I “got over” mine after many months of “tinnitus meditation” (there’s a short book on this written by a guy who has some crazy disease that causes extra-bad tinnitus). Basically, you meditate by purposefully focusing on your tinnitus. It starts to flip your brain’s response from one of fear to one of relaxation. Even within the first session, you’ll find that when you try to focus on the noise for as long as you can (use a timer and start with 5 mins), you eventually get distracted and think about something else, even if just for a moment. Then you realize that your brain isn’t “forced” to notice it - and the more you practice this, the better you’ll get at noticing it and gently pivoting your attention back to.. the rest of the world. The noise never goes away, your ability to ignore it just improves over time.
I no longer meditate as often, but when I do, it’s actually still quite effective. I now see it more as a “retreat” of sorts - I can just kind of dissociate and let the ringing take over. Reading this article brought it back, incidentally.. but I’m ok with it. Once you fully surrender to the noise, you can start to let go of it. It’s the mental resistance that makes it hard to deal with.
I’ve had it since I was a kid. One day I just noticed how strange it was that silence sounded like this. I was maybe 6 or 7? Eventually just got used to experiencing silence like this. However, I usually only become aware of it when I’m alone - more so indoors at night time.
But that isn’t tinnitus right? I noticed mine right around the same time and I call it the “aether noise”.
To me, regular tinnitus (which I also had for a few days after concerts) could be matched and recreated with a tone generator, and is much more “in your face” despite being the same volume by the end of my ears healing.
Aether noise on the other hand sounds multi tone, not a buzz or a hum. I have not yet managed to recreate it. I can hear it all the time if I can focus on it, but it only calls attention to itself in dead silence.
I've recently developed tinnitus within the last few months, so I'm still early in my researching. However, I've found a lot of people that discount this approach and swear it only makes things worse. That's why I've been hesitant to try it.
Do you think a lot of it has to do with having the right mindset?
It honestly may depend on how bad it is and how you react to it. For me, it was causing almost a constant panic-level reaction for weeks. I couldn’t sleep without heavy drugs, and I would wake up sweating and on edge. Just non-stop. I took a fair bit of time off work because of how hard it was to focus. So suffice to say I was willing to try anything.. and the meditation aspect was necessary for me beyond just reducing tinnitus. But I can’t see how it would make things worse, at least not in a permanent way.
I haven't used this technique myself but I can ignore it most of the time, and I think that's an important place to get to. For me, I feel that a big part of it is simply acceptance. If I'd get worked up over it every time I'm noticing it, I think it would be a lot harder to ignore over time. It sucks but this way it sucks a lot less.
It's a funny thing - like a bear in the woods type thing. Sometimes, when its existence gets called to my attention, like when I started reading this story and the comments just now, I suddenly realize how loud it is - but also how I've gone about my whole day without any problems, despite it having been there all the time. Not sure if that makes sense, but that's my experience and it's - fine, really.
Not saying that you shouldn't try other things, and I also don't really know how to get there beyond going easy on yourself. I'm just saying that to me being able to ignore it makes a huge difference in my life quality and so I think it's very worth pursuing. Good luck!
Thank you for recommendation. My tinnitus become quite severe now. For past three years it's almost impossible to sleep after waking up in the middle of the night. Overwhelming ringing is hard to ignore.
It reminds me to the intro to Odesza’s “A Moment Apart” album where an astronaut is up in space with a ticking sound and decides he has to fall in love with it for his sanity.
I have it from being a death metal singer/guitarist 30 years ago, but it gets much worse when tired or higher blood pressure (handy though ; most people don't have an actual audible alarm for that). It's indeed not recommended, it is, however very clever how the brain mostly filters it out unless I actively think about it.
I am in my 50s and the most notable 'side effect' is that I must avoid conference calls; it seems unconsciously I got good at reading lips in person, even in groups, but video calls and especially audio calls are just too hard. I tell people now I'm handicapped, which is indeed true I guess; we either meet in person or they will have to write it down. Captions sometimes work, but we work with people from around the world and some English accents just generate mostly random words as captions. Not sure why a discussion about a payment api is mostly about rain, goats, [laughter], [music] and such...
