I have mild tinnitus and the best advice I've ever read on the internet for it is: Stop reading. Don't look up information about tinnitus. Don't think about it. If you happen to notice it, try to distract yourself immediately. There maybe legitimate hearing damage but for the psychological aspect, the more you think about it the worse it becomes. I think I saw a quora answer somewhere where the doctor said "Nobody complains about tinnitus while playing Playstation". And it's very true. Until this post just now, I hadn't thought about it in weeks (months?).
This! Said it before here but also consider than right next to each ear drum is a huge artery. When you run you might hear your heart beating in your ears, but generally we totally tune it out. But it is always there.
Once I realised that I could also tune out tinnitus, I did just that - but a big part of that was just not thinking about it/dwelling on it.
Been nearly 20 years now and tinnitus rarely troubles me, in the way it used to really upset and stress me.
Decades ago I read about NASA's silent room, with the big wood spikes on the walls. All you can hear is your heartbeat and this high pitched whine. NASA figured out the high pitched whine was the nervous system (like, your brain).
I've got some mild tinnitus. I always wonder if it's my brain listening to itself. That little recursive loop is enough to distract me, even if it's not true.
Or further, if you do read stuff about it and start thinking about it, don't sweat it.
You'll eventually stop thinking about it, and life will go on.
When I first started dealing with tinnitus, it sucked. Until I realized it didn't.
Would I rather not have it? Sure. But life is not near as bad as I thought it would be at first, and I'm perfectly fine several years after it started.
"Don't sweat it" is the most important thing, I've found, especially with tinnitus.
As with a number of things, I've found I can actually move the needle when I give myself grace to fail, as long as I can genuinely try again and resolve to do better. A recent example being stopping telling myself I'm tired in the morning. Such a bad habit that self perpetuated. I was always feeling tired, in part, because I was telling myself I was tired.
Chewing fingernails on the other hand, damn... that hasn't worked so far because I give myself grace, but never really resolve to do better. Someday I'll figure that out.
When I first started experiencing tinnitus, it was a nightmare. I'm a naturally anxious, catastrophizing person. All the reading I did about it made it so, so much worse, both in terms of perceived severity of symptoms and psychological impact. It had a profound effect on my life. I genuinely had intrusive, obsessive "I'll never be happy again" type thoughts.
A few years later, it has basically zero impact on my life. I am not aware of it 99.9% of the time, and when I am aware of it, I don't go down the same psychological rabbit holes, and I quickly and reliably move out of awareness of it.
Obviously, everyone's experiences and particular symptoms are different. But I think it's really, really important to spread the message that it really can be a mild, almost inconsequential condition, for many people - even anxious, dare-I-say neurotic people.
There was no single silver-bullet treatment path for me, but a combination of very normal, mundane things like therapy, relaxation (massage, hot baths, exercise) and limited use of safe levels of white noise helped me. Perhaps the biggest thing was shrinking my time horizon from "how can I live the rest of my life like this?" to "how can I enjoy today as best as I can?"
The internet is full of horror stories from people, often written during their darkest moments, about how awful it can be. I could easily have written a hopeless, dark, scary account of my symptoms when I was at my lowest points.
Reading such accounts is of absolutely no utility to anyone. If anyone is struggling with this condition, I highly advise you to avoid reading such material at all costs. Try to maintain an awareness of the millions upon millions of people for whom tinnitus is a mild, transitory condition they almost never think about (and, as a consequence, never write about their experiences on the internet)
Meditation helped me shift from resistance to acceptance. When it's quiet and still in the room and I hear The Whine, I greet it. "Hi there, little Eeeeeee!" For me, that demotes it to an innocuous background sensation no worse, or even different, than realizing that oh, my foot is pushing against the floor. Fighting it is futile. Accepting it let me stop caring about it.
Of course I don't claim that's the universal fix for everyone. It sure helped me.
I have a very mild intermittent tinnitus and I found this link (which I found on HN at some point), which definitely gave an instant (albeit temporary) relief:
I also had some other people give feedback that it helped them, so doing a little bit of cheat replying under the top post, in a hope it is useful for some. (I have absolutely no relationship with the target of the link, and I saw there were several paid apps that basically used the same algorithm)
A little anecdata for myself: I have had a mildly higher blood pressure and pushing it down to accepted limits by diet and ~daily 6km running seems to have reduced the incidence - but this is just a piece of personal made data, so FWIW.
