Maybe I could apply for a clinical trial.
If it ever gets approved, it should be considerably better than Lenire, but it's sure taking its time.
A HN user said they'd provide specs to reproduce such a device, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43920360
[1] https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/7229... [2] https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/scitranslmed.aal3175 [3] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
The fans don’t totally block out the tinnitus, but they sorta act as an undistracting distraction.
I've found that stuff like this site and therapy approaches like it tend to make me hypervigilant about my tinnitus, which is exactly the opposite of what I want. My tinnitus is moderate-severity (it's loud but never competes with real sound) and just by keeping background noise around I'm at a point where I think about it maybe a couple times a week tops; most of the times I'm persistantly thinking about it, it turns out I have a sinus infection or something.
Pair: https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/numberStationsRadioNoiseGe... with: https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/magicDuneArrakisGenerator....
I set the numbers stations to 'narrow' and Arrakis to 'wide' and stereo field, mute the numbers stations that repeats german numbers (those stand out to me too easily)... and it's like some magical productivity hack of my brain.
The white noise generators were also a lifesaver when working in a busy open plan studio with loud idiots.
About 95% of the time, I can fairly easily just tune it out and it's no different than any other background noise. Living in NYC helps, there's a fair amount of constant background noise even in the best of times. I've found that finding 10-hour videos on YouTube of TV static at a low volume can be helpful for the remaining 5%.
Still I would really prefer it wasn't there. The ringing in my left ear is still annoying, and I'm only in my mid 30's, so assuming an average lifespan I have anywhere from 40-60 years left to enjoy this constant ringing.
I'll play with this thing to see if it helps.
I got mine in my 30's too. The first week I thought I was going crazy, and this was the end of my life. I was shocked, I couldn't go to work for a whole week.
I then saw a doctor who said to me: "Man, I've got tinnitus since 20 years and I barely hear it anymore. The more you accept it, the more it'll fade."
A decade later, my own experience is exactly this. I accepted it as one of the body malfunctions that comes with age for everybody. I barely hear it anymore except in extremely low noise situations and it doesn't bother me at all.
I wish you well.
I had a slight crack in my windshield right at eye level view. And after a minute of driving I don't notice it at all anymore
Here I am, 31. I have to look for them really really hard to see if they are still there. Only when I have a streak of stressful days and bad night sleep, they will be visible again. It comes without saying that I had to change my life in many, many aspects, not only due to these floaters. A much calmer life, better food, gym, financial security, better friends and people around me, and cultivate a spiritual being in some sense. The mind can be shaped in many many ways it's fascinating.
tinnitus seems similar. maybe in the future there could be some kind of functionally guided high intensity focused ultrasound ablation procedure that could dull out some of the malfunctioning percept, but for now probably the best bet is to ignore it.
on a related note in interesting auditory neurotechnology, vestibular implants seem pretty cool!
[Of course this is not be used as medical advice, as your LLM for that ;)]
No you can't tune them out.
They are always there, sometimes if you are very lucky you can get engrossed enough not to have them as the first or second thing on your mind
But it is always in the top five you never can tune them out you have always be aware as not to to certainn things.
What helped me accept (and ignore) tinnitus was realizing that I had already grown accustomed to tolerating that sound indoors. When's it's something you have no agency over (like "it's an old house and the wires just make that sound sometimes"), you learn it's part of the environment.
Accepting it as part of the environment gets you past the "OMG my body is ruined forever" anxieties and back to normal life.
I have known people that have it much worse than I face daily.
I genuinely could hear CRTs when I was 5.
Tinnitus sound now is very similar for me too.
Hearing test showed high frequency hearing loss in that range which is well above human speech and a lot of music.
I always have that, but I only hear a random high pitched tinnitus noise in one ear, rising and falling in volume for max 10 seconds, about once every few months.
I can still hear old CRTs in my forties, although it's less maddening now. They had those mosquito devices, that are intended to repel kids, for a while at a shopping mall near me. They repelled me very effectively as well.