I'm in my 30s and I have tinnitus since my 16 caused by playing drums with my first band. From that day on I always wear earplugs to minimize extra damage. I really recognize the conference call thing. When i'm in group and I can't see people well or there are a lot of people talking at the same time I also noticed I lip read more than I thought.
Took 1-2 years before I went a single day without thinking about tinnitus after I gave it to myself playing drums. I was so happy to be smashing those punk drums in the first rehearsal of this band. I remember exclaiming afterwards to one of my bandmates, "Wow my ears are ringing! That was awesome!" He said, "Ya, mine have been ringing for 30 years." My heart immediately sank knowing what I had just done.
I spent a lot of days/months totally devastated about it. I remember reading this story about some woman in a scandinavian country who chose medical-assisted suicide because hers was so bad. I thought that was going to be my story. I thought it was inevitable.
But I met a lot of people who lived completely normal lives and described their tinnitus as so much worse than mine. I eventually got used to it. I wouldn't say the actual ringing is better or worse than it was. I have no idea how to measure it anyways. But life has gotten so much better. And I almost never think about it any more -- maybe once every few weeks I'll have the thought, "Oh ya, I have ringing in my ears" and a few seconds later I forget about it again. I think it gets better for most people, thankfully.
I've had multiple times when my tinnitus has gotten noticeably worse. The path is always the same: some panic and desperation first, followed by some examinations and attempts of alleviation that do nothing, and finally familiarization and acceptance about 9-12 months afterwards that makes everything pretty much fine.
I'm sure it will happen again, and I can only hope that the acceptance phase keeps working.
When I'm very focused I can be in complete silence, but these moments are very few, once I notice the silence the ringing comes back again.
Mostly I'm at a point i don't hear it at all unless I get very distracted or see anything that mentions it. Like right now reading this post and the comments LOL.
That's how it is for me too. I don't hear it until someone mentions it. Then it's pretty noticeable. I went to an audiologist thinking I gave myself hearing loss at a point but he said my hearing is beyond exceptional, and that I should be very careful with it to preserve it. So I think I have an infection induced, or neurological cause.
Not useful for you now AFAIK, but there's some evidence that n-acetylcysteine has a protective effect if taken before or shortly after loud noise exposure.
Tinnitus is sometimes neurological, seemingly caused by the brain compensating for a loss of sensation. I can imagine a horror story in which this just makes it a thousand times worse, on top of permanently losing all hearing.
Now, being able to use a hot-swappable audio sensor instead of an ear made of tissue would be pretty dope.
There is, audio nerve can be surgically cut, but this means complete hearing loss in one ear. The whole inner ear can be removed. You don't want it without a good reason.
From what I've rad tinnitus can be caused by a) shift in small transmission bones, can be age related. 2) inner ears sensors mess up, can be from loud sound. 3) something else, like infection, inflammation, inner ear pressure build up (may be Ménière's disease).
Hope technology develops fast, some sort of implant talking directly to the audio nerve. I think they already exist or are in development. This can give in theory ultra- and infra-sound sensitivity too, as a bonus.
I've read about an experimental surgery sometime in the past doing this, and the patient had no reduction in their tinnitus. Their sound wasn't generated in the ear.
I guess there might be ethical issues doing the surgery. Also it'd be quite hard to do as the nerves are in the skull up against the brain so basically brain surgery. But I was thinking if there was some way to figure which nerves were firing and kill those that could maybe fix it.
Maybe if you could stick something like a neuralink in there?
For those with unilateral tinnitus that seems influenced by neck stretches or TMJ issues, try sleeping on your back or on the opposite side to avoid pressure on the affected ear.
Also, consider getting an MRI to check for possible causes; in my case, a vascular loop was found contacting the vestibulocochlear nerve inside the internal auditory canal.
While I consider my case largely managed, it still flares up a few times per month, usually triggered by irritation or inflammation (allergens, getting sick, poor neck posture, loud music for hours)
Oh! Before this thread disappears into the void (or until the next tinnitus thread), one more trick that really helped back then:
Percussion massage gun with the sharp tip, aimed at the trapezius and levator scapulae. Those muscles can refer tension right around the ears. Targeting them can calm things down fast, especially if your tinnitus is posture or tension-related.
