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.
sheepscreek · 4h ago
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.
no_time · 2h ago
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.
Do you have visual snow by chance too?
t34t4hthh · 24m ago
Not OP, but yes! I've had the exact same "symptoms" my entire life.
- A faint multi-tonal background "hiss", only apparent during silence, never goes away but is quite relaxing. I'm hesitant to even call it tinnitus
- Visual snow. I have early memories from at least 5 or 6, staring at the blue sky and noticing it's not pure (I see blue as everyone else, but with a very transparent layer of static)
I have attributed it to something "off" in the sensory filtering part of my brain
bvrmn · 2h ago
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.
sepositus · 5h ago
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?
plaidfuji · 4h ago
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.
emeril · 4h ago
I had bad tinnitus years ago that thankfully eventually largely went away
That said, always having some white noise or music going helped a lot
anonzzzies · 7h ago
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...
No comments yet
jsphweid · 5h ago
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.
But it'd be cool to hear complete silence again.
ajb · 52m ago
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.
mlinhares · 5h ago
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.
jay_kyburz · 4h ago
> I remember reading this story about some woman in a scandinavian country who chose medical-assisted suicide because hers was so bad.
I'm surprised there is not some method to surgically disconnect the brain from the ear.
0hijinks · 4h ago
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.
Biganon · 2h ago
Louder than you think, Dad! Louder than you think!
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)
labadal · 6h ago
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.
DontchaKnowit · 5h ago
I have had tinnitus for as long as I have been forming memories. As a child I called it "the sound of silence" and thought everyone heard it.
Never bothered me much. Its much worse now at times. Still doesnt bother me much
EvanAnderson · 3h ago
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.
philiplu · 3h ago
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.
lbourdages · 5h ago
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".
toast0 · 5h ago
I had some nasty eustacian tube blockage this winter and some tinnitus during the worst of it.
You might try alergy meds (pills or nasal inhalers) to try to clear that up. I wouldn't expect it to do anything for your chronic tinnitus though.
neom · 4h ago
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.
mackeye · 4h ago
lol, i distinctly remember calling mine "the sound of life" when i was younger. the metal shows didnt help it too much but its how it goes
blackguardx · 5h ago
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.
acjohnson55 · 4h ago
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.
jama_ · 2h ago
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.
D13Fd · 4h ago
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.
packetlost · 4h ago
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.
Barrin92 · 1h ago
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
atum47 · 6h ago
My dad also has it. Tinnitus is one of the topics on HN that I always click to see if there was any progress. That and Alzheimer.
le-mark · 7h ago
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.
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
deepsun · 7h ago
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.
th3o6a1d · 5h ago
I have tinnitus from going to loud concerts. I want to evangelize the importance of wearing ear plugs. It’s just not worth having hearing damage.
fexed · 46m ago
I've had tinnitus since birth, or at least for as long as I can remember. I learned to live with it, and now it's nothing more than a conversational topic for me.
jorgesborges · 7h ago
I’ve played drums and loud music for a long time. When I pay close enough attention there’s this persistent, aggravating noise — which I sometimes call “silence”, and other times call “tinnitus”.
technothrasher · 6h ago
> which I sometimes call “silence”
I've had mild tinnitus as long as I can remember; my earliest memory of it must have been when I was about four years old. I suspect I've had it my entire life. When I was a child, I thought it was just something normal that everybody had. When I heard the Simon and Garfunkel song, "The Sound of Silence", I thought that was what they were talking about.
grg0 · 6h ago
Are we talking about that thing you hear when in absolute silence in the dead of night? Is absolute silence even a thing?
technothrasher · 6h ago
I don't know what anybody else hears in absolute silence, but I hear a high pitched ringing. I can hear it any time I think about it. Like the other poster said though, my brain filters it out typically when other noise is around and I'm not paying attention to it.
turnsout · 5h ago
Same. I guess that’s tinnitus, but I feel lucky that most of the time I seem to filter it out.
RHSeeger · 6h ago
I have constant tinnitus and sometimes it just "stops" for a bit (like on the order of a minute or two). When it does, the lack of a background noise is just.. unnerving. It's like something is missing.
mattmaroon · 5h ago
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.
teruakohatu · 5h ago
> 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.
jay_kyburz · 4h ago
I went to a metal concert for the first time in err. 25-30 years and I don't remember them being so loud. It was physically painful.
