alt Hacker NewsI made tinnitus my friend, then it disappeared [video]
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It's almost certainly my own damn fault I have it, but after at least 35-40 years dealing with it,tinitus sure as hell isn't my friend.
Mine is high pitched, and varries in intensity but has gotten worse lately. Sometimes it makes jus existing down right hard, but usually it's only moderately annoying and I can mostly ignore it.
I've tried an assortment of sound based methods to mask it or train my brain to tune it out, but nothing has worked more than fleetingly.
The only thing that reliably gives me a break is if I can really focus on something. Music (passive or active), cooking, and programming are the most reliable, but sometimes reading, gaming, or good conversation works. Usually, though, everything is done with a constant backing track of flyback transformer whine.
Wear hearing protection, kids, or you may well live to regret it!
I really, really notice mine when meditating. You’re in a quiet room. You pause to listen to the sounds around you. You most loudly hear “eeeeeeeeeeee”.
For myself, I noticed that observing it cheerfully, like “oh, hey, little whining sound!” makes it disappear into the background and I stop noticing it.
I have had occasional tinnitus, and once it lasted for a few months and then went away. Sometimes it appears suddenly, and I've taken vitamin B12 and magnesium and it goes away in a few hours. Vitamin D might also help according to some studies, but in my case I think it might make it worse. Not sure if placebo or not.
of course even reading a thread on tinnitus makes mine worse. The mere fact of paying attention to it makes it worse, so I have a hard time seeing how a drug is going to help much. I do wish there was something.
Ostensibly mine is from high frequency hearing loss, which I absolutely have, but I now wear hearing aids and it has no measurable impact from my point of view.
I take comfort in that I can go long periods of time without noticing it, and I know that even though I'm focused on it now and it's loud, it will slowly drift to the background and below conscious notice before too long.
I certainly don't befriend it, but I when I notice it, I acknowledge that I notice it and move on with whatever I'm doing. Eventually I'll notice again, days or weeks later and realize I hadn't noticed it at all in the intervening time. So I just relax and move on.
I've had tinnitus for 25+ years after neglecting an ear infection while I was working overtime.
It's never disappeared, but the "rain on a tent" sounds from mynoise.net, fan noise, and having a Twitch stream on in the background masks it enough that it's not bothersome during the day.
"Befriending" it though? Naah, I don't think so.
This page has so many dang scripts and the iframe doesn't do it any favors. I've allowed everything and it still doesn't load. There are far too few specialists that work on tinnitus and so many dental and ENT specialists choose to not take it seriously enough.
I have high pitched 7k hz bi-lateral ringing, 24x7. I've had it my whole life. I am convinced part of it is due to being born very premature (I was 1 lb 11 1/2 ounces). I believe it may be cervical and/or neurological (vascular, specifically).
It's so frustrating because nothing has happened. Masking only does so much. Sitting around reading a book, or trying to sleep is almost impossible.
I've been wanting to make a documentary style video on this diagnosis/issue, because a more people suffer like this than people realize. One medical professional that was helping me passed away a few years ago and that still eats away at me, because he really cared that he wasn't able to help me and it ate away at him. I still miss him.
I had a strong feeling that I was developing tinnitus after my my usage of Apple's airpods[1] for meetings, video calls (personal and Official) and such, especially after years of Work From Home. I used to get puss from my ears, and sometimes that tweet/humming sound after a long day's use.
Later I switched to Bone Conduction headphones. I felt like BC Headphones has improved my condition a lot. No ear pain or puss or the humming noise. I hope it stays that way!
There's a book that briefly mentions the same effect on cluster headaches. They are not the main topic, but in the foreword author tells a story about having them as the reason he started the the journey. "The Presence Process", Michael Brown.
I don't even know why I have tinnitus. It's not end of the world bad tinnitus, but sometimes does get a little annoying. It is louder in the evenings/nights than in the mornings. I have it since primary school 4th grade or so, when I realized I have it, because an old teacher described her own tinnitus. But as far as I can remember there was no very loud sound event before that causing the tinnitus. Maybe it comes from bad posture or so, already in primary school. Too heavy school bag with too many books? Who knows. Have had it ever since. Most effective masking method for me is sound of rain whitenoise like that rainymood website.