I feel terrible because I never did anything wrong. I never went to a concert. I never worked around loud things for prolonged periods. I never listened to music too loud. I have tinnitus. It seems to go up in intensity when my TMD acts up, but it never goes completely away.
Mine isn't nearly debilitating, but I worry that it's going to get worse with time.
I wonder about a genetic component. I've had the "sound of silence" for as long as I can remember. I don't remember how old she was, exactly, but my daughter confirmed she was experiencing something similar at a pretty young age (under 5 y/o). We were always very careful with her hearing (to the point that we had very small earmuffs we'd have her wear in potentially loud situations), so I don't think it's the result of physical damage.
I'm sitting alone in a quiet room typing this and I've got a cacophony of >12kHz whine going in both ears. The left is slightly louder and lower than the right. It's not debilitating but it would be really neat to hear actual silence once in awhile.
I played w/ doing hearing range tests on myself and my friends using an old NEC V20-based laptop during my high school days (mid-90s). I wrote a little BASIC program that played sounds of increasing frequency and asked you to report if you could hear the sound. Sometimes it indicates it's playing a sound when it isn't. By playing (or not playing) sounds repeatedly I would build up a "score" for the user's high frequency hearing response.
I have notes showing I could hear between 16 and 17 kHz back then. Today I struggle to hear more than 12 kHz. Interestingly, my tinnitus presents frequencies high than I can actually hear now.
I've had tinnitus since my teen years, half a century ago. At least, what I normally hear is, I assume, tinnitus, but it comes in two forms. There's a constant sort-of grey noise, not too loud (definitely softer than people talking in the same room), which wavers in amplitude over a sub-second period. The more annoying form is a pretty pure sine wave, much louder, which thankfully is more infrequent. Not really sure if that quieter form is something everyone gets, or an actual tinnitus form. Anyway, after 50+ years, it's not a big deal to me.
I'm in the same boat for the most part. Always had tinnitus, for as long as I can remember. Doesn't bother me at all.
However, for the past 3 or 4 years, during spring, I get much worse tinnitus in my right ear for a couple weeks. It appears to be caused by some kind of blockage in my inner ear due to the inevitable viruses we catch during the winter. It's louder and a lower pitch (around 3 kHz, unlike my 10+ kHz normal one), and even though it's not the first time this happens by now, it's still extremely annoying. It's harder to just ignore, and my mind immediately starts thinking "what if this lasts forever?"
So I can imagine that for those who develop tinnitus at adulthood, it can cause a lot more distress, because they lived the "before".
Its the same for me. Its always been there. I've also done a lot of activities over my life that make it worse, like playing the drums, attending very loud electronic music parties, and motorcycling without earplugs. It's just a low-level background sound that is part of my life, and I'm lucky enough to be able to tune it out most times. But reading this post and going through this thread has made it a lot worse.
Interestingly, my five-year-old was complaining about ringing in her ears being distracting at bed time, so I wonder if it is genetic too.
Same for me, is it weird I'd go so far as to say... I like mine? I like the name "the sound of silence" for it - I kinda feel like I use it as a "plane" to think on top of somehow or something. For me it kinda...whirrs up almost, till I'm fully enveloped by my thoughts and imagination, at that point the tinnitus is gone and I'm in unbridled thinking mode,I quite like the whole experience personally. I'm scared it will get debilitating like others have described, but it's never bothered me.
I have tinnitus from an inner ear injury from snorkeling/free diving. Tinnitus can be caused by clenching your jaw or otherwise stimulating your jaw muscles. My ENT told me the nerves for the muscles are extremely close to the nerves for hearing. One thing I try when my tinnitus acts up is making sure to keep my jaw relaxed.
I've started wearing a night guard/TMJ splint, by the recommendation of a dentist. It helps a lot in preventing my jaw from locking up during the day. Have you given that a show to try and alleviate some pressure from the area?
you could have gotten tinnitus from medication. some medications (quite a few of the stronger antibiotics) are known as being ototoxic. my tinnitus started while taking antibiotics for a bad infection. I cant prove it was my antibiotic, but the antibiotic was ototoxic
I think this is the cause of mine. An audiologist said my actual hearing is remarkable and recommended protecting it, so I don't think it's hearing loss.
In my twenties, I was slowly developing tinnitus, it was driving me nuts.
