When you first notice that ringing in your ears you could have a very typical response: pretend everything’s fine. You go about your regular habits: you do your grocery shopping, you make dinner, you try to have a conversation with your partner. While at the same time you try your hardest to ignore that ringing. Because you feel sure of one fact: your tinnitus will fade away on its own.
After several more days of unrelenting ringing and buzzing, though, you start to have doubts.
This scenario happens to others as well. At times tinnitus stop by itself, and other times it will linger on and that’s the reason why it’s a tricky little condition.
When Tinnitus is Likely to Go Away by Itself
Around the globe, nearly everybody has had a bout of tinnitus because it’s very common. Tinnitus is a non-permanent condition, in most cases, and will ultimately go away on its own. The most prevalent scenario is the rock concert: you go see Bruce Springsteen at your local stadium (it’s a good show) and when you get home, you notice that your ears are ringing.
Within a few days the kind of tinnitus associated with damage from loud noise will normally disappear (and you chalk it up to the cost of seeing your favorite band play live).
Naturally, it’s exactly this type of noise injury that, over time, can cause hearing loss to go from temporary (or acute, as they say) to chronic. Too many of those kinds of concerts and you may wind up with permanent tinnitus.
When Tinnitus Doesn’t Seem to be Disappearing on its own
If your tinnitus continues for over three months it’s then identified as chronic tinnitus (but you should have it examined by a specialist long before that).
Around 5-15% of people globally have documented indications of chronic tinnitus. While there are some known close associations (like hearing loss, for example), the causes of tinnitus aren’t yet very well comprehended.
When the causes of your tinnitus aren’t clear, it often means that a quick “cure” will be evasive. 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 recede by itself. But if this is your circumstance, you can maintain your quality of life and manage your symptoms with some treatment possibilities (like noise canceling devices and cognitive behavioral therapy).
It’s Significant to Know What The Cause of Your Tinnitus is
It becomes much simpler to reduce the symptoms of tinnitus when you can identify the root causes. 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.
Here are some potential causes of acute tinnitus:
- Damage to the eardrum (such as a perforated eardrum)
- A blockage in the ear or ear canal
- Chronic ear infections
- Meniere’s disease (this usually has no cure and is often associated with chronic tinnitus)
- Loss of hearing (again, this is often associated with chronic tinnitus)
So…Will The Buzzing in My Ears Subside?
The bottom line is that in almost all cases, yes, your tinnitus will recede by itself. But the longer it lingers, the longer you hear reverberations or humming or whatever the sound happens to be, the more likely it becomes that you’re experiencing chronic tinnitus.
You can convince yourself there’s nothing wrong and hope that the buzzing will just stop. But eventually, your tinnitus might become distressing and it might become tough to concentrate on anything else. And in those cases, you might want a treatment plan more thorough than crossing your fingers.
Most of the time tinnitus is simply the body’s reaction to loud noise that could be damaging over time and will recede on its own. Whether that’s acute or chronic tinnitus, well, we’ll only know over time.