I also had to go have a nap in the car waiting for the main act to come on.
tmtvl · 1h ago
Concerts have to be so loud because audiences are loud. As in the band members on stage wouldn't hear anything but the audience levels of loudness.
presentation · 2h ago
Young people like intense experiences, blasting your ears out is fun when you're 18-24.
anotherevan · 1h ago
The hypersensitivity to noise is also known as hyperacusis[1] which is defined as, “an abnormal sound sensitivity or decreased sound tolerance, with a heightened sense of volume and physical discomfort from many everyday sounds that other people can comfortably tolerate.”
I have tinnitus, and the only way of not hearing it is to not think about it. I am hearing it again after reading this article.
tangoalpha · 5h ago
Got permanent tinnitus due to damage to auditory nerve from an accident back in 2010.
Coping was hard. Distracting yourself with various things so you dont think about it was key.
Things to try -
1) Keeping yourself distracted or occupied and trying to not be conscious about it for 50% of the day to start with, gradually improving to 90% of the day
2) White noise apps for sleep
3) Carry ear plugs at all times. Plug them in if watching a movie in a theatre or attending to an Indian wedding. Prevents worsening of the situation.
To those out there: you're not alone. The journey is different for everyone, and what helps one person might not help another — but with patience and experimentation, many find ways to manage and live fully despite it.
msephton · 6h ago
I also have tinnitus, as well as hearing loss related to loud music from nightclubs and concerts, and of course natural aging. AirPods Pro and the ability to adjust the audio to be personalised to my audiogram (hearing test results) is a huge quality of life increase. All done on device, no need to go anywhere or see any specialists.
richwater · 6h ago
Hey there...could you expand on "the ability to adjust the audio to be personalised to my audiogram"? Sorry i'm not familiar with AirPods pro but suffer from tinnitus.
turnsout · 5h ago
AirPods Pro 2 are now FDA approved to act as hearing aids, and during the setup, you will take a hearing test that generates an audiogram (essentially a personalized EQ adjustment). [0] I have pretty mild hearing loss, but it was very wild to turn it on for the first time. It’s like taking OFF a filter.
With that said, I don’t think it would lessen tinnitus, and I don’t think the parent comment was suggesting it would.
I can hear the high frequencies of cathode ray tubes, and generally feel like I hear much higher frequencies than others.
That’s just normal, but when I’m tired or stressed, my blood pressure is up, or I’m sick, it’s what most people probably classify as tinnitus and is at a much lower frequency, more of a high pitched tone.
acjohnson55 · 4h ago
I also used to be able to hear CRTs. I didn't know what it was for a long time, and then I figured out I could "hear when the TV is on".
EvanAnderson · 3h ago
Oh, yeah. 15 kHz whine from NTSC CRTs did used to be a thing for me. Eventually I lost that range of my hearing.
A few years ago I fired-up a 15 kHz monitor for my Apple II and my then 5 y/o daughter held her ears and complained that there was a terrible screeching sound that hurt her ears. Between losing the top-end of my hearing with age and the end of CRTs being mainstream display technology I'd forgotten about tube whine.
AStonesThrow · 2h ago
The whine you hear is not actually from the tube itself, but generated by the flyback transformer.
Why is the new style to avoid capitalization when writing? I see it everywhere now. I can only imagine the annoyance of fighting autocorrect just to format your content like this.
SchemaLoad · 5h ago
It's a zoomer thing. They turn off auto capitalization entirely to do it.
alabastervlog · 6h ago
Kids doing weird shit to stand out, like every generation.
It makes reading harder, and with modern tools it certainly isn't any easier to write—with both those things working against it I doubt it'll stick around.
MalbertKerman · 6h ago
Somebody just discovered E. E. Cummings and thought "I'm gonna be original just like that guy!"
EvanAnderson · 2h ago
Years ago I made a "poetry generator" web app stylized like a piece of music synthesizer gear (an "Angst Modulator"). In the "filters" section I had an "ee cummings" filter that removed punctuation and made everything lower case.