I have mild tinnitus in one ear, and also mild/moderate hearing loss in the same ear. The way my ENT explained it, it's like the nervous system trying to compensate for lack of stiumlation. I've noticed when I wear my hearing aid, I do not notice the ringing very much. I would encourage anybody with tinnitus to get their hearing checked because you might benefit from a hearing aid.
Mercifully my tinnitus only happens when I have eustachian tube congestion. I have elaborate jaw exercises that open things up enough to stop it, and for a while before and then after I moved I had other daily rituals to keep my sinuses clear (I'll spare you the more medical options but it included daily mucinex, spicy food and hot tea to open up the sinuses and keep them open).
Eventually my body got used to the local pollen, thank god. I haven't needed chemicals or lavage for months.
Got mild tinnitus in 2016 after an ear infection, and for about 1 year I was really bummed out about it. Then I guess I learnt to ignore it and sort of "forgot" about it. Now if I am reminded about it (thank you :) ), I can 'concentrate' on it and realise it's still there in some capacity, but otherwise I go on about my day no problem and don't think about it.
Is this true for other things? I have started getting motion sick from some video games and noticed that it becomes worse if I am thinking/worrying about it.
Last bad sickness hit was from Sable and Anti Chamber. There are few other indie games that effect me similarly. I thought it's lack of textures or crosshair in indie games, or may be it's the camera movement or both, not sure. But now, when playing first person games, i find myself worrying if it will make me sick. More I think, more I feel it. Yesterday I felt sick after playing Alien Isolation for the first time. It had textures, a crosshair, but camera was janky which made me worried and more I thought about it, worse it got and I end up deleting the game.
You may have tried this already, but plain old Dramamine completely prevents screen-related motion sickness for me (as long as I give it 20-30 minutes to kick in). Without it I get queasy from VR in like five minutes.
Also, ironically, I just played Alien Isolation, and the camera drove me crazy at first but stopped being a problem altogether after a few hours of gameplay.
Supported by my experience too. My tinnitus is very real, but when I discovered just how much of a psychological component was there, it became more manageable. Little by little I thought I was losing my hearing until I had it checked—it was perfect. The audiologist helped me understand that my constant "tuning in" to the tinnitus was creating the perception that my hearing was being harmed by loud noises and leaving a high-frequency sound in its place. Which is there, but when ignored, it largely disappears.
I've got a strong pulsatile tinnitus¹, which means I can hear a strong whooshing sound (like wind) matched to the rhythm of my heartbeat. It's in my right ear and lasts all day, all night, day in and day out for the last three or four years. When I tell people about it, I like to compare it to the Edgar Allan Poe story "The Tell-Tale Heart," where the narrator hears the heartbeat of a person he murdered coming from beneath the floorboards, and it grows louder and louder. Then I laugh it off and say "at least I'm not that crazy!"
Jokes aside, my tinnitus used to bother me horribly. It used to be all I could focus on, not just because it's loud and distracting at times, but because it triggered a severe case of health anxiety². I went through my regular GP, who referred me to an otolaryngologist and audiologist; that person found nothing physically wrong with my ear (which is usually the case for tinnitus) and referred me for an MRI; the MRI threw a big wrench in the works by discovering a brain tumor which turned out to be benign – a simple pituitary tumor which I just need to keep an eye on every few years. But again, still not the cause of the tinnitus.
Anyway, long story short, no cause was ever found for me suddenly developing this pulsatile tinnitus nearly overnight. It took a couple months to adapt to the new, constant sound in my ear, but I hardly notice it anymore unless I'm straining to hear something³. When I'm focusing on something like playing a video game, watching tv or listening to an audiobook, I don't notice the tinnitus at all. If the sound really starts to bug me, I've saved some brown noise tracks on YouTube that are particularly effective at drowning out the frequency of the whooshing sound.
¹ I also have the "regular", high-pitched whistling tinnitus, but I've had that most of my life.
² I've always had a health anxiety, learned behavior from my mother. This post makes me sound like a basket case, but I promise I'm a fully functional adult and these ailments I'm describing are trifles at the moment!
³ My wife and I have started to get into birding, so it does interfere a bit with my ability to hear some birds. More specifically, it interferes with my ability to locate where they are, I can't quite figure out if they're above me or behind me sometimes.
I'm very much the same. This kind of feels like a tree falling in the woods thing. I cannot really tell you my tinnitus actually goes away. Just that 99% of the time I'm not experiencing any evidence of it existing. Whether it's gone or I've just entirely tuned it out... who cares?
Right now I hear it because we're talking about it. In five minutes when I'm back to thinking about work, it will disappear again until the next time I randomly think about it.