I work with computers a lot and my spine was paying a price. In my late twenties I started working out and doing yoga and later pilates to strengthen my back and straighten my spine. My tinnitus went away. Something was being pinched in my neck, causing the tinnitus.
I'm not sure this is your problem, but it might help someone out there.
I have noticed that my traps and everything around it feel a lot better when I work out. Hopefully I can continue to work out, despite recent minor injuries.
I get a weird transient tinnitus where my hearing drops out in one ear or the other for about 15 seconds, and is replace by a tone, which slowly fades as my hearing comes back. It sometimes happens multiple times per day, and sometimes not for weeks at a time. I've seen a couple specialists about it, but no known cause.
I also notice a low-level tinnitus when I'm in very quiet places. I keep white noise machines around to cover it.
This happens to me as well, I believe the official term for this is "Sudden Brief Unilateral Tapering Tinnitus". Seems like it is fairly common, and can occur regardless of whether one has tinnitus or not [0].
Oh wow, I have tried to research it, but never came across the name. This is exactly it. The neurologist (who I saw for a cluster of similarly petty symptoms) and the ENT I've seen about it didn't provide that term for me.
I have the same thing, it feels like your ear is clogged with water, or when you shift in altitude, then like a high pitched sound for ten seconds and then everything is normal again. Every few months or so this sporadically happens.
Funny thing is every time I mentioned this IRL there's always someone who has experienced it too, like some sort of common mystery condition
I have permanent tinnitus and have this too, though it very rarely happens on its own. When it happens, for me, this sound is usually a signal to immediately change my posture when sitting in a chair.
When I reach flow, I tend to not notice until later that I'd now be sitting cross-legged, or that I've tucked one leg under myself.
That pressure tends to trigger the sound you describe after a while. I imagine because of bad blood circulation, though I have no idea why it's that sound signalling that for me.
Same with me. It usually happens when I've been reading in bed for long and I unconsciouly get in a bad posture (neck). Correcting it, doing some shoulder and neck light exercices help but I've never associated it with pressure caused by lower body, mainly legs. Which it might as it also happens when I'm cross legged (and somewhat torso twisted) at the computer desk for too long.
I have this. It’s pretty uncommon for me but happens every once in a while. I have heard it’s no big deal. My imagined explanation is that it is a muscle that spasms and temporarily blocks sound to the ear, but actually I have no idea.
I have this too. My theory is the random "drops" are caused by the inner ear hairs attuned to that frequency get disturbed by something (like a shift in fluid) and overloading their respective nerves, similar to the afterimages that come from staring at a bright light.
The low level tinitus in a quiet room seems pretty normal to me, it's your brain looking for really quiet noises that are at the limit of what your ears can pick up. Or something, I'm no expert on it.
> I have this too. My theory is the random "drops" are caused by the inner ear hairs attuned to that frequency get disturbed by something (like a shift in fluid) and overloading their respective nerves, similar to the afterimages that come from staring at a bright light.
Interesting theory. Yeah, for me, it often happens when I'm sitting still working. I have never noticed it in response to sound. But, yeah, I can imagine it being some innocuous physical thing in the fluid.
> The low level tinitus in a quiet room seems pretty normal to me, it's your brain looking for really quiet noises that are at the limit of what your ears can pick up. Or something, I'm no expert on it.
Yeah, might be somewhat like the hum when the gain is turned up on a guitar amp and nothing's playing. Basically just amplifying the noise floor. I'm not sure if it's true tinnitus, or just my brain filling in for the white noise I normally have in the background.
I've had this for as long as I can remember. I have distinct memories from being maybe toddler-aged and having this. I've found that the Valsalva maneuver can make it fade away faster, as can placing your palm over your ear and squeezing it to pump air around. Always figured it was something to do with the pressure in my ear.
I got this after chemo. It hasn't gone away and probably never will, but it's not so bad. Unfortunately I lost a lot of hearing, too. Turns out platinum is quite bad for the ears.
Same here. Some days are worse than others. Like some of the other comments, I notice it most when tired or stressed. But it is constant. Chemo also gave me optical migraines, that show up most along with the increased tinnitus. Glad you're still here!
Perhaps consider seeing an upper-cervical (Blair) chiropractor. I know I'm probably going to get dog-piled for mentioning the word since so many people think it's nonsense... a lot of the practices are, but the Blair system is very effective.