I have it after I shot an indoor USPSA (IPSC) match right after a major ear infection. I always wear double ear plugs and muffs. The ENT I saw said he thought it was the infection that did it not the shooting. My hearing test came back very good despite the ringing. It’s always there, especially when it’s dead silent but after about four years, I don’t think about it anymore most of the time. I always wear shooting grade earmuffs even when doing yardwork with a lawnmower and the weedeater, I baby my hearing the best I can. It is a good reminder that we only get it once.
there is precedent for this, you don't really feel your heart beating or hear your blood rushing most of the time. the brain learns which signals aren't important to you.
tinnitus also happens to be a very predictable signal, so the key is to convince your brain that it's noise to be filtered out. if you focus on it you will convince your brain of the opposite.
My dad has it really bad because he worked in a nightclub in his twenties. He would say it's like a jumbojet idling its engines nearby, all the time. It's thanks to him that I started taking ear protection seriously.
Yeah, that's nice and all, but people suffering from tinnitus will tend to get downright angry when you tell them: "Just change your attitude to it." There's nobody with tinnitus who hasn't heard it 100x already. And it's not that easy.
It's unfortunate and surprising that there's still no effective drug, though lidocaine does, in fact, work. (Very temporarily, sadly.)
And time does help, at least sometimes. Over the past ten years, my tinnitus has gone from a 5/10 (highly annoying and noticeable above ambient noise, but not debilitating in any respect,) to something like a 1/10 (I don't even hear it unless I'm in an extremely quiet room and trying to sleep).
...But it sure ain't my friend, and never will be. It's hard to interpret it as anything but an annoying side-effect of self-inflicted nerve damage.
It took a while but this worked for me (no gimmicks either)
For people looking for treatment for long-term tinnitus, notched sound therapy has been statistically shown to help by reducing brain activity in relation to the perceived tinnitus frequencies (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8832119/). In other words, it doesn't go away, but it becomes less "important" to the auditory centers.
There are various professionally provided therapies of this style, but there are also simple self-therapy apps that find the perceived frequencies and then play white noise or a music library with the sound adjusted to produce the notched effect in that small frequency window. For example: https://audionotch.com/ https://www.tinnitusnotch.com/ https://www.tinnaway.com/
If you do not already use MyNoise to help you focus at work, then, like, what are you even doing? Sometimes I'll listen to music of various kinds if my work isn't too deep, but whenever I need to concentrate deeply on a problem, MyNoise will have the perfect noise blocker. Go explore the site. It's a lovely little corner of the "classic" internet: no ads, no shenanigans, just this one dude making a technical masterpiece that you can enjoy.
People say hearing loss is permanent, that may be true and I thought tinnitus was that, but its a separate correlated thing that doesnt have to be permanent
Ever since I got better earplugs and kept them on my keyring for more routine use, the symptoms have dissipated over time
Not going to name a brand since aficionados all have opinions about their deficiencies in favor of another brand thats equally open to debate
But I’m glad my tinnitus symptoms haven't seemed to be permanent
I haven't had ringing after music festivals in years now, and I can hear people again in loud environments
I've had tinnitus for years. At best it's usually isolated to my left ear and sounds like crickets. At worst it sounds like a choir of crickets in a large cathedral.
Funnily enough I only just remembered it because of this post and yes the crickets are still there. Thanks for that OP.
The post beneath this one is titled:
How Golden Is Silence, Actually?
Over the years I have seen a few threads on tinnitus. I have it very mildly and doesn’t bother me much. On the other hand I have had “floaters” in my eyes since I was a teenager (probably just when I noticed them). Until I saw a doc I thought I was going blind but apparently they run in my family. They are like visual tinnitus and my god do they drive me crazy. I find wearing sunglasses helps me ignore them but they can be brutal. I am a big skier and in flat light they drive me bonkers. Not sure I have seen these discussed here but maybe I missed it.