Your brain is constantly sensing things that you don't perceive because it is quickly filtered out. My guess is that tinnitus, at least at low levels, works much the same. So the more you think about it, the more you focus on perceiving in, the less your brain will automatically filter out the mild sensation, thus the worse it gets.
The best advice I ever heard was just to massage the back of your head and neck. One relatively common cause of it is muscle tension back there and a quick massage often makes it go away like magic.
I don't think that works for everyone, but it's such a simple thing to try that anyone suffering should see if it works for them.
"Ganbare!" doesn't make for particularly good advocacy though. It's a condition that by itself isn't life threatening, can be linked to lifestyle choices, and mostly doesn't affect children, so no halo effect.
That's pretty much it. It's like the nose in your visual area. It's always there but normally you don't see it. Focus on everything else. Let it be there but focus on something.
Thanks. Thanks a lot. Now I see my nose. But I guess it’s like being conscious of breathing to where you feel like you have to manually inhale and exhale; it eventually goes back to automatic.
Sadly, I have found this to be true for many things. Not dismissing any real, physical aspect, but there's always a psychological aspect that comes into play as well.
In this thread (and probably others): People who either aren't aware or don't care that some people actually suffer from tinnitus. Occasionally i get a burst of it where it is physically painful, and i wince, tears come to my eyes. [0]
"just don't think about it, bro"
lol - they prescribe opiates for this condition.
noise machines are linked to making it worse. Humans may not be used to "silence" or whatever people are claiming in here, but we're also not used to broad-spectrum noise, either. Nature doesn't sound like a fan, or any other sort of "noise" except for, possibly, a few dBa around the floor of all noise due to echoes and reflections. Do you all ever go outside of the cities?
[0] i consider mine mild, i always know when i'm gunna suffer after a noise, my brain just knows the SPL that will trigger it in a few hours, so i generally try to be asleep before it kicks in. I do get the waves of tinnitus that i think most people say is "mild", it comes and goes; and yeah, that is easy to "ignore". I have friends with it that avoid certain foods and drinks (like red wine and whisky), where a bout of tinnitus escalates into a migraine headache, or worse, a cluster headache.
> Nobody complains about tinnitus while playing Playstation
As a long time sufferer, I want to support the general sentiment of this post, and I hope it helps someone who finds this that is currently suffering. My core message is that managing your psychological response to your condition matters immensely. I've noticed over the years that my perception of my tinnitus gets worse when my stress levels are high, even if for unrelated reasons. For example, reading about this post might remind me of it when I wasn't thinking about it for a long while. And suddenly this might bring back unpleasant feelings I have about it and it might suddenly feel very loud and overpowering when half an hour ago I wasn't even aware of it. But then an hour or two later I'll catch myself having a normal, quiet, unimpeded conversation with someone, which can feel like a contradiction.
Unmanaged, this kind of thing can turn into an unchecked, self reinforcing doom loop that's not always necessary or helpful. As with anxiety (another long term problem I manage), one unhelpful thing doctors might say when you first get tinnitus is that it doesn't go away - this is one of those technically true statements that patients can misinterpret. The reality is that just like anxiety, in many cases there's plenty reason for hope: it's often quite possible to improve quality of life that's mostly the same as it was before. It's still there if you check, and time to time you need to manage it, but also you might go days and weeks without even noticing, living a perfectly normal and happy life rather than a miserable existence.
On the other hand, leaving your primary care doctor with "yup, it's tinnitus" (my interpretation at the time: you're fucked for life, good luck) can lead to deep feelings of despair, panic, lack of sleep, over-sensitivity to noise of any kind even within normal thresholds, and many more terrible things. And "just ignore it, you'll be fine" is trite advice that can be difficult to achieve without help, like telling someone to ignore a siren in the next room. And it might be difficult for others to understand how debilitating it can be. But slowly and step by step it's possible to get there.
Sadly compassionate and competent care for tinnitus, even among audiology specialists, is few and far between and patients are left to suffer and / or try to figure stuff out on their own, which like a hypochondriac on webmd, can leave you feeling even worse. Luckily it is more possible to find tinnitus specific care these days and I encourage you to find a clinic that does this if you can - it's worth traveling for IMHO. There's a cocktail of potential causes that indicate different treaments so take this with a grain of salt but what worked for me was a combination of various things first to manage my current state and give me some relief during my initial crisis state (psychological help with how to deal with the reality of your condition, various things to help mask it and allow me to get normal sleep), clearing out wax (it's hilariously gross and also wild how it can affect your hearing perception and tinnitus in the most unexpected ways), common sense non-doomer information on the nature of the disease, what to do next and how to slowly transition to focusing on normal life ("playing playstation"): doing things with people, being outside, working out, focusing on your interests, as opposed to catastrophizing at home in bed. This feels like a non-cure cure but the results for me are night and day - if it's a placebo, I'll take it. I still have trouble with it time to time, but lead a normal happy life most days.