(All the silly thing did was chain together stanzas randomly based on subjective "scores" I'd given to each stanza and the position of the "knobs" the user set for various "feelings". It was a fun gimmick 30 years ago. God. I'm old...)
amanaplanacanal · 5h ago
I did that in grade school. The teacher wasn't impressed.
forgotoldacc · 6h ago
it's not to stand out when every person types like this
the real reason is it's conversational. it's casual. it removes the gap between the reader and the writer
it's how people talk in a chat with their friends
in pretty much every language across the world, writing was always "formal" and lacked the voice of a couple of people having a chat. at some points, writing was even a separate language. east asian people did lots of their correspondence in classical chinese instead of using their own languages. the catholic church hated the idea of people reading the bible in anything but latin
then people chilled out and realized writing how we speak makes it more accessible to everyone. and that's not a bad thing, it's a good thing. novels started taking a more conversational style and some people looked down on that decades ago. now those novels are considered classics, and honestly, i'd attribute half of that to their writing seeming "formal" in retrospect because formal speech today is yesterday's casual speech. now people will revolt against modern writing and think it's below them. in 5 decades people will think this kind of writing is very formal
basically, it doesn't make it harder. it makes it easier. people write how they think and they don't worry about being perfect. and as another commenter said, autoformatting and autocorrecting tools just break shit more than they fix it these days. i can't even type "i have 5 pennies" without my phone correcting it to "I have 5 Pennie's" for some reason.
wiseowise · 4h ago
> novels started taking a more conversational style
It’s one thing to have conversational style and another to (almost) completely disregard grammar.
> i can't even type "i have 5 pennies" without my phone correcting it to "I have 5 Pennie's" for some reason.
Let me guess: an iPhone? What a motherf**ing garbage the new iOS keyboard is. Hope whoever worked on it reads this and feels ashamed.
alabastervlog · 6h ago
> it's not to stand out when every person types like this
Yeah, OK, I should have written "for social signaling".
saying "the way i write is correct. the way they write is signaling (and that's implicitly wrong)" is not a stance any serious linguist will support.
it is an interesting point to take, to claim that lowercase makes reading difficult. 12 year olds have no problem communicating this way and it's very easily understood. same with 30 somethings such as myself. it's not really the responsibility of the youth to limit their expression for the comprehension older people who don't engage with things they consider below them
german has even more extreme capitalization and english tossed out those rules. Maybe We could return to Something Similar to the Rules that German uses and That could be helpful for easy Reading?
or maybe english speakers just decided those rules were annoying and dropped them and people never missed those rules decades later when we forgot they ever existed
wiseowise · 4h ago
>> “it’s not signaling!”
> continues to provide reasons why it is signaling
kayodelycaon · 7h ago
It's clearly a deliberate choice by the author, not a grammatical error. They do use capitals for proper nouns. And for the record, you can disable automatic capitalization.
adamgordonbell · 6h ago
It has a button to captilize, which is neat.
The two versions read slightly differently to me. So I assume the slight different tone is part of the point.
hooverd · 6h ago
I don't know, but I find it quite unpleasant to read.
grg0 · 6h ago
I hate it too. If you want to avoid capitalization, then at least go all caps like the Romans.
khazhoux · 6h ago
my thoughts are too profound and vibrant to slow down for the shift key
wiseowise · 4h ago
It is also very important to reply “fr” asap, otherwise your “bestie” might think you’re “cringe”.
Like HFT, every nanosecond matters.
j16sdiz · 6h ago
The answer is simple: They turned off autocorrect.
With so many new, markup words everyday on social media ("enshittifcation" - i am looking at you), autocorrect can be annoying.
Keeping computer commands in notes also prompt me to turn off autocapitalisation
Once they are off, typing in lowercase is just natural
VladVladikoff · 6h ago
I have been to a lot of very loud electronic music shows in my life. For most of it I was young and foolish and did not wear hearing protection. Later in life I started to wear earplugs. I occasionally get waves of tinnitus in one ear. It comes on randomly and only lasts about one minute. I’m always afraid it will not go away. One day the wave will decide to just stay? I haven’t been to any loud shows in over a decade. I have no idea what triggers the waves, I can just be sitting in a quiet room and suddenly it will hit. And then nothing for a few weeks. Ears are strange.
dexwiz · 6h ago
I've been told that sometimes this is one of the nerve endings in your ear dying. Your brain doesn't know what to do with the signal and you interpret this as a steady tone for 10 seconds to a minute. I have taken pretty good care of my hearing and I still get them occasionally.
justmedep · 4h ago
Best way for me to get rid of my tinnitus was to get a hearing aid. In my specific case I got the Lyric hearing aid which is a totally invisible hearing aid positioned deep inside the ear canal and it is worn 24/7. It is known to reliably eliminate a tinnitus that is caused by hearing loss in the high frequency range.
memsom · 3h ago
I have had tinnitus for most of my life. When I was a child I had a massive ear infection that burst my eardrum on the left side and that is the worse side. Honestly I can just tune it out and it seems normal. It mainly causes issues in louder environments because it can be difficult to hear what people are saying. And it doesn’t need to be very loud. A bar with music and lots of people talking around me can be enough.
