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The Organ of the Universe: On Living with Tinnitus
- tbtowzhtow 9y agoSuicide up next folks. Tinnitus for decades hasn’t been fun.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoI hope you're kidding if you're talking about yourself. And if you're talking about others, no, suicide isn't the answer to decades of tinnitus, no matter how bad. If you mean yourself, don't. Get help if you need it (medical, counseling or both).
- davidzweig 9y agoYeah, tinnitus is rough. Hope you find a way forward.
- 3327 9y agoI suffer from it in my right ear, I discovered some foods exasperate it.
- michrassena 9y agoDo you cut the foods out of your diet and see an improvement? Which ones?
- TwoNineA 9y agoFor me it's alcohol.
- loceng 9y agoThat may be yeast related.
- evincarofautumn 9y agoAlcohol itself is also ototoxic, damaging the cochlear hair cells.
- blunte 9y agoSame, but I suspect it also has to do with changes in my heart rate due to lower quality blood at the time. Now that I wear an HR monitoring watch 24/7, I can easily spot nights I drank too much. Instead of 62 resting heart rate, I'll have 75-85. And if you think about it, normally when you have somewhat elevated heart rate, something active or interesting is going on (which provides distraction). But if you're just chilling, but intoxicated, you may be more likely to notice the increased blood pressure.
- Mz 9y agoSome people benefit from improving their magnesium status.
- Fezzik 9y agoTinnitus really is a horrible. I suffer from it and find the ringing detracts significantly from my cognitive abilities; my train of thought is often derailed because my brain is being goofy and fighting with the noise. I also had headphones glued to my ears all through middle-school and high-school, and even though I was careful with the volume I can only assume this is the culprit for my current auditory state. I wish I could make it go away.
- biggieshellz 9y agoHave you seen an audiologist and gotten your hearing checked? Often, if you have a hearing loss, if the missing frequencies are boosted by a hearing aid, the brain doesn't feel the need to fill in with the tinnitus (or at least as loudly).
- mmastrac 9y agoI think I've had it my whole life. It's that persistent high-pitched noise - almost like the imperceptably high sound old TVs used to make when they were turned on - when nothing else is making sound. If there's not a lot going on around me I can hear it quite well. I pretty much tune it out and it doesn't affect my quality of life. I sort of understand where the author is coming from. About ten years ago I ended up getting a ton of floaters in my eye and I struggled to accept them for a few months. In the end my brain tuned those out as well... at least most of the time. Most of this comes down to acceptance of something you can't change. It sucks. Nothing you can do about it.
- guhcampos 9y agoMine sounds exactly the same! I usually describe it as the sound of "brightness" and it does feel like something coming from inside my head, instead of from the outside word. As many people, I cope with mine by just ignoring it, most of the time. Sleeping has been hard though, since I can remember. Today I resort to some kind of color noise, such as a fan, air conditioner, or white noise apps (brown noise works best) or I just fall asleep (often with aid) watching TV or listening to a podcast. In the end, it's not really a practical problem, but a more philosophical one: it makes me sad to think I'll never be able to experience silence.
- Robelius 9y agoAbout 4 years ago I was listening to a podcast. One host was explaining to the other that he had tinnitus, and what that meant. I still remember how shocked I was when I heard the tinnitus host was in the minority of the population. Never knew what tinnitus was, but had assumed everyone heard a low buzzing noise. I always thought a low buzzing noise was what silence meant.
- lovemenot 9y agoYou might have been right all along. As far as I know, many people who don't have tinnitus are able to experience such auditory hallucinations in a sensory deprivation tank or similar. If that assumption is right then the difference between tinnitus sufferers and others is of degree: the level of background sensory input at which consciousness of such hallucinations might kick-in. Hence, tinnitus or not, lower auditory input tends to lead to greater likelihood of auditory hallucination.
- sswaner 9y agoMy tinnitus is a side effect of a double stapedectomy, replacing the stapes bone in my middle ear with a titanium replacement. I have no regrets, my hearing went from 20% of normal to 80% and allowing me to have mostly normal hearing. At first, the tinnitus was maddening, I would wonder if I would rather be deaf then have the constant ringing. Then I read an article about counseling and training as an effective method. I ended up training myself to not focus on it, now it isn’t an issue unless I think thoughts like “wow, I haven’t thought about my tinnitus in a long time”, am asked about it or see a mention of it. My ENT surgeon told me at my last checkup after surgery that the tinnitus is in the brain and that I would have ringing even if he removed the inner and middle ear. I sometimes wonder if the ringing is there if I am not thinking about it.
- codesnik 9y agothey replace this tiny bone with titanium now? unbelievable!
- HeavenBanned 9y agoGet a Marpac-Dohm and kiss your tinnitus goodbye.