My girlfriend at the time told me I needed to try this "new pillow that's the best." I woke up with a kink in my neck and an ear that was screaming at me (2300 Hz for those masochists that want to know what it sounded like).
Took around four years to track it down and get it mostly solved.
The screaming is gone most of the time now, but occasionally I'll move a certain way and it will suddenly come back. A firm press with my thumb in a particular spot on the back/side of my neck for a few seconds will be enough to get it to go away.
Think you mean plugging, not plucking, your ears, unless sirens make you remove hair, in which case they did you a favor.
I got some nice ear plugs designed for concerts (Loop) because I go to a concert and I already have mild tinnitus and don't want it to get worse.
I do not know why concerts have to be SO LOUD. Loud, sure. Permanent ear damage loud, why? It should tell you something that the guys on stage wear ear plugs.
That's a really good point about hearing damage vs eye damage, the only thing I can think of is it's a lot harder to measure and people don't care as much. It would be really hard to prove you had hearing loss in a court of law, let alone that it came from one specific event, and you'd have a much easier time proving that a high powered laser blinded several people, perhaps. And nearly 100% of people would choose "deaf" if they were forced to pick between that and blind.
> I do not know why concerts have to be SO LOUD. Loud, sure. Permanent ear damage loud, why
I have often wondered this. So it’s non-deafening loud at the back? I was at a concert recently that was way too loud. A sound guy came to check and stood in front of the speakers. I thought finally it’s going to be turned down … nope … clearly his hearing had already gone which would explain why it was so loud.
I think my hearing has been damaged in the past and so I now always have either AirPods at the very least or earplugs on hand. If anything loud, like heavy construction next to a bus stop, is happening I put them in. I can’t undo the past but I can prevent future damage.
99% of concert performers use Monitors to hear their own performance over the crowds and have nothing to do with the loudness of the audience speakers. Stage Monitors can be just speakers at the front edge of the stage pointed directly at the band [1] or they can be sound isolating earpieces so artists can hear exactly the sound mix they want [2].
Not necessarily because of the band members, but yeah, you want to cover up the noise of people chattering away in the back.
Music can also sound better when it's louder, up to a certain point - if you're recording and mixing a piece of music, you want to do so at a very moderate volume, because if you crank it up loud some of the imbalances in the mix become less obvious.
That said, there's 'loud enough that the music sounds good and you're mostly hearing music and not audience', and then there was the Prodigy concert I went to, where I was wearing earplugs and my ears still hurt. Amazing concert, but holy crap, probably the loudest situation I've ever encountered. I've also been right in front of the speakers at a festival dance tent, and my earplugs rattled due to sound pressure, which was unnerving but quite funny.
Most veterans have it, I sure do although relatively mild. Besides being issued defective ear plugs, the CVC helmets we used were garbage at protecting your ears.
In some ex-soviet countries college students may go to introductory military training, and they never even tell students that they need earplugs when giving them an AK to shoot at a shooting range.
I used double protection my entire time in as a Huey Crew Chief and my hearing is smoked. It’s ringing hard right now as I type this, the people closest to me can’t seem to understand because it’s invisible. Sometimes I wish I couldn’t hear at all so it was obvious
Readit News
The book is a quick read and helpful: https://a.co/d/ckOzbSq
I no longer meditate as often, but when I do, it’s actually still quite effective. I now see it more as a “retreat” of sorts - I can just kind of dissociate and let the ringing take over. Reading this article brought it back, incidentally.. but I’m ok with it. Once you fully surrender to the noise, you can start to let go of it. It’s the mental resistance that makes it hard to deal with.
To me, regular tinnitus (which I also had for a few days after concerts) could be matched and recreated with a tone generator, and is much more “in your face” despite being the same volume by the end of my ears healing.
Aether noise on the other hand sounds multi tone, not a buzz or a hum. I have not yet managed to recreate it. I can hear it all the time if I can focus on it, but it only calls attention to itself in dead silence.
Do you have visual snow by chance too?
Do you think a lot of it has to do with having the right mindset?