It is totally possible to exist with it though.
nozzlegear · 5h ago
I've got the typical high-pitched ringing kind that I've had for as long as I can remember, along with pulsatile tinnitus that developed several years ago, meaning I can hear a whooshing sound in my ears to the rhythm of my heartbeat. When I tell people about the pulsatile tinnitus, I like to joke and compare it to the heartbeat from Edgar Allen Poe's story "The Tell-Tale Heart."
Luckily neither of these tinnituses bothers me as much as the subject of that story. In fact they don't bother me much at all anymore, although the pulsatile one did cause a great deal of anxiety when it first developed seemingly out of nowhere. My brain has learned to adapt and ignore the sounds pretty easily unless I'm in a quiet room and have nothing else to focus on.
And a tip for anyone suffering: I've found that those "8 hours of brown noise" loops on YouTube work wonders for drowning out the sound of both regular and pulsatile tinnitus.
ehrjfjrjrfjn77 · 3h ago
I'm embarrassed to say I spent the first week or two with my pulsatile tinnitus fascinated by how rhythmically the wind was gushing through the trees outside my bedroom window. At some point I must have rolled over, the whooshing noise switching sides along with my left ear, and realised the noise was not coming from outside at all.
About 6 months after onset it disappeared as quickly and mysteriously as it first appeared.
Tinitus is misfiring nerves firing along the path somewhere from ear cochlea to cortex. From your description there is pain and discomfort for high frequencies also, it's not just a pure ringing that might even favor 1 ear? I did some research for a novel ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtxgpaXp9vA&t=4697s ) and learned that hearing is not too hard to understand, but it's mysterious in its perfection and a Job Well Done in evolution, the most complicated thing that comes already hard-wired.
Some 30,000 nerves along the path from ear to cortex in 4 neuronal stages. An awful lot. That would make pain and discomfort after hearing damage (and slowness of healing) a sort of canary that there might be some systemic problem with myelin or nutrition. (try "Key Nutrients for Myelin Support") and try to binge on those items if you are ready to try anything.)
I've had temporary damage with effects lasting a week. I was a sound guy and have at times troubleshooted crossover networks that peaked around 3kHz and it wasbad, but the very worst was dropping a 60lb steel theater weight onto a pile of other weights. Didn't even hear the sound but hearing went silent for 5 minutes and took a week to all come back! Also ultrasonics that were felt as pressure not sound. I recovered completely and have a rolloff beyond 13k that is probably age. But it's scary, I hope you heal!
This greg.technology gent is not just any ear blaster, he brought us Sonic Garbage ( https://sonicgarbage.greg.technology/ ) that has been featured here on HN. And check out his cheerleading offer at ( https://blog.greg.technology/ ). It looks like a good deal because I've exchanged emails with him and he is a plain spoken cheerful guy... the offer is not satire in any way.
obloid · 6h ago
I have had tinnitus for years, I suspect partly genetic and exacerbated by spending a lot of my 20s and 30s at loud concerts. But just recently I noticed I now have deafness to certain frequencies in one ear. I had an air leak a tire and realized I could hear the hiss of air escaping with one ear but not the other.
Protect your ears, folks.
neilv · 6h ago
> so now, i am one of those people that plucks their ears when an emergency vehicle goes by with the siren blaring.
You might get one of those low-end decibel meters that supposedly are calibrated at the factory (around $25 in the US), to measure how loud the sirens are. Maybe they're louder than they need to be, and you can request for them to be adjusted, as a public health improvement.
I've been meaning to do something like this. My city has sirens throughout the day, but one particular ambulance company's seems much louder to me than any other company or other emergency vehicle -- dangerously louder. As someone who walks miles every day, on major streets and near hospitals, the near-daily potential hearing damage risk has started to get a bit concerning. I'd like to have data (and make sure it's not just a frequency sensitivity specific to me), before I ask them respectfully if the volume can be adjusted.
lukan · 6h ago
I feel you, but I also think you don't need to buy special equipment, they might ignore anyway.