- Flands 9y agoPlace the palms of your hands over your ears with fingers resting gently on the back of your head. Your middle fingers should point toward one another just above the base of your skull. Place your index fingers on top of you middle fingers and snap them (the index fingers) onto the skull making a loud, drumming noise. Repeat 40-50 times. Some people experience immediate relief with this method. Repeat several times a day for as long as necessary to reduce tinnitus.Dr. Jan Strydom, of A2Z of Health, Beauty and Fintess.org.
- figurehe4d 9y agoDo you know why this works? Because it jostles the sternocleidomastoid muscle which connects to the base of your skull behind your ears. If this technique cures/helps your tinnitus its because you probably sit/stand with bad posture. You can attain more lasting results by regularly stretching that muscle (massage/pull on it). This will not cure hearing-loss related tinnitus. Personal experience: this not only cured my tinnitus, but also cured a pattern of headaches I was experiencing as well as pain from my eyes that I thought was due to eye strain (from being latched onto a computer screen).
- koube 9y agoDo you have a source for this? It seems dubious that tapping a muscle 50 times would be an effective treatment for muscle strain.
- sevenfive 9y ago...isn't that sort of what a massage is?
- tome 9y agoAh, that's interesting. In the past I've had mild tinnitus only in my right ear, and I've had a sensitive sternocleidomastoid, but only the right one!
- blarg1 9y agoI use to suffer from bad head aches, pain from my eyes as well as a throbbing pain. Though it was just from withdrawal from having too much caffeine/sugar and then going cold turkey on them which I was doing in cycles.
- dpflan 9y agoThis is another article about tinnitus: > A Music Lover’s Guide to Tinnitus: https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2985 https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2985 It has great resources too: > Hearing Wellneaa for Musicians: http://journals.lww.com/thehearingjournal/Fulltext/2017/04000/Hearing_Wellness_for_Musicians.11.aspx http://journals.lww.com/thehearingjournal/Fulltext/2017/0400...? > American Tinnitus Association: https://www.ata.org/ https://www.ata.org/ (And warns about apps like this: Tinnitracks: http://www.tinnitracks.com/en http://www.tinnitracks.com/en) — UPDATE — It was also posted to HN; here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14618455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14618455
- erik_p 9y agowait, what's the ATA warning about tinnitracks? On the surface seems like a good idea to me... but couldn't find reference to it good or bad on the ATA site.
- dpflan 9y agoAh, should've grouped things better: the linked Resident Advisor article warns. "Notch therapy has been around for a while and, as with many tinnitus therapies, its efficacy is disputed. Various online resources can help you explore it for free, but it has also been repackaged and marketed as a (paid-for) app by the likes of Tinnitracks. It's worth treating their miracle-cure claims with scepticism." (The "Various online resources" is a link to: http://www.notchtherapy.com/ http://www.notchtherapy.com/)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- coldcode 9y agoI had it for a couple months earlier this year and it was terribly annoying. My ENT took all sorts of images (CAT, MRI) and in the end just gave me some strong antibiotics in the ear. After a few days I was like, what is wrong, and realized it was gone. Of course there are many reasons but in my case it was some oddball bacterium.
- davidzweig 9y agoCould you tell us a bit more? How did the doctor establish that bacteria was the problem? I started having problems after having something like a flu, with thick yellow stuff coming out of my eyes. The ear doctor I saw didn't have many ideas.
- biggieshellz 9y agoIf the ear doctor you saw couldn't diagnose the problem, you might want to look for an otologist or neurotologist. It's a more specialized version of an ENT that deals with problems of the inner ear.
- coldcode 9y agoThe ENT didn't really know what the issue was for sure, the antibiotics were more of a guess from what I could tell. Since it worked it was a good one.
- julian37 9y agoAn interesting collection of research papers on Tinnitus: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/4725/towards-an-understanding-of-tinnitus-heterogeneity https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/4725/towards-an-...
- CapTVK 9y agoA good way to deal with tinnitus is by trying to find sounds/background noise to tone it down or drown it out (and by drowning out I mean not loud, more like a gentle distraction). This can be anything from the sound of the rain, a shower, car with windscreen wipers on, the tumbling and rumbling of a dryer, a train, the winds, birds chirping, waves etc.. There are plenty of white noise generator apps available, just experiment and if you find something that seems to help set a timer. It will help getting to sleep. Rest is so important.
- biggieshellz 9y agoNote that if you're trying to habituate to the tinnitus, they recommend that you keep the masking noise just below the volume of the tinnitus. That way, your brain learns to ignore the noise in a way that it wouldn't if it were masked out entirely.