A friend once thought it was funny to try the 15.000Hz silent ringtone on me, although I had told him not to. It made me react without conscious input and I nearly broke his phone.
Holy crap! I'm not alone! And now I have a name for it. They've always freaked me out and I don't even know how to describe it to people.
I get these, too. I just looked it up, and it's called "Sudden, brief, unilateral, tapering tinnitus (SBUTT)." That's quite an SEO-friendly name.
It's mildly annoying but I've definitely learnt to live with it pretty ok.
Audiologist suggested treating it like a rock in your shoe. At the time seemed like impossible advice but now I just live with it and it’s 100% fine.
Also the idea that it is actually made worse by anxiety was a game changer for me. Literally, “don’t worry about it” is the exact right advice.
I only notice it when it changes abruptly (very rare), but otherwise I just tune it out
That said, I have experienced occasional reoccurrence. One thing that helps is I ask my masseuse to concentrate on the sides of my neck- there is a specific muscle that when tense can cause ringing.
Does your tinnitus get momentarily worse when you tense your neck muscles?
It’s not what anyone wants to hear, but it’s the pragmatic approach that works best from everything I’ve seen.
The people who become involved in tinnitus forums, support groups, and chasing experimental treatments think they’re helping themselves but they’re really only bringing it to top of mind over and over again.
It feels frustrating to give up and disconnect from all things tinnitus related on th internet, but disconnecting is exactly what helps with the process of letting it fall into the background of your life. Constantly bringing it to the foreground and reading about it only makes it worse.
I didn't want to depend on a drug, but after getting into a really bad, quasi-suicidal mental state, I went to the psychiatrist. I've been on escitalopram for 4 months and it has really helped reduce the distress associated with tinnitus in like 80%. Making an effort to not think about it has also helped.
I hope to stop taking the drug at some point and see if the mental improvement persists.
To everyone who doesn't have it, wear ear plugs at concerts, be careful when you remove the ear plugs, and use the max volume limiters on your phones. Enjoy your hearing while you have it.
Oh, exactly this. Haven't thought about mine in months, but as soon as I actively think about the subject, suddenly the high-pitch whine in my left ear is back and louder than ever.
I also experienced significant hearing loss around the same time. My hearing had always been absurdly good, but that changed over about a year. Now I can hear well enough to get by, but I really miss what I had. Protect your hearing!
They make a sensual pleasure less pleasurable, and they also protect against life-altering consequences.
I wish I took better care of my ears as damage is pretty much irreversible.
Street fests are the worst since you have a perfect combination of amateur sound engineers, outside sound shaping, and an amateur audience to boot. Sometimes I think bringing children to steet fests should be illegal if there's going to be that loud of music. I've seen some clock in at ~115dB! Ridiculous.
Gotta get better about the condom usage though
I could not get to sleep because the noise was so loud and intense.
It reminded me of those spy films where they torture someone playing loud heavy metalcore all day and night.
I had a X-ray, ultra-sound and two Consultants had a look.
Both said that there was nothing wrong with my ear. No ear wax, no damage, no issues at all.
They both mentioned that tense facial and neck muscles may be a cause.
As well as the constant ringing, there is a sound like a central eating system, thumping and groaning away, in both my ears too. I initially thought the thumping and groaning was the Mrs snoring.
I bought some earloops thinking my ears were too sensitive and I was somehow hearing noises from the houses down the road and the motorway traffic 3 miles away. to no avail, even with the earloops blocking all exterior noise, I still had the high pitched and low piched internal noises.
I found a way to reduce the noise.
I was laying in bed one night and I was relaxing my jaw when I noticed that if I opened my mouth and let my jaw hang loose all the noises stopped.
So over a month or so I tried to train my jaw to be less tense and more relaxed.
For me it worked.
it was my jaw.
I'm 69, so have a few less years years than your good self
I may not be able to fully recount all the factors but I believe my ears may have had some residual fluid after recovering from covid (my covid symptoms were entirely unpleasant and impacted me differently in many ways). Before my ears cleared up, I took a domestic flight where I actually got vertigo for a few 10s of seconds on ascent. My ENT believes my eardrum expanded to touch the inner ear.