To get a rough reading, your smartphone can provide that data via app. Then you would have some numbers you can tell official people - and then they can measure again with calibrated eqipment if in doubt.
neilv · 6h ago
Is there an app you'd recommend?
(PhyPhox on my phone says it wants to be "calibrated" against one of those meters, but I haven't checked how accurate it is without that.)
gruez · 5h ago
If you're on iPhone you can use "NIOSH SLM", which is pre-calibrated for iPhones.
lukan · 6h ago
Unfortunately not. I tried it out one time, but don't remember the name. But there are many and the basic functionality should be the same.
rietta · 6h ago
I have had a touch of it for a few years. I have been very careful to protect my hearing. Always listening to headphones on the lowest setting. Always wearing hearing protection while operating lawn equipment. I have been an amateur competitive shooter and always double up with plugs and muffs. Then in 2022, I had a terrible double ear infection the same week I competed in a local USPSA (IPSC) match and boom that was it. Ironically the ear doctor thinks it was the infection. I showed him the system I use for shooting. It doesn’t bother me anymore though it is always there when there is silence.
Gualdrapo · 7h ago
I have it since I can remember, but got aggravated by two events:
(1) One time when I was going to setup the drums to play for a band, walked front of a tall speaker and precisely when I stepped in front of it a loud boom scaped from it; and
(2) covid-19.
It's kind of in "stereo", in the right ear is a bit louder and with a higher pitch than in the left ear. I can't imagine how terrible it is for people with worse cases but in my case I can live with it despite sometimes I have trouble hearing some stuff - but it's kind of uncanny sometimes I even forget about it until I remember I have it, like now reading "tinnitus" in the title of this article. Something like the yawn effect.
saltcod · 6h ago
Had a huge scare after a concert a few years ago. My ears hurt and were very poor for a few days after. Very scary.
Luckily it went away. I wear ear protection all the time now. agree that there should be laws governing sound volume.
ggm · 9h ago
Welcome to your new life. This upgrade is not optional and a reboot will not clear it.
Tinnitus has many causes. Most of them are avoidable but some (antibiotics) less so.
People's ability to internalise a coping mechanism also varies. My own ability rises and sets like the tide. Some days it's all encompassing and some days it's just the liveness check for the nuclear storage tank alarm which reassures me I'm not dead yet.
White noise can help. Tuned noise can help. Other sounds can help. Apple ipods are said to help. It's all subjective. Do you want to test a rather odd mouth fitted electrode plate and a series of tuned sounds? It might help, and is being licenced with Food and Drugs.
Seeing "the Who" live in Glasgow twice in the 70s probably triggered mine. Or a number of other over-amped gigs. But my GP assured me the drugs for blood pressure, or antibiotics, or any number of situations were just as likely or what is known as "idiopathic" which is Latin for "who knows"
My partners tinnitus is much more intrusive and causes her more grief, since she now misses much ambient bird song lost in the ear soup. Beyond commiserations there isn't much I can say, inside my own kilohertz whine sound bath.
sonofhans · 6h ago
Was seeing The Who in their prime worth the tinnitus?
ggm · 6h ago
I don't think some basic ear protection would have detracted from the experiences.
Pete Townsend has said his own hearing loss distressed him enormously.
wiseowise · 4h ago
I have a “mild” tinnitus that I only hear in complete silence.
Last time I went to a party, I pulled out an AirPods when we were (practically) standing in front of the speakers. Still remember puzzled and “not cool, dude” looks, lol. I’m not taking chances with this tinnitus crap after what I read online.
poink · 6h ago
I got tinnitus as a baby from ear infections and it sucks enough I’m very thankful I cannot remember life without it. That would be torture
mlconnor · 6h ago
It’s really tough, my heart goes out to you. I have tinnitus too but mine is much better than it used to be. Carry high quality earplugs on your keychain everywhere you go. And believe it or not, diet and especially sodium play a big part. Take care of your ears and they may heal and dial back the high sodium foods.
vladdrak · 5h ago
Tinnitus may be a symptom of hearing loss. I recommend you get checked by an Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) specialist.
ttoinou · 7h ago
Thanks for the reminder. Do you remember if it was mainly the mid and trebles that were too high ?
Do you also get hurt when hearing loud bass / infra bass ?
inverted_flag · 9h ago
I pray every day for a cure.