That aside, while we don't have the technology to make it fully go away yet, there have been a lot of recent changes and advances in our understanding of how it works which might lead to new therapies. Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor and might be butchering this so take this with a grain of salt: There seem to now be competing theories on the exact causes e.g. arguments about whether it's the the little hairs in the ear are sending no signal or incorrect signals. Also a recent understanding that you can have a seemingly unaffected hearing AND a normal audiogram but still have tinnitus is leading people to question if it's a different type of damage (different, larger hairs) that cause it which might mean different therapies. There's promising new treatments like Lenire which seem to be low risk and whose early study results seem to be much more promising than earlier versions of similar ideas (haven't tried it). I wouldn't be shocked if we eventually got much much more in our lifetimes.
TLDR: of course you'd rather not have it - please do be careful in protecting your hearing as much as possible. But if you're at the point where you do have it, just take a bit of solace maybe that it's not always a terrible prognosis and more improvement might be possible than you think. And the psychology and managing my emotional perception of it was very helpful for me. I hope this helps you, dear reader.
I can't comment on how mainstream of a scientific opinion his response is, but I know it certainly reframed the way I thought about my own tinnitus and inspired my original comment, including the Playstation bit. That was a lightbulb moment for me. "Wow, he's right, I NEVER think about tinnitus when I'm otherwise engaged mentally..."
It turned out to be caused by an improperly filled root canal; some root material remained inside the tooth, the flesh above and around the tooth was inflamed and this was applying pressure inside the skull and bringing tissues which would otherwise not have been into contact, or firmer contact.
I had the root canal re-made, and the tinnitus ended.
I also had tinnitus, as a result of a gum infection. It was a low grade infection for a while which made me not make much of a connection, but when I finally got antibiotics after the infection got way worse, the infection and the tinnitus cleared up within 3 days
I had moved to NYC, had a new dentist, in our general initial discussion about my teeth I described the history of the tooth and that I still had some sensation (not pain, just sensation) on pressing the flesh of the gum above the tooth.
He took an x-ray just of that tooth, and lo and behold, a big bloom on inflammation above and around the tooth.
So it was easy to find, if you looked.
Interestingly, the root canal re-drilling specialist who did the work told me he had over the many years a number of cases where patients had various issues such as dizzyness, where their issue went away when their improper root canals were re-made.
"...improperly filled root canal; some root material remained inside the tooth..."
UGG. I've been experiencing noticeable tinnitus this motorcycle season. It is to the point I'm now actively investigating. Recently I read neck pain or tension can cause tinnitus. I have a terrible mattress. I'm contemplating a move, so I've been holding off on replacing it. Trying exercise and stretching in the mean time.
I also had a root canal in November 2023. The tooth was sensitive and this only abated somewhat after about six months, which is coincidentally when I noticed the tinnitus.
I had very slight intermittent tinnitus that went away after being treated with an ALF appliance for TMJ and sleep apnea. I think my jaw joint was pressing on a nerve by my ear somehow. My bite was fixed by tilting it slightly back to horizontal to open up the joint and allow the teeth to erupt a bit until they met again.
As a former drummer who bashed way too many Chinas without proper ear protection, I had some scary tinnitus for quite a while. My advice;
- First make sure that the frequency is not dancing around. If it is then probably it is one of those things your brain making up then it is relatively easier to fool yourself back again. Check it when it happens https://audionotch.com/app/tune/ (disclaimer I am not related to website, just first google result).
- If it is constant then try to counter it with noise especially when trying to sleep. Just give yourself one of those nice YouTube colored-noise videos like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SHf6wmX5MU
- Avoid in-ears altogether, especially the bass-boost ones make sure that it does not fit airtight. More bass does not mean you pulsate your ear-canal with an airgun. If you want proper bass sound, invest in hi-fi stereo and listen to it in a good room.
- As mentioned, distract yourself. Even if it is chronic and actually has a pathological cause, the brain finds a way to cope with it, like the glasses on your nose not noticing the weight.
