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Ask HN: Anyone with headphone induced tinnitus?
Curious if you guys have had much experience with it?
Was blasting a 500 hz pure turn way to loud to get into flow state yesterday. Fearing I may have done permanent damage. Got myself to a doctor and to immediately get some steroids prescribed (seriously, do this if it ever happens to you. You've got a really short window to potentially reverse damage). But even still, does anyone have any stories or tips?
- anigbrowl 10y agoNo, but why the fuck would you blast a sine wave into your ears using headphones of all things? Please go and read up on your cochleae, this is the sonic equivalent of trying to blind yourself with a laser pointer. If your finding a flow state that elusive then try drugs, which are likely to be significantly safer in small quantities. Sine tones don't exist in nature any more than lasers do. Your anatomy is not equipped to safeguard you from such foolishness.
- l33tbro 10y agoAppreciate the calm and measured response. Well, given that this is becoming a pretty common cultural practice for study and programming flow, you may wish to chose a slightly less clumsy analogy than your laser pointer example. In fact, the very practice of using pure tones is actually recommended by medical researchers [1] and therapists [2] as relief for tinnitus. As for your sine wave argument, it seems likely to be fallacious. Sure, perfect sine waves are computationally generated and do not exist in nature (similar to the way geological straight lines also cannot). But close variations of sine waves do exist. Things like infrasound [3] generated from ocean waves and natural airflows, as well as tones like "The Hum" [4] pop to mind. In that case, please explain to me how a pure tone (highly compressed and full of AAC audio artifacts, mixed with surrounding natural walla at work) is a perfect sine wave? Secondly, please explain to me how this perfect (sic) sine wave would traumatise the cochlea? [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3634972/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3634972/ [2] http://www.tinnitusretrain.com/do-binaural-beats-cure-tinnitus/ http://www.tinnitusretrain.com/do-binaural-beats-cure-tinnit... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum
- anigbrowl 10y agoI do have very strong opinions on this because I despair at how little care people take of their hearing, and this is one of the few effective tactics I've found. Infrasound is hardly relevant given that we're evolved not to be able to hear it. I say that pure sine tones are bad (not perfect, please don't put words in my mouth or demand peer-review rigor from a n informal comment) because the anatomy of the cochlea is such that it behaves like an FFT, in that individual hair cells along it's length are keyed to specific frequences; When you play a relatively loud pure tone the cilia are stimulated at that individual frequency absent the sympathetic resonances that would normally occur in any naturally resonating cavity, undermining the chemical compensators and acoustic feedback mechanisms that normally protect to some degree against broader-spectrum excessive loudness. Tinnitus remedies remain highly speculative, but in any case treating the cure as a prophylactic is rarely a good idea. Yes, I gave you a hard time about it, but when you start out by saying you were 'blasting a 500 hz pure [tone] way too loud' Then I want to clearly discourage other readers from engaging in such cavalier behavior.
- PaulHoule 10y agoI got tinnitus from an Ozzy Osborne concert 20 years ago. Did not great it, but it got better. Today I think I hear better than my parents did at my age because I can hear the flyback transformer from an old TV and my parents could not. I live on a farm and we have disposable foam earmuffs. If you are mowing the lawn, going to a motorsports event or experiencing anything loud it is a good idea to use them.