Spivak · 7h ago
The bilateral stimulation devices aren't a cure, but they do meaningfully help. My tinnitus is much quieter after using it.
inverted_flag · 7h ago
Did you use the Lenire? I was hoping the Susan Shore device would be available by now since it supposedly had a much better study backing it but it seems to be stuck in limbo. I’m not even sure if it’s been submitted to the FDA yet.
cheema33 · 7h ago
Shit. I have never been to a loud concert. And I think I’ll go without for the rest of my life. I do love my Bose noise cancelling headphones. I listen to music at a low volume. I am now wondering if the noise cancellation part that generates its own frequencies helps or hurts.
RIMR · 4h ago
I was very miserable when my chronic tinnitus showed up, but my life improved greatly after my doctor got me in the right cognitive behavioral therapy to learn to ignore it. After plenty of practice, it's now hard for me to hear it without actively listening for it, even though it is quite loud.
My advice to anyone struggling with tinnitus is to avoid silence for a while. Focus on anything but the tinnitus. Never give yourself the chance to focus on it. Buy bone conductor headphones and listen to ambient music instead of sitting in silence. Buy a white noise machine for when you go to bed, or run a fan. Then spend a few minutes every waking hour of your day actively listening to the sounds around you
Eventually you'll have trained yourself to listen to something else. As long as there's something else to listen to, even if it is very quiet, you'll default to listening to that instead of your tinnitus until it becomes something you do passively.
I might as well not have tinnitus anymore. I can't speak for everyone, especially not in regards to hypersensitivity to noise like the author here has, but I went from mourning the loss of my daily comfort to completely forgetting about the problem in a couple of months.
m3kw9 · 4h ago
Went to a jazz club and could not believe why the music had to be so loud. My ears were numb coming out of there for an hour
mirawelner · 6h ago
Blogs like these remind me of the time I was riding my scooter without a helmet. A lady in a wheelchair yelled “wear a helmet it’s how I ended up in this chair”
So now I wear a helmet
AStonesThrow · 7h ago
I sang in choirs for nearly 25 years. The scariest thing about it was that everyone thought that the way to test a microphone was to tap firmly & directly on the diaphragm.
They also thought they could adjust or move equipment without muting the channel on the mixer.
It is absolutely crazy to tap your mic when you know that booms are bound to reverberate from your powered-up PA system.
Microphones amplify human speech. They are not drums. Why not test them by speaking or singing in front of them?
I kept telling them that one day they would damage either a speaker, an amp, or someone’s perfectly good hearing.
wellthisisgreat · 3h ago
Can it somehow be related to having tight neck / jaw muscles?
pier25 · 6h ago
Both my wife and I started experiencing tinnitus days after the first covid shots. I will never be able to prove the shots were the cause but there was really nothing else happening in our lives back then.
In my case it was never severe but I've heard of people woken up by their tinnitus.
Thankfully it has mostly subsided. These days I barely notice it unless I'm in a very quiet environment.
instagib · 4m ago
I got mine from Covid. I’ve read that some medicines may have a side effect of tinnitus and stopping them can make it disappear.
Tsarp · 4h ago
Very interesting, I started noticing it around the whole covid time too. Somehow I associated it with excess headphone use from WFH, combined with lesser general mobility(bed to desk commute).
rendx · 8h ago
"Complex trauma opens up another possible pathway between tinnitus and trauma -- one similar to that proposed for the connection between tinnitus and traditional trauma. Let’s say, for example, that my parents belittled me constantly and that as a result I never felt myself competent in handling challenges. Instead, I was made to feel powerless in the face of adverse circumstances and carried this insecurity into my adult life. Hence, when I am faced with the challenge of responding to tinnitus, my sense of helplessness as a child reemerges and blocks my ability to adequately deal with it. As the authors of the EMDR studies propose, this would mean that to treat the tinnitus we would need to treat the trauma."
Phillips JS, Erskine S, Moore T, Nunney I, Wright C. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing as a treatment for tinnitus. Laryngoscope. 2019 Oct;129(10):2384-2390. doi: 10.1002/lary.27841. Epub 2019 Jan 28. PMID: 30693546.
Rikkert M, van Rood Y, de Roos C, Ratter J, van den Hout M. A trauma-focused approach for patients with tinnitus: the effectiveness of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing - a multicentre pilot trial. Eur J Psychotraumatol. 2018 Sep 11;9(1):1512248
Moore, Tal & Phillips, John & Erskine, Sally & Nunney, Ian. (2020). What Has EMDR Taught Us About the Psychological Characteristics of Tinnitus Patients?. Journal of EMDR Practice and Research. 14. 229-240. 10.1891/EMDR-D-19-00055.