I have had tinnitus since I was about 20 and I am now 50. Its always been there until last year when I had a slight reprieve for about 10 seconds. I was sick, the sickest I had been for years. I came down a with bad flu and was on a cocktail of drugs... antibiotics, painkillers etc. So there I was, lying in bed staring out the window when suddenly everything went peaceful and very quite. I then realised that i could no longer hear the ringing in my ears. I was sick but not delirious. Try hard as I could, i couldn't hear the ringing in my ears for about 10 seconds when suddenly as quickly as the ringing appeared, it re-appeared again.
I got a tinnitus which severely impacted my life only to find out that it is connected to my posture and neck issues, something which wasn't mentioned almost anywhere until I found out by myself and the specifically searched for.
At glance, again I don't see mention about that in this article. Apple has accelerometers on AirPods Pro, I hope they incorporate head position into the study.
Nothing helped until I got serious into fixing my posture. Now it's almost cured.
What I did was to sit like they tell on these brochures when you purchase a computer or something.
I was using just my laptop, purchased a stand, a keyboard and a mouse and always use my computer sitting properly.
I’m also doing neck exercises to strengthen my neck muscles, this one was a doctors advice.
Lastly, I no longer sleep on stress inducing position. I used to do that a lot, would not be bothered to sleep on a small couch at friends house, now I don’t do that. If it no bed is available, would sleep on the floor.
the newer generations of AirPods absolutely trigger tinnitus for me. The gen 1 AirPod Pros are the best. I really have to crank the volume to trigger it. The Gen 2 AirPod Pros are the worst. Even low volumes rip apart my ears. Constant ringing all of the time. The USB-C Airpod Pros Gen 2 are ok at low to mid volumes, can't use them at high volumes what so ever though, they also let in a terrible amount of wind noise for outdoor activity which makes them unusable since turning up the volume to mute the wind noise causes tinnitus for me.
The AirPod Pro Max also get too loud, they are ok at low to mid volumes, high volumes = extreme tinnitus.
HomePods are similar, I can only have them on at volume levels I appreciate for short periods of time or I get tinnitus.
Compare this with my old sennheisers and audeze headphones, 0 tinnitus even at extreme volumes. Similar for my in ear Mochi headphones.
Or compare the HomePods to my Panasonic Surround Sound Speakers for my TV from 12 years ago that I still use, I can make the walls shake with no tinnitus. If I turn up my homepods to a volume close to that my ears will be ringing for hours or days after. It really bums me out, I wish I understood what is changing about the technology. Like are they going from Analog to Digital and is digital more harsh or something? I don't know.
"triggered" tinnitus from in-ear headphones or normal headphones is not necessarily from the sound level. Try to massage ears (pull earlobes forward, back, up down, and massage muscles around ears) head and jaw muscles. Stretch your neck muscles.
If you do it from time to time and tinnitus eases even a little, it might come from how the AirPods or headphones press your ear or head causing tensions.
I had really bad Tinnitus for years. Then I took a hearing test. Doc concluded that I needed a hearing aid. Then I got the Lyric hearing aid which sits deep inside your ear canal 24/7 and it immediately did not only fix my hearing but also my tinnitus.
Its an analoge but digitally programmable hearing aid which needs to be replaced every 3-4 months or so.
I think I suffer from this. My theory: There are muscles in the ear canal that try to modulate the sound and those muscles tense up and cause issues. I also have sore muscles that get a lot better from use of magnesium supplements and the tinnitus also get slightly better from this use. (It get a lot worse if I stop taking it)
The theory of my ENT is that the brain tries to make up noises when certain frequencies are not properly "used" because your hearing is bad. My hearing in the higher frequency spectrum is really bad – thus I hear high pitches sounds (tinnitus) when I am not wearing that hearing aid.
I think it is pretty common that tinnitus gets better with any kind of hearing aid however some devices & hearing loss combinations tend to be more successful
Readit News
AirPods Pro 2 adds 'clinical grade' hearing aid feature
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41491191
Once I realised that I could also tune out tinnitus, I did just that - but a big part of that was just not thinking about it/dwelling on it.
Been nearly 20 years now and tinnitus rarely troubles me, in the way it used to really upset and stress me.
I've got some mild tinnitus. I always wonder if it's my brain listening to itself. That little recursive loop is enough to distract me, even if it's not true.
(I grew up on 4chan and know better than to check back here for replies. Nice idea though!)
Deleted Comment
You'll eventually stop thinking about it, and life will go on.
When I first started dealing with tinnitus, it sucked. Until I realized it didn't.
Would I rather not have it? Sure. But life is not near as bad as I thought it would be at first, and I'm perfectly fine several years after it started.
