advice sought desperate

CJmasgrande

Folks,

I know I have chronic ear wax, I also have absolutely chronic tinnitus in my right ear.

The tinnitus has gotten exceptionally severe in the past month but it's been an issue for approximately the past 5 years I'm a male now aged 51.

A few years ago I saw three ear specialists had scans and all same to me nothing told me to learn to live with it.

Since then it's progressed to extremely severe I'm at a very low eb right now.

I often wonder is impacted wax actually causing problems and I'd love to find out is there an ultimate way system of dealing with severe waxy ears,?

looksee

Dealing with waxy ears, get them cleaned at intervals (not with water). Most hearing clinics will provide this service.

The tinnitus, sorry, at the moment there is no solution. The advice you were given is frustrating but all that can be said - live with it. The more you worry about it and think about it, the worse tinnitus gets. That is very unhelpful but is the case. I am sitting quietly browsing boards and not wearing my hearing aids and the tinnitus is deafening (so to speak ) When I stir myself and start doing stuff (yes, I know its almost noon, its a Saturday!) I will become less aware of the tinnitus and it will appear to go away. I don't allow it to actively annoy me so its just noise that I ignore.

Sorry I can't be more helpful. I have both your issues and there isn't a lot to be done about either of them.

Terminator

Your mileage may vary but eating lots of processed food containing white flour, sugar, etc can increase ear wax in my experience. I don't think that has a major impact on Tinnitus though unless your hearing levels drop dramatically when you are blocked up. In the same vein if you have hearing loss in one or both ears and you are listening to media at a high volume to compensate this can exacerbate tinnitus. It may be worth getting hearing aids if that's the case. When I pop my hearing aids in the morning the tinnitus fades away and I can get on with my day.

In addition to eating badly, I find my Tinnitus gets worse if I have too many late nights in a row.

Any time you are having a bad episode there are various free tinnitus apps that can help - Resound have one that plays rain sounds or white noise through your phone speaker.

https://www.resound.com/en/hearing-aids/apps/relief

looksee

That's interesting about the ear wax/processed food. As it happens I eat gluten free and as I don't have a 'sweet tooth', I eat little added sugar, and little processed food, I still have the wax problem to some extent, but maybe not so much as when I was not gluten free, so there may be something in what you say.

I agree the hearing aids can help a bit, but tinnitus is definitely more obtrusive when you are thinking about it.

Terminator

I eat gluten free too! However, these products often have more processed junk in them than their wheat equivalents. It's very hard to avoid processed food entirely but I think cutting down on it can help.