7 ms·

I would urge anyone that suffers from tinnitus to get their hearing checked if they haven't already. Getting hearing aids has given me significant relief from

I would urge anyone that suffers from tinnitus to get their hearing checked if they haven't already. Getting hearing aids has given me significant relief from tinnitus and if my hearing aid battery dies the tinnitus comes back fairly quickly. It's as if my ear is trying to compensate for the lack of sound. Of course, there are multiple reasons for tinnitus to occur so your mileage may very, but it's absolutely worth checking out.

flamtap 7y ago
>It's as if my ear is trying to compensate for the lack of sound. As I understand it, this is exactly what tinnitus is. Your ear becomes insensitive to a certain frequency, so your brain "equalizes" it, if you will, and over compensates to the point that you're hearing something that's not there.
- falcolas 7y ago
  The brain can also confuse input from nearby muscles for missing sounds in some cases. My own tinnitus can get a lot worse if my upper back and shoulder muscles are tense.
  - ymolodtsov 7y ago
    Yes! Mine is connected with the jaw joint.
- ymolodtsov 7y ago
  There are multiple reasons for it, including nerve damage and effects from surrounding tissues and joints.
ekianjo 7y ago
Is tinnitus diagnosed as a chronic condition? If you are only susceptible to sporadic hiss/ringing would that be considered normal or pathological?
SkyPuncher 7y ago
> It's as if my ear is trying to compensate for the lack of sound. Holy crap. You just blew my mind. "Silence is deafening" makes more than just figurative sense. From a young age, I've always noticed a light ringing while in extremely quiet places. Not enough to bother me, but enough to notice my ears straining to hear sound.
- cevn 7y ago
  I hear it right now. Doesn't everyone?
  - dicknuckle 7y ago
    My office has plenty of hum and hiss, so no.
    - bdamm 7y ago
      This is exactly my problem as well. How would I actually be able to differentiate high pitches (which I hear constantly) from noisy electronics and power supplies? The times where I'm out in deep nature with utter quiet (e.g. no airplane flying overhead at 30,000 feet) is so rare that I couldn't say I'd achieved homeostasis with silence. So really I spend 99% of my life in near proximity (within 30') of some cheap electronics that could very well be the source of this constant high pitch background noise. Or it's me.
      - hluska 7y ago
        I have tinnitus and haven’t talked about this with other sufferers so this may just be me. But if I slowly plug and unplug my ears, the difference between tinnitus and all the background shit is obvious. The only way I can describe it is that the sound comes from a different place and when you change how your ear works, you can hear the differences between the sources. My hearing is awful so I really pray this anecdata is of no use to you.
      - falcolas 7y ago
        Ear plugs. If you can drop the surrounding noise by 35+db, you'll notice what's tinnitus and what's ambient noise. Funny story related to this question, one day in a conference room I thought my tinnitus was just particularly bad, until someone went and turned off some unused AV equipment. The pitch of the electronic noise was identical to my personal tinnitus (and different than someone else's - they commented that it wasn't the right pitch for them).
xtracto 7y ago
I have a google alert on "fx-322" from Frequency Therapeutics, which appears to be a drug injection that helps with hearing. It had a fast track designation from the FDA, and just initiated Phase 2a clinical studies. Somewhere I read that apparently they will also test its impact in Tinnitus.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
zzzeek 7y ago
how does a hearing aid correct for tinnitis? I have permanent though currently modest hearing damage and persistent tinnitis of several different sounds at the same time. it's clear I'm going to have a hearing aid in the coming years as my dad does also, even though unlike me, and he was not a drummer that stood next to speakers in clubs, but he doesn't have the tinnitus.
- mav3rick 7y ago
  It amplifies the ambient sound so it drowns the tinnitus more.

flamtap 7y ago

>It's as if my ear is trying to compensate for the lack of sound. As I understand it, this is exactly what tinnitus is. Your ear becomes insensitive to a certain frequency, so your brain "equalizes" it, if you will, and over compensates to the point that you're hearing something that's not there.

falcolas 7y ago
The brain can also confuse input from nearby muscles for missing sounds in some cases. My own tinnitus can get a lot worse if my upper back and shoulder muscles are tense.
- ymolodtsov 7y ago
  Yes! Mine is connected with the jaw joint.
ymolodtsov 7y ago
There are multiple reasons for it, including nerve damage and effects from surrounding tissues and joints.

ekianjo 7y ago

Is tinnitus diagnosed as a chronic condition? If you are only susceptible to sporadic hiss/ringing would that be considered normal or pathological?

SkyPuncher 7y ago

> It's as if my ear is trying to compensate for the lack of sound. Holy crap. You just blew my mind. "Silence is deafening" makes more than just figurative sense. From a young age, I've always noticed a light ringing while in extremely quiet places. Not enough to bother me, but enough to notice my ears straining to hear sound.

cevn 7y ago
I hear it right now. Doesn't everyone?
- dicknuckle 7y ago
  My office has plenty of hum and hiss, so no.
  - bdamm 7y ago
    This is exactly my problem as well. How would I actually be able to differentiate high pitches (which I hear constantly) from noisy electronics and power supplies? The times where I'm out in deep nature with utter quiet (e.g. no airplane flying overhead at 30,000 feet) is so rare that I couldn't say I'd achieved homeostasis with silence. So really I spend 99% of my life in near proximity (within 30') of some cheap electronics that could very well be the source of this constant high pitch background noise. Or it's me.
    - hluska 7y ago
      I have tinnitus and haven’t talked about this with other sufferers so this may just be me. But if I slowly plug and unplug my ears, the difference between tinnitus and all the background shit is obvious. The only way I can describe it is that the sound comes from a different place and when you change how your ear works, you can hear the differences between the sources. My hearing is awful so I really pray this anecdata is of no use to you.
    - falcolas 7y ago
      Ear plugs. If you can drop the surrounding noise by 35+db, you'll notice what's tinnitus and what's ambient noise. Funny story related to this question, one day in a conference room I thought my tinnitus was just particularly bad, until someone went and turned off some unused AV equipment. The pitch of the electronic noise was identical to my personal tinnitus (and different than someone else's - they commented that it wasn't the right pitch for them).

xtracto 7y ago

I have a google alert on "fx-322" from Frequency Therapeutics, which appears to be a drug injection that helps with hearing. It had a fast track designation from the FDA, and just initiated Phase 2a clinical studies. Somewhere I read that apparently they will also test its impact in Tinnitus.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

zzzeek 7y ago

how does a hearing aid correct for tinnitis? I have permanent though currently modest hearing damage and persistent tinnitis of several different sounds at the same time. it's clear I'm going to have a hearing aid in the coming years as my dad does also, even though unlike me, and he was not a drummer that stood next to speakers in clubs, but he doesn't have the tinnitus.

mav3rick 7y ago
It amplifies the ambient sound so it drowns the tinnitus more.