That said, always having some white noise or music going helped a lot
It's a funny thing - like a bear in the woods type thing. Sometimes, when its existence gets called to my attention, like when I started reading this story and the comments just now, I suddenly realize how loud it is - but also how I've gone about my whole day without any problems, despite it having been there all the time. Not sure if that makes sense, but that's my experience and it's - fine, really.
Not saying that you shouldn't try other things, and I also don't really know how to get there beyond going easy on yourself. I'm just saying that to me being able to ignore it makes a huge difference in my life quality and so I think it's very worth pursuing. Good luck!
I am in my 50s and the most notable 'side effect' is that I must avoid conference calls; it seems unconsciously I got good at reading lips in person, even in groups, but video calls and especially audio calls are just too hard. I tell people now I'm handicapped, which is indeed true I guess; we either meet in person or they will have to write it down. Captions sometimes work, but we work with people from around the world and some English accents just generate mostly random words as captions. Not sure why a discussion about a payment api is mostly about rain, goats, [laughter], [music] and such...
I spent a lot of days/months totally devastated about it. I remember reading this story about some woman in a scandinavian country who chose medical-assisted suicide because hers was so bad. I thought that was going to be my story. I thought it was inevitable.
But I met a lot of people who lived completely normal lives and described their tinnitus as so much worse than mine. I eventually got used to it. I wouldn't say the actual ringing is better or worse than it was. I have no idea how to measure it anyways. But life has gotten so much better. And I almost never think about it any more -- maybe once every few weeks I'll have the thought, "Oh ya, I have ringing in my ears" and a few seconds later I forget about it again. I think it gets better for most people, thankfully.
But it'd be cool to hear complete silence again.
I'm sure it will happen again, and I can only hope that the acceptance phase keeps working.
Mostly I'm at a point i don't hear it at all unless I get very distracted or see anything that mentions it. Like right now reading this post and the comments LOL.
I think you are thinking of Gaby Olthuis. Her story is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzQ6kSqBOao
I'm surprised there is not some method to surgically disconnect the brain from the ear.
Now, being able to use a hot-swappable audio sensor instead of an ear made of tissue would be pretty dope.
From what I've rad tinnitus can be caused by a) shift in small transmission bones, can be age related. 2) inner ears sensors mess up, can be from loud sound. 3) something else, like infection, inflammation, inner ear pressure build up (may be Ménière's disease).
Hope technology develops fast, some sort of implant talking directly to the audio nerve. I think they already exist or are in development. This can give in theory ultra- and infra-sound sensitivity too, as a bonus.
Maybe if you could stick something like a neuralink in there?
For those with unilateral tinnitus that seems influenced by neck stretches or TMJ issues, try sleeping on your back or on the opposite side to avoid pressure on the affected ear.
Also, consider getting an MRI to check for possible causes; in my case, a vascular loop was found contacting the vestibulocochlear nerve inside the internal auditory canal.
While I consider my case largely managed, it still flares up a few times per month, usually triggered by irritation or inflammation (allergens, getting sick, poor neck posture, loud music for hours)
Percussion massage gun with the sharp tip, aimed at the trapezius and levator scapulae. Those muscles can refer tension right around the ears. Targeting them can calm things down fast, especially if your tinnitus is posture or tension-related.
Not medical advice.
Never bothered me much. Its much worse now at times. Still doesnt bother me much
I'm sitting alone in a quiet room typing this and I've got a cacophony of >12kHz whine going in both ears. The left is slightly louder and lower than the right. It's not debilitating but it would be really neat to hear actual silence once in awhile.
I played w/ doing hearing range tests on myself and my friends using an old NEC V20-based laptop during my high school days (mid-90s). I wrote a little BASIC program that played sounds of increasing frequency and asked you to report if you could hear the sound. Sometimes it indicates it's playing a sound when it isn't. By playing (or not playing) sounds repeatedly I would build up a "score" for the user's high frequency hearing response.
I have notes showing I could hear between 16 and 17 kHz back then. Today I struggle to hear more than 12 kHz. Interestingly, my tinnitus presents frequencies high than I can actually hear now.
However, for the past 3 or 4 years, during spring, I get much worse tinnitus in my right ear for a couple weeks. It appears to be caused by some kind of blockage in my inner ear due to the inevitable viruses we catch during the winter. It's louder and a lower pitch (around 3 kHz, unlike my 10+ kHz normal one), and even though it's not the first time this happens by now, it's still extremely annoying. It's harder to just ignore, and my mind immediately starts thinking "what if this lasts forever?"