The following day I went to a gun range and did skeet shooting for a couple of hours then shot really big guns and sniper rifles. The earplugs I brought myself were likely not adequate and taking them out and putting them in repeatedly in relatively cool weather likely didn't provide the best seal either.
That night or the next day I noticed lots of ringing in my ears and I started to become worried when it was still there even after a week. The worst was being in silent meeting rooms at work where it was most noticeable. It was extremely depressing and I nearly lost all hope.
I visited 2 separate ENTs and each just sent me re-take my yearly hearing test. They didn't really provide any comforting words other than to take the test and wear hearing protection, etc..
Before the hearing test (~2 weeks after the gun range and flights) I explained everything to the audiologist and he said "Lots of people have various degrees of tinnitus/ringing, just don't think about it. I have it and that's what I do. Don't let it bother you and live your life."
Interestingly enough, my audio test came back better than the previous 10 year results and since then I just don't think about it. If I do I can certainly hear it. My only personal takeaway is that the brain and body are very complex and have an arsenal of mechanisms to deal with trauma and that for this particular instance I've been very lucky.
I too got used to it, but I would really advice people to avoid flying sick if they can help it (or at least use some meds to unblock your ears while doing it).
- Cut stimulant use (coffee, energy drinks) and alcohol
- Drink plenty of water
- Check blood pressure
- Talk to a dentist and check if you grind teeth or suffer from jaw stiffness
- Supplement Magnesium (chelated/glycinate, 300mg/day)
I’m ignoring issues of the ear canal (wax, secretions) since you mentioned it.
Studies point to tinnitus being either caused by changes in blood supply on the inner ear, of neurological origin or trauma. These are all measures I took and greatly improved my case (and when I neglect one of those, it comes back).
I do very slightly grind my teeth in my sleep, but in this particular case the problem is basically solved (at least at the dental level) because I have mild sleep apnea so I sleep with a plastic mouthpiece every night anyway.
I'll look into the magnesium supplements.
Magnesium plays a part on vasodilation regulation as well, and many people are silently deficient on it. It’s hard to detect deficiency w/ blood samples, because the body works hard to keep blood concentration stable. You will know you do if you get muscle cramps or twitches.
At the time my life had changed dramatically. My parents split. Moved to an area adjacent to government housing projects, through which I had to travel everyday to school, and I was, by virtue of unfortunately being wrong color, beaten daily by gangs of hooligans. I ended up sneaking through a slightly wooded area like a South American guerilla until they caught me there.
I couldn't handle it as I was already a sensitive kid and, the parent I ended up with, the other having gone to jail, was compassionless due to their own horrific upbringing. So I had no way of coping which led to total breakdowns and anxiety attacks.
Tinnitus reared it's ugly head soon after which further exacerbated the anxiety.
But the correlation is all speculation on my part because my parent only took me to the doctor a year or so later after much complaining. And only for the tinnitus, not the crippling anxiety.
I saw a few specialists, had hearing tests, MRI and CT, and everything came back fine. Couldnt work it out so I gave up for a bit.
Later I went back to my GP and got another referral. This time the consultant asked the radiologist to focus on a specific area. He explained it can show up on a normal scan but unless they know what to look for it often gets missed.
That is when they found I have thinning of the bone over the inner ear called superior semicircular canal dehiscence SSCD.
I wear sleep earphones at night which have been life changing.