"This brief summary considered literature from both the hearing and trauma disciplines, with the goal of reviewing mechanisms shared between tinnitus and PTSD, as well as clinical reports supporting mutual reinforcement of both their symptoms and the effects of therapeutic approaches."
"clinicians who offer tinnitus and hyperacusis rehabilitation should screen for suicidal and self-harm ideations among patients with symptoms of depression and a childhood history of parental mental illness"
"Good mental health/EMDR treatment with tinnitus includes a comprehensive phase 1 history taking, targeting any precipitating trauma experiences, and “float back,” targeting the negative cognitions about the present experience of tinnitus."
yeah, me too.
Got it from as a 16yr old being shown how to shoot a 3030 without hearing protection.
I'm sure its more than that, but thats when i first noticed it.
Hate it, but have learned to just accept it.
medhir · 5h ago
I got tinnitus in my right ear after the second round of mRNA vaccines for Covid in May 2021 that never went away, equally do not recommend.
If you’re going to concerts / loud venues regularly, please for the love of god invest in some decent earplugs. They go for $15-30 on amazon and come with a carrying case usually, it’s a simple habit that will save you lots of heartache down the line.
DidYaWipe · 5h ago
Stay away from COVID boosters then, folks. I'm really enjoying a degraded life from a nearly-useless booster. The disgusting part is that hearing damage is a scientifically accepted side-effect that researchers are afraid to speak out about for fear of being "canceled."
Suppressing side-effect information is every bit as bad as anti-vaxxing.
timmytokyo · 4h ago
I'm sorry to hear you're suffering from tinnitus, but what science is there to support the claim that the COVID vaccines cause it? Anecdotes are not science.
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?
- A faint multi-tonal background "hiss", only apparent during silence, never goes away but is quite relaxing. I'm hesitant to even call it tinnitus - Visual snow. I have early memories from at least 5 or 6, staring at the blue sky and noticing it's not pure (I see blue as everyone else, but with a very transparent layer of static)
I have attributed it to something "off" in the sensory filtering part of my brain
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
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...
No comments yet
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.
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'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.
proceeds to rip off ears
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)
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".
You might try alergy meds (pills or nasal inhalers) to try to clear that up. I wouldn't expect it to do anything for your chronic tinnitus though.
I also notice a low-level tinnitus when I'm in very quiet places. I keep white noise machines around to cover it.
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.
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
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/08/29/business/3m-settlement-mi...
I've had mild tinnitus as long as I can remember; my earliest memory of it must have been when I was about four years old. I suspect I've had it my entire life. When I was a child, I thought it was just something normal that everybody had. When I heard the Simon and Garfunkel song, "The Sound of Silence", I thought that was what they were talking about.
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://www.dwmaudiology.com.au/services/hyperacusis/
Coping was hard. Distracting yourself with various things so you dont think about it was key.
Things to try - 1) Keeping yourself distracted or occupied and trying to not be conscious about it for 50% of the day to start with, gradually improving to 90% of the day 2) White noise apps for sleep 3) Carry ear plugs at all times. Plug them in if watching a movie in a theatre or attending to an Indian wedding. Prevents worsening of the situation.
To those out there: you're not alone. The journey is different for everyone, and what helps one person might not help another — but with patience and experimentation, many find ways to manage and live fully despite it.
With that said, I don’t think it would lessen tinnitus, and I don’t think the parent comment was suggesting it would.
[0]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/120992
That’s just normal, but when I’m tired or stressed, my blood pressure is up, or I’m sick, it’s what most people probably classify as tinnitus and is at a much lower frequency, more of a high pitched tone.
A few years ago I fired-up a 15 kHz monitor for my Apple II and my then 5 y/o daughter held her ears and complained that there was a terrible screeching sound that hurt her ears. Between losing the top-end of my hearing with age and the end of CRTs being mainstream display technology I'd forgotten about tube whine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyback_transformer
It makes reading harder, and with modern tools it certainly isn't any easier to write—with both those things working against it I doubt it'll stick around.