- keitmo 9y agoI developed tinnitus in 2009, a neurological "gift" from a case of swine flu. (The other gift was chronic paroxysmal hemicrania, a nightmarish migraine-like condition that threatened to destroy my life until I got it under control with medication.) The tinnitus was exacerbated a few years later after a freak accident while inflating a mountain bike tire. The tire exploded off the rim, more-or-less directly into my right ear. I'm now partially deaf on that side, but of course I hear the tinnitus load & clear.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dvtv75 9y agoMine was a "gift" from my mother's physically abusive boyfriend, who would haul me around by my ears when I was five or six. I have three high pitched tones in my right ear, two in my left. If you're familiar with the high pitched squeal of a CRT television, even the lowest of my tones is far, far higher pitched than that. Now that I'm in my 40s, it's probably well outside my actual hearing range.
- Nursie 9y agoThe first rule of tinnitus club is... don't talk about tinnitus. Because then you remember you have it and start hearing it again. Had it about a decade now, I can ignore it most of the time.
- 0xfaded 9y agoI hate this. I always thought that if I had some ailment I would research everything about it and try fix it. I still do that with tinnitus, but when I do I'll hear it.
- Nursie 9y agoYeah it sucks. I went through a few emotional states on my journey to 'meh'. One of the phases was a sort of desperation (there has to be a way to fix it! has to be!) and I did a lot of reading, went so far as to do stuff like notching my music collection... But in the end all that actually helps has been acceptance with an undercurrent of mild annoyance.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- empath75 9y agoI have intermittent tinnitus from djing but I barely notice it 90% of the time, even when it’s quiet. Every once in a while something will trigger it and it’ll be overwhelming and I’ll have to find something to listen to to drown it out.
- jpindar 9y agoMy tinnitus is usually not bad enough to be bothersome, but when it gets painful, I listen to https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/neuromodulationTonesGenerator.php https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/neuromodulationTonesGenera... That's not just noise, it does... something... that provides instant relief. That site also has a great variety of background sounds which you can adjust and combine in myriad ways.
- didgeoridoo 9y agoHoly. Crap. I just listened to that for 5 minutes and my tinnitus (which was pretty bad today) just vaporized. I feel like my jaw has relaxed for the first time in weeks. How did I not know about this??
- jpindar 9y agoWeird, huh? The sounds are similar to tinnitus in frequency, but since they vary, your brain hears them as musical rather than noise... I guess.
- jpindar 9y agoWhich doesn't explain why the relief persists after you stop the sound. As an electrical engineer, it's as if tinnitus is the audio processing part of your brain being phase locked on one audio frequency and these external signals make it lose the lock.
- burnte 9y agoAfter reading your comment, I loaded that up and played it for several minutes. I've never heard ACTUAL silence before. I have tinnitus from a couple of bad concussions when I was a kid, and I've always had at least a quiet tone in my ear. This is weird!
- certifiedloud 9y agoWow thanks. I had no idea how much my tinnitus bothered me until I listened to that and felt the relief. It felt like water was being drained from my ears!
- blunte 9y agoUltra low frequencies are my problem. When it is quiet (at night), if there is anything generating low frequency waves anywhere around, I may hear it. It feels like an incredibly subtle repeating gentle puff of air entering the ear (which makes sense, given that it's a pressure wave). And unfortunately, one ear is more sensitive to it than the other, which gives me a feeling of uneven pressure from one side of my head to the other. There is no cure for this, as far as I know, because it is an external sound. And it's nearly impossible to identify the source for many reasons (difficulty in detecting/recording, ease of transmission through solid objects (such as the ground), and long waves which can carry very far). It just takes a little ambient noise to mask it. The sound isn't painful, per se, because it's very low amplitude. But when there is nothing else to distract, it feels like having your head inside a washing machine. Sources can include large engines (locomotive, truck, ship, whatever.), heavy equipment (particularly at factories), and my favorite - wind over a mountain ridge. The last one can carry for miles!
- IAmGraydon 9y agoWhat you're describing is spasming of the tensor tempani muscle.
- blunte 9y agoWhat I'm describing is very location dependent, just as sound waves will be louder depending on your proximity to their half or full wavelength. I don't doubt there can be internal explanations for some sounds, but what I experience is often dependent on location within a few feet, with some spots being much louder than others. Also, I'm not always the only person who hears it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum
- davidzweig 9y agoI get that a bit late at night, I think from the noise of the fridge compressor motor that reverberates against the wall. If I put in an earplug it stops.
- khaledh 9y agoI've had mine for 11 years now. It started out mild and got much worse over the first year or two. It has since plateaued to high-pitched noise. I learned to tune it out most of the time, but occasionally I'd get those sudden extreme attacks that last for several seconds before subsiding to the normal level. Thankfully I've trained myself to cope with it, which as the article author mentions our brains are good at doing. I've been living mostly a normal life, but occasionally I get reminded of it if it's too quiet, or when reading an article like this.