So I can imagine that for those who develop tinnitus at adulthood, it can cause a lot more distress, because they lived the "before".
Interestingly, my five-year-old was complaining about ringing in her ears being distracting at bed time, so I wonder if it is genetic too.
I work with computers a lot and my spine was paying a price. In my late twenties I started working out and doing yoga and later pilates to strengthen my back and straighten my spine. My tinnitus went away. Something was being pinched in my neck, causing the tinnitus.
I'm not sure this is your problem, but it might help someone out there.
I also notice a low-level tinnitus when I'm in very quiet places. I keep white noise machines around to cover it.
[0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21970850/
Funny thing is every time I mentioned this IRL there's always someone who has experienced it too, like some sort of common mystery condition
When I reach flow, I tend to not notice until later that I'd now be sitting cross-legged, or that I've tucked one leg under myself.
That pressure tends to trigger the sound you describe after a while. I imagine because of bad blood circulation, though I have no idea why it's that sound signalling that for me.
The low level tinitus in a quiet room seems pretty normal to me, it's your brain looking for really quiet noises that are at the limit of what your ears can pick up. Or something, I'm no expert on it.
Interesting theory. Yeah, for me, it often happens when I'm sitting still working. I have never noticed it in response to sound. But, yeah, I can imagine it being some innocuous physical thing in the fluid.
> The low level tinitus in a quiet room seems pretty normal to me, it's your brain looking for really quiet noises that are at the limit of what your ears can pick up. Or something, I'm no expert on it.
Yeah, might be somewhat like the hum when the gain is turned up on a guitar amp and nothing's playing. Basically just amplifying the noise floor. I'm not sure if it's true tinnitus, or just my brain filling in for the white noise I normally have in the background.
My girlfriend at the time told me I needed to try this "new pillow that's the best." I woke up with a kink in my neck and an ear that was screaming at me (2300 Hz for those masochists that want to know what it sounded like).
Took around four years to track it down and get it mostly solved.
The screaming is gone most of the time now, but occasionally I'll move a certain way and it will suddenly come back. A firm press with my thumb in a particular spot on the back/side of my neck for a few seconds will be enough to get it to go away.
I got some nice ear plugs designed for concerts (Loop) because I go to a concert and I already have mild tinnitus and don't want it to get worse.
I do not know why concerts have to be SO LOUD. Loud, sure. Permanent ear damage loud, why? It should tell you something that the guys on stage wear ear plugs.
That's a really good point about hearing damage vs eye damage, the only thing I can think of is it's a lot harder to measure and people don't care as much. It would be really hard to prove you had hearing loss in a court of law, let alone that it came from one specific event, and you'd have a much easier time proving that a high powered laser blinded several people, perhaps. And nearly 100% of people would choose "deaf" if they were forced to pick between that and blind.
I have often wondered this. So it’s non-deafening loud at the back? I was at a concert recently that was way too loud. A sound guy came to check and stood in front of the speakers. I thought finally it’s going to be turned down … nope … clearly his hearing had already gone which would explain why it was so loud.
I think my hearing has been damaged in the past and so I now always have either AirPods at the very least or earplugs on hand. If anything loud, like heavy construction next to a bus stop, is happening I put them in. I can’t undo the past but I can prevent future damage.
I also had to go have a nap in the car waiting for the main act to come on.
[1] https://audioinstallations.co.uk/blog/stage-monitors-how-do-... [2] https://www.newsweek.com/taylor-swift-eras-tour-cruel-summer...
Music can also sound better when it's louder, up to a certain point - if you're recording and mixing a piece of music, you want to do so at a very moderate volume, because if you crank it up loud some of the imbalances in the mix become less obvious.
That said, there's 'loud enough that the music sounds good and you're mostly hearing music and not audience', and then there was the Prodigy concert I went to, where I was wearing earplugs and my ears still hurt. Amazing concert, but holy crap, probably the loudest situation I've ever encountered. I've also been right in front of the speakers at a festival dance tent, and my earplugs rattled due to sound pressure, which was unnerving but quite funny.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/08/29/business/3m-settlement-mi...