As with a number of things, I've found I can actually move the needle when I give myself grace to fail, as long as I can genuinely try again and resolve to do better. A recent example being stopping telling myself I'm tired in the morning. Such a bad habit that self perpetuated. I was always feeling tired, in part, because I was telling myself I was tired.
Chewing fingernails on the other hand, damn... that hasn't worked so far because I give myself grace, but never really resolve to do better. Someday I'll figure that out.
A few years later, it has basically zero impact on my life. I am not aware of it 99.9% of the time, and when I am aware of it, I don't go down the same psychological rabbit holes, and I quickly and reliably move out of awareness of it.
Obviously, everyone's experiences and particular symptoms are different. But I think it's really, really important to spread the message that it really can be a mild, almost inconsequential condition, for many people - even anxious, dare-I-say neurotic people.
There was no single silver-bullet treatment path for me, but a combination of very normal, mundane things like therapy, relaxation (massage, hot baths, exercise) and limited use of safe levels of white noise helped me. Perhaps the biggest thing was shrinking my time horizon from "how can I live the rest of my life like this?" to "how can I enjoy today as best as I can?"
The internet is full of horror stories from people, often written during their darkest moments, about how awful it can be. I could easily have written a hopeless, dark, scary account of my symptoms when I was at my lowest points.
Reading such accounts is of absolutely no utility to anyone. If anyone is struggling with this condition, I highly advise you to avoid reading such material at all costs. Try to maintain an awareness of the millions upon millions of people for whom tinnitus is a mild, transitory condition they almost never think about (and, as a consequence, never write about their experiences on the internet)
Of course I don't claim that's the universal fix for everyone. It sure helped me.
Some days it's noticeable on its own, and on rare occasions, it's annoying.
I avoid alcohol, caffeine, heavy sodium, and (when possible) heavy stress, since I've heard those might be contributors.
I also try to avoid really loud noises (but that's impossible where I live in the city right now, and is an almost daily 'adventure').
https://generalfuzz.net/acrn/index.html
I also had some other people give feedback that it helped them, so doing a little bit of cheat replying under the top post, in a hope it is useful for some. (I have absolutely no relationship with the target of the link, and I saw there were several paid apps that basically used the same algorithm)
A little anecdata for myself: I have had a mildly higher blood pressure and pushing it down to accepted limits by diet and ~daily 6km running seems to have reduced the incidence - but this is just a piece of personal made data, so FWIW.
Eventually my body got used to the local pollen, thank god. I haven't needed chemicals or lavage for months.
Last bad sickness hit was from Sable and Anti Chamber. There are few other indie games that effect me similarly. I thought it's lack of textures or crosshair in indie games, or may be it's the camera movement or both, not sure. But now, when playing first person games, i find myself worrying if it will make me sick. More I think, more I feel it. Yesterday I felt sick after playing Alien Isolation for the first time. It had textures, a crosshair, but camera was janky which made me worried and more I thought about it, worse it got and I end up deleting the game.
Also, ironically, I just played Alien Isolation, and the camera drove me crazy at first but stopped being a problem altogether after a few hours of gameplay.
Jokes aside, my tinnitus used to bother me horribly. It used to be all I could focus on, not just because it's loud and distracting at times, but because it triggered a severe case of health anxiety². I went through my regular GP, who referred me to an otolaryngologist and audiologist; that person found nothing physically wrong with my ear (which is usually the case for tinnitus) and referred me for an MRI; the MRI threw a big wrench in the works by discovering a brain tumor which turned out to be benign – a simple pituitary tumor which I just need to keep an eye on every few years. But again, still not the cause of the tinnitus.
Anyway, long story short, no cause was ever found for me suddenly developing this pulsatile tinnitus nearly overnight. It took a couple months to adapt to the new, constant sound in my ear, but I hardly notice it anymore unless I'm straining to hear something³. When I'm focusing on something like playing a video game, watching tv or listening to an audiobook, I don't notice the tinnitus at all. If the sound really starts to bug me, I've saved some brown noise tracks on YouTube that are particularly effective at drowning out the frequency of the whooshing sound.
¹ I also have the "regular", high-pitched whistling tinnitus, but I've had that most of my life.
² I've always had a health anxiety, learned behavior from my mother. This post makes me sound like a basket case, but I promise I'm a fully functional adult and these ailments I'm describing are trifles at the moment!
³ My wife and I have started to get into birding, so it does interfere a bit with my ability to hear some birds. More specifically, it interferes with my ability to locate where they are, I can't quite figure out if they're above me or behind me sometimes.
Right now I hear it because we're talking about it. In five minutes when I'm back to thinking about work, it will disappear again until the next time I randomly think about it.
