also had GI symptoms, which I thankfully don't have.

Best regards,
Eric

 

[aviator8]

My ENT is stumped by the fact that jutting my lower jaw forward increases the volume of my tinnitus a lot.

Same here. and i can reduce the volume by pulling my ear away from my head, kind stretching out my eustachian tube

gluten seemed to aggravate the tinnitus.

How strange that gluten would trigger it. I would have never guessed that.