You might have a common reaction when you first hear that ringing in your ears: pretend everything’s fine. You go about your regular routines: you do your shopping, you make dinner, you attempt to have a discussion with your friends. In the meantime, you’re trying to push that ringing in your ear out of your mind. Because you’re convinced of one fact: your tinnitus will go away on its own.
After several more days of unremitting ringing and buzzing, however, you begin to have doubts.
You aren’t the only one to ever find yourself in this situation. At times tinnitus will go away by itself, and other times it will linger on and that’s why it’s a challenging little condition.
The Condition of Temporary Tinnitus
Tinnitus is incredibly common around the world, nearly everyone’s had a bout here and there. Tinnitus is a temporary condition, in most cases, and will ultimately vanish on it’s own. A rock concert is a good example: you go to your local stadium to see your favorite band and you discover, when you get back home, that there is a ringing in your ears.
The kind of tinnitus that is associated with temporary damage from loud noise will often diminish within a couple of days (but you accept that it’s just part of going to a loud show).
Naturally, it’s precisely this type of noise damage that, over time, can cause loss of hearing to go from temporary (or acute, as they say) to chronic. One concert too many and you could be waiting a long, long time for your tinnitus to go away on its own.
When Tinnitus Doesn’t Seem to be Going Away on its own
If your tinnitus lingers for over three months it’s then classified as chronic tinnitus (but you should have it checked by a specialist long before that).
Around 5-15% of individuals around the world have recorded indications of chronic tinnitus. While there are some recognized close connections (like hearing loss, for instance), the causes of tinnitus aren’t yet well understood.
When the causes of your tinnitus aren’t obvious, it often means that a quick “cure” will be unidentifiable. If your ears have been ringing for over three months and there’s no identifiable cause, there’s a good possibility that the sound will not go away on its own. But if this is your circumstance, you can preserve your quality of life and manage your symptoms with some treatment options (such as noise canceling devices and cognitive behavioral therapy).
The Cause of Your Tinnitus is Relevant
When you can identify the root cause of your tinnitus, dealing with the condition suddenly becomes much simpler. If a bacterial ear infection is, for instance, the reason for your tinnitus, you can revive a healthy ear and clear hearing by managing it with antibiotics.
Some causes of acute tinnitus could include:
- A blockage in the ear or ear canal
- Chronic ear infections
- Damage to the eardrum (such as a perforated eardrum)
- Loss of hearing (again, this is often associated with chronic tinnitus)
- Meniere’s disease (this is often associated with chronic tinnitus, as Meniere’s has no cure)
So…Will The Ringing in My Ears Stop?
In general, your tinnitus will subside on its own. But it becomes increasingly more likely that you’re dealing with chronic tinnitus the longer these tinnitus sounds last.
You feel that if you simply disregard it should vanish by itself. But there may come a point where your tinnitus begins to become uncomfortable, where it’s difficult to focus because the sound is too disruptive. And in those cases, you might want a treatment plan more comprehensive than crossing your fingers.
In most cases, however, as a matter of fact, throughout most of your life, your tinnitus will usually go away by itself, a typical reaction to a noisy environment (and your body’s means of letting you know to stay away from that situation in the future). Only time will tell if your tinnitus is chronic or acute.