- osrec 9y agoI have a theory that everyone experiences some form of tinnitus, but only some are bothered by it. It's like when you start thinking too deeply about how your intangible mind controls your body, it can be rather suffocating, as there is no escape from the unanswered sense of emptiness that thought can generate. Similarly with tinnitus, once you start focusing on it too much, it feels like like something you can't escape from. I've helped a few of my friends with tinnitus by simply helping them focus on other things (especially when alone).
- WaxProlix 9y agoObjectively not true, because people go from not having the condition to having it over a period of time. Unless you're contending that they always had it but went from not experiencing it to experiencing it after an especially loud concert or something like that?
- osrec 9y agoYes sort of. Basically I think people become hyper aware of it, then the hyper awareness may subside and perhaps come back later.
- Dunedan 9y agoAs tinnitus can be measured using hearing tests I think we have a pretty good understanding that it's not a universal condition.
- biggieshellz 9y agoThat's how Tinnitus Retraining Therapy works, but there's also a physical component that makes it more likely. Researchers have hypothesized that if you have sharp notches in your hearing thresholds at certain frequencies, your brain is more likely to try to fill in with tinnitus than if you had a flatter loss across the spectrum. As the article states, this is still an active research area -- we don't really have a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms that create tinnitus yet.
- tylerjwilk00 9y agoThere is a Visual version of tinnitus that goes by the name Visual Snow[1]. I developed both at the same time. The visual snow was maddening and tinnitus is unpleasant. There is apparently a link between the two and seems both are mostly noise artifacts of the visual and auditory systems of the brain. It makes sense that these systems would have some innate noise in the signals. Eventually I was desensitized to the new baseline noise levels. Kinda like Exit signs at movie theaters, You don't notice until someone points it out. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_snow https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_snow
- sgt 9y agoThat makes floaters [1] seem like a piece of cake. I've had floaters for many years due to myopia. As a developer, I always seek out dark themes in IDE's and such because if I have a white background I see the little guys floating by. Most of my life I managed to ignore them, but a few years ago I became obsessed with the floaters and I saw them a lot more than usual because my mind was constantly looking for them. So take my advice; if you have floaters - do NOT try to think about them or actively seek them out. It's a dangerous path. It took me a couple of years to get back to where I am now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater
- interfixus 9y agoConstant dog-whistle in my right ear for the last ten years+. Perceived sound is constant, but effect ranges from insignificant basic condition to friving me up walls, and keeping me awake at night. Never really did the loud music stuff, and no headphones/earplugs, really. A grinning, idiot colleague once emptied a huge bucket of glass bottles into a container where the broke and shattered as I was standing right by. Felt my ear flattening, and that was the start of it.
- diyseguy 9y agoI've been treating my occasional tinnitus with a combination of neti pot rinsse with the valsalva maneuver. It's mostly gone since I started doing this every so often.
- toomanybeersies 9y agoI've had tinnitus for as long as I can remember. Most days I don't even notice it, it probably helps that I listen to music for 12 hours a day, but even sitting in a quiet area without music it's not intrusive unless I focus on it. Oddly enough though, it really flares up when I'm stressed, especially if it's emotional or relationship stress. I'm not sure why that is. It never really gets "bad" in that it causes me distress, but it gets very noticeable.
- orionblastar 9y agoWhen I was young I had many earaches, and they had to put in ear drops and a cotton ball to keep the medicine from coming out of my ears. I heard a noise I could not explain, it sounded like radio noise I said at the time. The doctor thought I said static but it was more like radio feedback. I had a hearing test, and I was told I had normal hearing. It comes and goes, and at times I can ignore it or it dies down for a while and starts up again. Doctors say it is not Tinnitus, I am not sure what it can be?
- dekhn 9y agoI have two things- a constant, quiet hissing noise that doesn't bother me (can only hear it when things are completely quiet). And another, which happens sporadically- it will feel like a rapid pressure change in my head followed by a high pitched noise that gradually decays. Annoying, but not critically so.
- GuardianCaveman 9y agoI have had tinnitus and it was pretty terrible the first year but I got used to it almost completely. Then I woke up one day with a new thing called diplacusis where I hear a tone on top of sound for certain frequencies. So my wife says hi how are you and I hear that plus a tone for each word. It sounds kind of like the radios in the xwings in Star Wars. I’ve been adjusting for 3 months but it’s very hard to habituate. Fortunately it has softened in that time. But it seems to be extremely rare associated with a sudden dip in one of the hearing ranges where the rest of hearing is mostly normal. Oh well...