Sleeping with tinnitus can be very hard and increases the anxiety. At least it was for me. I found specific sleep earphones worked particularly well at reducing this.
i was taking it for unrelated nerve pain and was very surprised that my sense of smell and hearing also remarkably improved, to the point where i needed to reduce the long standing 'known' audio levels of all my various listening gadgets a few clicks. the ringing was a little worse for the first couple weeks, but then reduced a couple more weeks, then almost completely stopped 1 day.
from what i gather, high doses of the fat soluble form of vitamin b1 can repair nerves and is used as first line therapy in some countries for neuropathy, chronic pain and even alzheimers.
i'm sure it won't help everyone, i can't even find any solid research on tinnitus and benfotiamine, but putting this out in the ether since it is a cheap and relatively safe thing to try, i was completely surprised by this nice off-label side effect (it did help with my nerve pain as well). there is much more research based evidence on benfotiamine therapy for other nerve problems, and it follows that hearing and smell would also be affected, it's all nerves, good luck
edit * adding if you are taking high doses of benfotiamine, you should also be taking magnesium with it, i just took zma (zinc, magnesium and b6) at bedtime *
Why not use lipothiamine or occasionally sulbutiamine instead for this purpose?
As for ALA, I take the r- fraction form.
the cynic in me thinks the research around an un-patentable nutritional fix could only be funded in academia and there's much more serious nerve ailments that get the attention/dollars
I don't know the exact cause, but I started noticing it during a job-related burnout and a series of work-related events that significantly increased my stress levels.
It was so bad to the point I had to abruptly quit my job (FYI, freelancing without a safety net sucks).
My doctor gave me pills to help calm my brain and the noise, especially during the night. I also have hypersensitivity, so having a constant noise ringing was not ideal :/
Luckily my ENT doctor recommended that I do multiple things at the same time:
- tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT), listening to white noise ~4 hours a day
- going to a therapist
- daily meditation
- daily exercise
- reducing salt, chocolate, coffee, etc.
I started to see life a bit differently since then. Things that disrupt your life can happen so suddenly...
I'm still trying to find a job, but I lost a lot of confidence and developed a bit of a trauma since I don't want to experience burnout again :/
It will be easy once you start.
The white noise must be played below the level of the tinnitus, so one can hear both sounds simultaneously. Doing so, in theory, the brain learns to reclassify the tinnitus as an unimportant signal (noise).
It might not be worth it to you, it might be worth it to someone else.
I would still like to hear about this substitute that is both effective and can be used "all the time".
Tizanidine causes "dependence", too, by the way.
Funny you mention Tizanidine, because that is what I want to try as well for my MS-related muscle spasticity.
Alprazolam works, but I have been using it for years and it would be great to finally get off of them. It does not last long either, and longer acting benzos don't work for me for some reason. I tried diazepam, which was supposed to be just perfect, but it did not work at all. :(
In any case, hoping tizanidine will work for me, we will see.
Let me know if tizanidine works for your tinnitus though, my mom has been "suffering" from it for a long time now.
38, came out of nowhere few months ago, seen any kind of doctor, I hear this 24/7 whistle in my ear.
Being in silent rooms or trying to sleep is hard.
It was not until someone explained that they had tinnitus and told me their symptons that I suddenly realised that I too had tinnitus.
Since then it's become harder to ignore it but on the other hard, its nice to know that it's not normal and that others can truly hear nothing - something I do wish I could do: hear nothing. I did recently discovered that head under water helps to reduced the sound.
Acceptance has been my treatment for years, I hear it when there is mental downtime. So it does keep me busy (mentally) so that I don't hear it - ironically tinnitus motivates me to do stuff!
100%. I remember being rather young - maybe 5? - and listening to the deafening sound of ringing in my ears when laying in bed. Never knew that quiet was supposed to actually be quiet.
I wish I didn't have it, but I've literally never not had it, AFAIK.
Possibly unrelated: I can fall asleep within a minute of laying my head down, almost every single day. Built-in white(ish) noise machine?
It rarely bothers me (although it’s always there) but obviously there’s a cause and I’d like to find it. I have a suspicion it may be somehow related to neck anatomy and/or postural factors (it sometimes seems to worsen slightly with particular positions) in bed but beyond that I’m at a loss.
I would really like to experience total silence at some point, but that seems very unlikely.
I'm on 12kHz, vacuum cleaner level.
