The ringing just won’t go away. That high pitched buzz in your ear has been nagging you since yesterday morning and it still hasn’t disappeared. you realize that the buzzing is tinnitus but your beginning to worry about how long it will keep going.
Tinnitus can be caused by injury to the stereocilia inside of your ears (the air vibrations that your ears turn into sound, are sensed by these tiny hairs). Generally, too much excessively loud noise is the cause. That’s why you notice tinnitus most often after, for example, attending a concert, eating at a noisy restaurant, or being seated next to a roaring jet engine while you’re taking a trip.
Under Normal Scenarios, How Long Will Tinnitus Persist?
Tinnitus can’t be cured. But that doesn’t mean it’ll never subside. There will be a wide variety of factors that will establish how long your tinnitus will stick around, such as the root cause of your tinnitus and your overall hearing health.
But if you find your ears buzzing after a noisy day of traveling, you can typically expect your tinnitus to fade away in a day or two. Normally, tinnitus will persist for 16 to 48 hours. But in some cases, symptoms can last as much as a couple of weeks. And tinnitus will return if you are exposed to loud noise again.
If tinnitus continues and is affecting your quality of life, you need to consult a specialist.
What Leads to Long Term Tinnitus?
Tinnitus is normally impermanent. But sometimes it can be permanent. Particularly when the cause of tinnitus is something out of the ordinary either with respect to origin or in terms of intensity. Here are several examples:
- Traumatic Brain Trauma (TBI): The brain is where the majority of sound is processed. When those processors begin to misfire, because of traumatic brain trauma, tinnitus can be the result.
- Hearing loss: Often, hearing loss and tinnitus are joined at the hip. So you may end up with irreversible tinnitus regardless of the cause of your hearing loss.
- Repeated exposure: If your ears are buzzing after one rock concert, think of how they’ll feel after five rock concerts a week or if you’re a musician who performs concerts and practices all day. Continued exposure to loud noises can cause permanent hearing damage, including tinnitus.
Permanent tinnitus is substantially less common than its more short-term counterpart. But there are still millions of Americans every year who are treated for permanent, or chronic, tinnitus symptoms.
How Can You Get Your Tinnitus to go Away?
You will want to get relief sooner rather than later regardless of whether your tinnitus is permanent or short term. Even though there’s no cure for tinnitus, there are a few things you can do to lessen symptoms (though they will probably last only so long):
- Find a way to mask the sound: You can sometimes mask the sound and get a restful nights sleep by utilizing some source of white noise like a fan or humidifier.
- Use earplugs (or earmuffs): If you cannot steer clear of loud environments, then safeguarding your hearing is the next best option. (And, really, you should be protecting your hearing whether you have tinnitus or not.)
- Avoid loud noises. Your symptoms might be prolonged or might become more intense if you keep exposing yourself to loud noises such as rock concerts or a jet engine.
- Try to remain calm: perhaps it sounds a little… abstract, but remaining calm can really help keep your tinnitus in check, mostly because increased blood pressure can stimulate tinnitus flare-ups.
Sadly, none of these methods will get rid of long term tinnitus. But diminishing and managing your symptoms can be equally significant.
When Will Your Tinnitus Disappear?
Your tinnitus, in the majority of scenarios, will recede by itself. Your hearing should return to normal within 16 to 48 hours. However, you will want to seek out a solution if your tinnitus persists. The sooner you discover a treatment that is effective, the sooner you can experience relief. Get your hearing examined if you think you have tinnitus or hearing loss.