Meniere's Disease and Tinnitus Symptoms

Friday, August 24, 2012 | Unknown at 8:24 PM |

Tinnitus and Ménière's disease are closely related. While tinnitus will most often be a condition in its own right, with its own causes, it is in fact sometimes a symptom of Ménière's disease.

Lets begin by describing the symptoms of both of these conditions.

Tinnitus Symptoms

The symptoms of tinnitus can include hearing high or low pitched sounds or tones in one ear, or in both ears at the same time. These sounds are often described by tinnitus sufferers as being like bells ringing, or perhaps like a loud buzzing.

Sometimes people describe their symptoms as like the sound of rushing water or a banging noise.

Other symptoms of tinnitus can include hearing degradation over time and also high levels of stress and anxiety, especially if the tinnitus becomes so frequent and loud that a person feels constantly distracted, isolated and avoids social encounters etc.

Symptoms of Ménière's Disease

Here are the main symptoms experienced by sufferers of Ménière's Disease

Aural Fullness: This can be best described as the feeling you get in your ears when on a plane ride and the plane is either ascending or descending. It's the feeling of pressure in your ears. However, in this case it can't be relieved by chewing.

Tinnitus: The symptoms of tinnitus as described above are often experienced,especially buzzing sounds and unfortunately the tinnitus is continuous and not intermittent.

Hearing Loss: Hearing loss is another symptom. It most often will start with a degradation in hearing in one ear, often in the lower frequencies of sound, and then move to the other ear.

It can keep fluctuating between both ears or eventually occur in both at the same time. The hearing loss gets progressively worse and can become permanent.

Vertigo: Possibly the worst symptom of Ménière's Disease can be vertigo. Sufferers can experience extreme bouts of rotational vertigo or dizziness lasting up to 24 hours or more. These spells of vertigo can come and go for weeks at a time.

These attacks are unpredictable and naturally vertigo can totally incapacitate a person as they may feel like they are constantly spinning and losing their balance. Sometimes a person will be so badly affected they will actually fall suddenly, which is known as a 'drop attack'.

Vertigo itself will then have its own symptoms such as nausea, sweating and vomiting.

Migraine: People with Ménière's Disease often experience migraine headaches as well.

Diagnosing Ménière's Disease and Tinnitus

The important distinction for someone who has tinnitus is whether they have tinnitus by itself or because they actually have Ménière's disease. The reason this is so important is that naturally the treatments are different for both conditions.

If a person has Ménière's disease the diagnosis can be slower because its symptoms don't always occur at the same time. For example you may only suffer from tinnitus but then at a later stage vertigo may start to appear or migraines etc.

In other cases you may first start experiencing vertigo, then later hearing loss and tinnitus, or perhaps all at the same time. It varies from person to person.

The first thing a person who is having these symptoms should do is visit their doctor. They will perform various tests or refer you to a specialist who will help in diagnosis and then offer the appropriate treatment options.