If you ever find something that works for you, please reply here @tombert, I'll do the same :)
I already posted another comment, but will mention here for GP that the ‘White Bursts’ noise generator on mynoise.net is where I’ve experience the strongest tinnitus reaction. I can audibly hear the tinnitus drop with every cycle, and after listening to it for a few minutes, my tinnitus is quieter for maybe a half hour, then it comes back later.
that said, prob nothing to do other than wait and hope for the best really
when i had tinnitus following an ear infection years ago, it lasted several months and gradually went away but I always had at least white noise around me and some people say "notch" therapy can be helpful...
At one point it was so loud, it would drown out the sound of a dryer when right next to it.
This was party from impacted earwax but still pretty bad after cleaning.
Hearing test showed substantial high frequency loss (well above speech frequencies)
A few suggestions:
1) Listening to light music helped me stop focusing on it.
2) Tried Taurine. Unsure if it helped, didn’t hurt. Make sure you aren’t low on Vitamin D. That alone causes enough other problems too.
3) Make sure you don’t clench teeth or have dental issues. I think that might be able to aggravate the nerves.
It never went fully away but I’m no longer overtly conscious, just faint in the background. Always aware of light pressure/muffled feeling in affected ear. Changes were slow and gradual but did happen. Doesn’t bother me much anymore. Do miss the “sound of silence” but light background music while working is enjoyable .
My own tinnitus is 15khz which is annoyingly high. And I suspect the reason why tools like Tinnitus Neuromodulator don't help much in my case.
I like “tinnitusreliever610”. TBH, I haven’t found the notched noise to be any more relief than full spectrum white or pink noise.
Please consider a local noise generator. Static is incompressible so you're using quite a lot of data.
I went through MRI etc to no avail.
Then one day I felt something (extremely deep in my ear) just 'release', like a tube unblocking or pressure equalising. And the sound went away and (fingers crossed) hasn't come back since. This was after daily issues for 8-9 months solid.
Can you try something? Find a very quiet place, one where you do hear the tinnitus.
Move your jaw as far to left, and then to the right, and notice if the tinnitus stops, changes, or alters at all.
Next, get a firm hold of your earlobe of the tinnitus ear, and pull and hold it away and at various angles from your head; you can do this earlobe move separately or in combination with the jaw movements.
Do any positions improve the tinnitus?
In my experience, I barely notice it on a day-to-day basis.
What I have noticed is that it's worse/noticeable when after a night of drinking and if I'm tired/stressed.
First and foremost, ignore it. When you find yourself listening to it, distract yourself and immediately move on.
Secondly, add more white noise into your environment. The best approach I find is just opening a window or adding a little fan or water feature to your desk. White noise generators don’t work as well for me, but they can help in a pinch.
I believe that our modern day indoor environments are honestly just too unnaturally quiet anyway.
I’m not joking when I say that the only time I really get annoyed by my tinnitus is when the monthly “cure” for it gets posted on HN. ;-)
apparently the phenomenon is called residual inhibition. If only there was a way to make this work permanently...
Also works pretty great. If I need a few minutes of actual silence I use that. I think people using TENS and other therapies are basically stimulating the same nerves to treat it.
I think actually stimulating the parts of your hearing that match the tinnitus is what helps. That's why this white noise thing works. But, also, listening to music or watching movies with the Airpods Pro (after configuring) -- I assume -- does something similar.
Lots of people giving good feedback on it, though. What exactly is it about this site that works for other people?
Honestly, I never felt particularly negative about it.
I guess if you never know what true silence sounds like, you never know what you are missing.
I found a YouTube video of a "tinnitus demo" with the right sound and frequency. I could only start hearing it at about 80% volume. I gave my headphones to my partner and she said it was unbearable. I guess I'm used to my normal.
I slightly regret knowing about it, I seem to be paying more attention to it now.
It's a quieter version of the tinnitus you can personally get if you are close to a loud noise (don't do this intentionally, it is an indication that you've caused yourself some hearing damage).
I've never heard static, I think that honestly sounds closer to what might actually be termed a noise floor. I know what a noise floor sounds like, and I've never heard a noise floor just due to quiet conditions...