I don't think that works for everyone, but it's such a simple thing to try that anyone suffering should see if it works for them.
Did my hearing get worse? No, I was mostly at home.
The problem is my home office is too quiet. So now I open a window or put on some natural sounds or music and it goes away.
Those two things all but cured my tinnitus: 1. not obsessing about it and 2. avoid silent spaces
Blood pressure and muscle tension seem to be primary factors in my perception of tinnitus.
"just don't think about it, bro"
lol - they prescribe opiates for this condition.
noise machines are linked to making it worse. Humans may not be used to "silence" or whatever people are claiming in here, but we're also not used to broad-spectrum noise, either. Nature doesn't sound like a fan, or any other sort of "noise" except for, possibly, a few dBa around the floor of all noise due to echoes and reflections. Do you all ever go outside of the cities?
[0] i consider mine mild, i always know when i'm gunna suffer after a noise, my brain just knows the SPL that will trigger it in a few hours, so i generally try to be asleep before it kicks in. I do get the waves of tinnitus that i think most people say is "mild", it comes and goes; and yeah, that is easy to "ignore". I have friends with it that avoid certain foods and drinks (like red wine and whisky), where a bout of tinnitus escalates into a migraine headache, or worse, a cluster headache.
and forget about the hum the air conditioner in the house makes. Or that buzzing from the lights. hmmm... your computer isn't actually silent, is it?
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As a long time sufferer, I want to support the general sentiment of this post, and I hope it helps someone who finds this that is currently suffering. My core message is that managing your psychological response to your condition matters immensely. I've noticed over the years that my perception of my tinnitus gets worse when my stress levels are high, even if for unrelated reasons. For example, reading about this post might remind me of it when I wasn't thinking about it for a long while. And suddenly this might bring back unpleasant feelings I have about it and it might suddenly feel very loud and overpowering when half an hour ago I wasn't even aware of it. But then an hour or two later I'll catch myself having a normal, quiet, unimpeded conversation with someone, which can feel like a contradiction.
Unmanaged, this kind of thing can turn into an unchecked, self reinforcing doom loop that's not always necessary or helpful. As with anxiety (another long term problem I manage), one unhelpful thing doctors might say when you first get tinnitus is that it doesn't go away - this is one of those technically true statements that patients can misinterpret. The reality is that just like anxiety, in many cases there's plenty reason for hope: it's often quite possible to improve quality of life that's mostly the same as it was before. It's still there if you check, and time to time you need to manage it, but also you might go days and weeks without even noticing, living a perfectly normal and happy life rather than a miserable existence.
On the other hand, leaving your primary care doctor with "yup, it's tinnitus" (my interpretation at the time: you're fucked for life, good luck) can lead to deep feelings of despair, panic, lack of sleep, over-sensitivity to noise of any kind even within normal thresholds, and many more terrible things. And "just ignore it, you'll be fine" is trite advice that can be difficult to achieve without help, like telling someone to ignore a siren in the next room. And it might be difficult for others to understand how debilitating it can be. But slowly and step by step it's possible to get there.
Sadly compassionate and competent care for tinnitus, even among audiology specialists, is few and far between and patients are left to suffer and / or try to figure stuff out on their own, which like a hypochondriac on webmd, can leave you feeling even worse. Luckily it is more possible to find tinnitus specific care these days and I encourage you to find a clinic that does this if you can - it's worth traveling for IMHO. There's a cocktail of potential causes that indicate different treaments so take this with a grain of salt but what worked for me was a combination of various things first to manage my current state and give me some relief during my initial crisis state (psychological help with how to deal with the reality of your condition, various things to help mask it and allow me to get normal sleep), clearing out wax (it's hilariously gross and also wild how it can affect your hearing perception and tinnitus in the most unexpected ways), common sense non-doomer information on the nature of the disease, what to do next and how to slowly transition to focusing on normal life ("playing playstation"): doing things with people, being outside, working out, focusing on your interests, as opposed to catastrophizing at home in bed. This feels like a non-cure cure but the results for me are night and day - if it's a placebo, I'll take it. I still have trouble with it time to time, but lead a normal happy life most days.
That aside, while we don't have the technology to make it fully go away yet, there have been a lot of recent changes and advances in our understanding of how it works which might lead to new therapies. Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor and might be butchering this so take this with a grain of salt: There seem to now be competing theories on the exact causes e.g. arguments about whether it's the the little hairs in the ear are sending no signal or incorrect signals. Also a recent understanding that you can have a seemingly unaffected hearing AND a normal audiogram but still have tinnitus is leading people to question if it's a different type of damage (different, larger hairs) that cause it which might mean different therapies. There's promising new treatments like Lenire which seem to be low risk and whose early study results seem to be much more promising than earlier versions of similar ideas (haven't tried it). I wouldn't be shocked if we eventually got much much more in our lifetimes.