IDK, like I said, unfortunately science hasn't found a way to easily and temporarily swap ears.
My daughter has it, too. My wife doesn't, but my daughter has described it to me.
I haven't felt negative about it except for the time I visited an anechoic chamber exhibit at a local museum (COSI in Columbus, OH) in my early 40s. It really messed with my perception and the tinnitus was much louder than normal for days after. Even thinking about it makes me edgy.
I'm half convinced it's something like blood vessels too close to sound receptor thingies in my ear. Or something similar.
I had a hearing test done a few years ago and my hearing is actually slightly above average for my age.
It would be nice to not have it, but whatever.
I don't think my tinnitus is from hearing damage.
I've just downloaded this audio track with yt-dlp, placed it on an sdcard and I play it in a loop on a small speaker.
I have no affiliation with this macOS app, but I use it for the same reasons you do. It's paid, but worth it IMHO. It generates the noise on your own machine, and you can pick what kind of noise you want to hear: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/brown-noise-ambient-noise/id15....
https://treblehealth.com/tapping-technique-for-temporary-tin...
I had tinnitus for over 10 years. My tinnitus was not the usual ringing type, it was some sort of humming, low frequency noise. The frequency was not constant, it could vary. It could sometimes stop for 5-10 minutes, e.g. after a hot bath.
Went to see many specialists, tried everything, to no avail.
One day I started experiencing recurrent tension and light pain in my neck and shoulder blades, so I started doing some neck and shoulder blades stretches several times a day.
After a few weeks, the pain was gone, and I realised the tinnitus had stopped. This was maybe 2 years ago (I am still doing those exercises multiple times a day).
I have found doing the Alexander Technique helps me quite a bit with the tinnitus.
Almost certainly. My Dr feels mine created a weakness that enabled tinnitus to develop 4 decades later.
I was also driving an old car w/ heavy cabin noise and the timing fits. I recently moved into a different old car and will see if anything changes.
edit: The last time I tried to gauge my freq, I put it at about 1150Hz. Today I would say it's closer to 5300Hz. I guess ignoring it includes ignoring changes.
Tinnitus and anxiety are comorbid. It's healthy to just practice letting it be if you can.
This is me. I have a mental distance worked out. Posting in this thread will require a bit of recovery time.
However, I recently learned by best friend (lives distant now but we chat daily) has tinnitus to the point where it affects discerning speech - so it's up there. But it doesn't bother him at all to think and talk about it. He's never felt any distress from it.
I'd never heard anyone say that. I changed the topic because I didn't want to put his zen at risk.
I could not get to sleep because the noise was so loud and intense.
It reminded me of those spy films where they torture someone playing loud heavy metalcore all day and night.
I had a X-ray, ultra-sound and two Consultants had a look.
Both said that there was nothing wrong with my ear. No ear wax, no damage, no issues at all.
They both mentioned that tense facial and neck muscles may be a cause.
As well as the constant ringing, there is a sound like a central eating system, thumping and groaning away, in both my ears too. I initially thought the thumping and groaning was the Mrs snoring.
I bought some earloops thinking my ears were too sensitive and I was somehow hearing noises from the houses down the road and the motorway traffic 3 miles away. to no avail, even with the earloops blocking all exterior noise, I still had the high pitched and low piched internal noises.
I found a way to reduce the noise.
I was laying in bed one night and I was relaxing my jaw when I noticed that if I opened my mouth and let my jaw hang loose all the noises stopped.
So over a month or so I tried to train my jaw to be less tense and more relaxed.
For me it worked.
it was my jaw.
I was thinking that maybe I cough something during my travels so I went to see a few specialists but they found nothing.
What I understand now is that the cause is probably all the vipassana meditation I did and some psychedelics I experimented with during my travel which opened some filters I had in my mind blocking sensor noise. It's the most plausible explanation for me.
The noise was probably always there, or maybe it got louder when I become older, but I never noticed it until it became disturbing.
A decade later the noise is still there, all the time, but it's not an issue at all anymore. It's not louder than before, and I have no negative feelings associated with it. I made peace with it and I can now easily ignore it, or to be more accurate, I can live with it and it'll disappear on its own after a short time until I put my attention back to it (voluntary or not).
As I'm writing this in a quiet room it's very loud, but that's fine, it just sensor noise. Soon enough I'll stop hearing it if I don't focus on it.
I hope reading this can help. I wish I had someone back then telling me that it would turn out okay to just accept it after doing some medical checks.
Been there. After a few years of slow increase, mine suddenly cranked up to 11 (due to an infection, it turned out). There were a few rough weeks while I worked out counter & coping measures. I still need those measures from time to time.
measures:beltone app & speakers at the head of my bed.
A half doz (non-controlled) insomnia meds to rotate thru.
I discovered UK Great Railway Journeys vids;
they interfered with distress feedback loopsAnyone with tinnitus only in their right ear?
And yeah, I've had it since the early 90's and it mostly only bothers me now when someone brings it up. Thanks Hacker News!
First kid had colic and measured crying at close to 100db, basically two months exposure to a jackhammer… Always held on right side — maybe a coincidence…
Mine was ear wax. I went to an ENT doctor for an unrelated issue, he pulled a big plug of wax out of my ear, and my tinnitus (which was quite bad and had a very sudden onset) totally disappeared.
If you have it, go get a doctor to look in your ear before you give up and decide to try to live with it.
it's not too bad, only one ear and it comes and goes pretty quickly.
For me the COVID correlation is 100%, but I haven't found too much literature about it and wonder if anyone experienced it as well
The scans and hearing tests are not useless, they help rule out the nastier causes of tinnitus. Calling them useless and going straight for jaw therapy is potentially dangerous advice for some.
Sure, give it a try, but don't skip the rest of the diagnostic process.
I'm really paranoid about giving them tinnitus. I am just back from holiday with extended family, I mentioned to my brother that the white noise he is using with his kids is extremely loud, he's using a phone app. To the point my daughter moved rooms out of his kids room. Google ai agrees with me that hearing damage is definitely a risk. I mentioned this to him and it went down really badly. I'll not mention it again.
It's like trying to put out fire by lighting more fire, what am I missing?
The sound machine linked here was really helpful for me when I had some distressing tinnitus due to concerts several years ago. If I listened to this somewhat loudly for several minutes, I'd then get about 2-3 minutes of what felt like pure silence. And for a little while after that as the tinnitus came back, my brain interpreted it as a gentle white noise instead of a continuous high-frequency tone. Then it went back to the tone a little while later. So if I was having trouble sleeping due to hyperfocusing on the tone I'd first pop in some airpods and listen to this for a few mins.
Nowadays my tinnitus is much less bothersome. Probably a combination of objectively getting a little better, and me getting more acclimated to it. Plus I've been using good musician's ear plugs for all my concerts and raves since then which stopped it from getting worse.
I think I have always had it; I became more aware it was abnormal and unusual in my twenties when I realised that TV dramas use a similar high pitch sound to indicate someone who has had sudden hearing damage (after an explosion etc.) and then it really bothered me for a while because I was living in a very quiet area.
About six years ago now I was at a gig at a local venue when I experienced hearing loss due to a freakish bit of bass feedback. I was in a particular corner of the room and clearly experienced an overtone that almost nobody else heard at all, and at a volume nobody else experienced; pure bad luck. The sound made me run away automatically. I was thirty yards away before I even really comprehended that I was leaving.
I experienced considerable hearing loss — muffled, incomplete hearing — for several days. Nearly complete for the first day.
But when my tinnitus came back I realised I felt sure I was going to get my hearing back essentially entirely. It was curiously reassuring. I've never really been stressed by it since.
So I have what I expect to be lifelong tinnitus. But also earplugs now.
Such a lie. I started getting mild tinnitus at 20 from playing in rock bands. Then at 24 it got less mild from partying. Then at 27 it got worse, I don't know why.