TLDR: of course you'd rather not have it - please do be careful in protecting your hearing as much as possible. But if you're at the point where you do have it, just take a bit of solace maybe that it's not always a terrible prognosis and more improvement might be possible than you think. And the psychology and managing my emotional perception of it was very helpful for me. I hope this helps you, dear reader.
I can't comment on how mainstream of a scientific opinion his response is, but I know it certainly reframed the way I thought about my own tinnitus and inspired my original comment, including the Playstation bit. That was a lightbulb moment for me. "Wow, he's right, I NEVER think about tinnitus when I'm otherwise engaged mentally..."
It turned out to be caused by an improperly filled root canal; some root material remained inside the tooth, the flesh above and around the tooth was inflamed and this was applying pressure inside the skull and bringing tissues which would otherwise not have been into contact, or firmer contact.
I had the root canal re-made, and the tinnitus ended.
Thanks!
He took an x-ray just of that tooth, and lo and behold, a big bloom on inflammation above and around the tooth.
So it was easy to find, if you looked.
Interestingly, the root canal re-drilling specialist who did the work told me he had over the many years a number of cases where patients had various issues such as dizzyness, where their issue went away when their improper root canals were re-made.
UGG. I've been experiencing noticeable tinnitus this motorcycle season. It is to the point I'm now actively investigating. Recently I read neck pain or tension can cause tinnitus. I have a terrible mattress. I'm contemplating a move, so I've been holding off on replacing it. Trying exercise and stretching in the mean time.
I also had a root canal in November 2023. The tooth was sensitive and this only abated somewhat after about six months, which is coincidentally when I noticed the tinnitus.
But I'm thinking the head is pretty much solid-state; everything is packed in there. Apply pressure is one place and it ends up somewhere else.
- First make sure that the frequency is not dancing around. If it is then probably it is one of those things your brain making up then it is relatively easier to fool yourself back again. Check it when it happens https://audionotch.com/app/tune/ (disclaimer I am not related to website, just first google result).
- If it is constant then try to counter it with noise especially when trying to sleep. Just give yourself one of those nice YouTube colored-noise videos like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SHf6wmX5MU
- Avoid in-ears altogether, especially the bass-boost ones make sure that it does not fit airtight. More bass does not mean you pulsate your ear-canal with an airgun. If you want proper bass sound, invest in hi-fi stereo and listen to it in a good room.
- As mentioned, distract yourself. Even if it is chronic and actually has a pathological cause, the brain finds a way to cope with it, like the glasses on your nose not noticing the weight.
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At glance, again I don't see mention about that in this article. Apple has accelerometers on AirPods Pro, I hope they incorporate head position into the study.
Nothing helped until I got serious into fixing my posture. Now it's almost cured.
I was using just my laptop, purchased a stand, a keyboard and a mouse and always use my computer sitting properly.
I’m also doing neck exercises to strengthen my neck muscles, this one was a doctors advice.
Lastly, I no longer sleep on stress inducing position. I used to do that a lot, would not be bothered to sleep on a small couch at friends house, now I don’t do that. If it no bed is available, would sleep on the floor.
The AirPod Pro Max also get too loud, they are ok at low to mid volumes, high volumes = extreme tinnitus.
HomePods are similar, I can only have them on at volume levels I appreciate for short periods of time or I get tinnitus.
Compare this with my old sennheisers and audeze headphones, 0 tinnitus even at extreme volumes. Similar for my in ear Mochi headphones.
Or compare the HomePods to my Panasonic Surround Sound Speakers for my TV from 12 years ago that I still use, I can make the walls shake with no tinnitus. If I turn up my homepods to a volume close to that my ears will be ringing for hours or days after. It really bums me out, I wish I understood what is changing about the technology. Like are they going from Analog to Digital and is digital more harsh or something? I don't know.
To put it less bluntly: even if there is no evidence of harm, one can rationally decide to avoid these products out of caution.
If you do it from time to time and tinnitus eases even a little, it might come from how the AirPods or headphones press your ear or head causing tensions.
Its an analoge but digitally programmable hearing aid which needs to be replaced every 3-4 months or so.
I think it is pretty common that tinnitus gets better with any kind of hearing aid however some devices & hearing loss combinations tend to be more successful