The doctors at urgent care erroneously diagnosed the problem as dehydration as a result of my telling them I had played tennis earlier before the incident. They sent me home with instructions to drink lots of water. After waiting another 48 hours completely unable to hear or even stand up, I went back to the urgent care. This time, they diagnosed it as an ear infection and gave me antibiotics. Over the next two weeks, my balance slowly returned, but what little hearing I still had slowly deteriorated further. About a month after it started, I finally was referred to an audiologist that concluded that I was completely deaf in my left ear, possibly due to a viral infection, but there isn't any way to know for sure the cause. Had it been treated with steroids immediately, it might have saved my hearing.
I am now 40 years old and have lived with being single sided deaf for half my life. Initially I didn't think much of it. I've slowly realized it has had a profound impact on my personality and sense of identity. I am much less social due to the difficulty I have hearing in group settings. Conversations are frustrating because it takes so much effort to hear the other person properly. I am reluctant to tell people about my condition because I don't want to be seen as handicapped in any way. Usually by the time I do end up telling someone, they say they had already figured as much.
Tinnitus is a major daily issue as well. I can’t seem to understand how this website helps though.
One interesting effect is that I have developed a preference for sitting or walking on people's right hand side, especially with good friends or people I respect.
The most interesting effect is I have noticed how much people take for granted the ability to sense where sound is coming from. Early on in our relationship I would occasionally perform "magic tricks" where I know immediately where a sound is. She would ask: how did you know where it was?
This mirrors what turned out to be the onset of my pulsatile tinnitus – especially the "strange metallic echo". I remember sitting at my desk listening to the radio when I noticed it sounded like the radio's speakers were slightly out of sync with each other. I took my headphones off and listened, and my coworker's voice sounded metallic and robotic, almost exactly like a dalek from Doctor Who.
By the time I got to the doctor (same day), the metallic echo had passed but I had that fullness feeling in my ear that you describe and my doctor couldn't diagnose. Long story short, I'm not completely deaf but I have reduced hearing and permanent pulsatile tinnitus in my right ear.
I've had regular tinnitus since I was a kid, and I've thankfully been able to adjust to hearing the sound of my own heartbeat in my ear at all hours of the day without too much trouble. But when I describe what it's like to friends and family, I like to joke that it's like the heartbeat in Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-tale Heart.
> I am now 40 years old and have lived with being single sided deaf for half my life. Initially I didn't think much of it. I've slowly realized it has had a profound impact on my personality and sense of identity. I am much less social due to the difficulty I have hearing in group settings. Conversations are frustrating because it takes so much effort to hear the other person properly.
My reduced hearing has affected me more than I thought it did, and I've only come to realize it very recently. It's difficult for me to help my wife with her birding hobby because I'm always pointing in the wrong direction, for example. It also takes a lot of my patience not to get irritable when she's trying to talk to me while we're watching tv or listening to a book in the car, because I have a hard time tuning out things I can hear in my good ear and focusing on her with my bad ear.
Check out whooshers (dot com) or /r/pulsatiletinnitus for two supportive communities with some good advice.
If you're suffering from tinnitus, remember, at least you're not bald and 5'2" tall.
Stress can also cause us to subconsciously clench our jaws, which again can contribute.
Feeling stressed or fatigued certainly lowers my mental tolerance for annoying bullshit like tinnitus.
Neuromodulator certainly masks my tinnitus, but doesn’t reduce it. Sometimes I feel like it’s a little worse when I turn off the sound.
Mynoise.net is great though. The speech jammer is awesome in noisy places, and layering noise and thunderstorms helps me work. I’m a happy subscriber.
If you have tinnitus, it’s worth a try to massage or work on relaxing those areas.
Keep at it, I think you're on to something!
I've always thought of it as a sunburn; you don't get cancer the first time, but if one keeps going out in the sun, one's chances go up. If I keep going to shows without hearing protection, then I might not get tinnitus the first time, but eventually the damage will be done. It's why I wear hearing protection every time.
That all being said, this looks promising and I'm glad people are working in this space.
ronnier•3mo ago