(All the silly thing did was chain together stanzas randomly based on subjective "scores" I'd given to each stanza and the position of the "knobs" the user set for various "feelings". It was a fun gimmick 30 years ago. God. I'm old...)
the real reason is it's conversational. it's casual. it removes the gap between the reader and the writer
it's how people talk in a chat with their friends
in pretty much every language across the world, writing was always "formal" and lacked the voice of a couple of people having a chat. at some points, writing was even a separate language. east asian people did lots of their correspondence in classical chinese instead of using their own languages. the catholic church hated the idea of people reading the bible in anything but latin
then people chilled out and realized writing how we speak makes it more accessible to everyone. and that's not a bad thing, it's a good thing. novels started taking a more conversational style and some people looked down on that decades ago. now those novels are considered classics, and honestly, i'd attribute half of that to their writing seeming "formal" in retrospect because formal speech today is yesterday's casual speech. now people will revolt against modern writing and think it's below them. in 5 decades people will think this kind of writing is very formal
basically, it doesn't make it harder. it makes it easier. people write how they think and they don't worry about being perfect. and as another commenter said, autoformatting and autocorrecting tools just break shit more than they fix it these days. i can't even type "i have 5 pennies" without my phone correcting it to "I have 5 Pennie's" for some reason.
It’s one thing to have conversational style and another to (almost) completely disregard grammar.
> i can't even type "i have 5 pennies" without my phone correcting it to "I have 5 Pennie's" for some reason.
Let me guess: an iPhone? What a motherf**ing garbage the new iOS keyboard is. Hope whoever worked on it reads this and feels ashamed.
Yeah, OK, I should have written "for social signaling".
> basically, it doesn't make it harder.
Iassureyou,capitalizationisn'tbecauseit'spretty.Aspectsofwrittenlanguageareoftenthereforverygoodreasonsrelatedtomakingreadinglower-effort.
it is an interesting point to take, to claim that lowercase makes reading difficult. 12 year olds have no problem communicating this way and it's very easily understood. same with 30 somethings such as myself. it's not really the responsibility of the youth to limit their expression for the comprehension older people who don't engage with things they consider below them
german has even more extreme capitalization and english tossed out those rules. Maybe We could return to Something Similar to the Rules that German uses and That could be helpful for easy Reading?
or maybe english speakers just decided those rules were annoying and dropped them and people never missed those rules decades later when we forgot they ever existed
> continues to provide reasons why it is signaling
The two versions read slightly differently to me. So I assume the slight different tone is part of the point.
Like HFT, every nanosecond matters.
With so many new, markup words everyday on social media ("enshittifcation" - i am looking at you), autocorrect can be annoying.
Keeping computer commands in notes also prompt me to turn off autocapitalisation
Once they are off, typing in lowercase is just natural
It is totally possible to exist with it though.
Luckily neither of these tinnituses bothers me as much as the subject of that story. In fact they don't bother me much at all anymore, although the pulsatile one did cause a great deal of anxiety when it first developed seemingly out of nowhere. My brain has learned to adapt and ignore the sounds pretty easily unless I'm in a quiet room and have nothing else to focus on.
And a tip for anyone suffering: I've found that those "8 hours of brown noise" loops on YouTube work wonders for drowning out the sound of both regular and pulsatile tinnitus.
About 6 months after onset it disappeared as quickly and mysteriously as it first appeared.
https://www.tinnitustreatmentreport.com/
Some 30,000 nerves along the path from ear to cortex in 4 neuronal stages. An awful lot. That would make pain and discomfort after hearing damage (and slowness of healing) a sort of canary that there might be some systemic problem with myelin or nutrition. (try "Key Nutrients for Myelin Support") and try to binge on those items if you are ready to try anything.)
I've had temporary damage with effects lasting a week. I was a sound guy and have at times troubleshooted crossover networks that peaked around 3kHz and it wasbad, but the very worst was dropping a 60lb steel theater weight onto a pile of other weights. Didn't even hear the sound but hearing went silent for 5 minutes and took a week to all come back! Also ultrasonics that were felt as pressure not sound. I recovered completely and have a rolloff beyond 13k that is probably age. But it's scary, I hope you heal!
This greg.technology gent is not just any ear blaster, he brought us Sonic Garbage ( https://sonicgarbage.greg.technology/ ) that has been featured here on HN. And check out his cheerleading offer at ( https://blog.greg.technology/ ). It looks like a good deal because I've exchanged emails with him and he is a plain spoken cheerful guy... the offer is not satire in any way.
You might get one of those low-end decibel meters that supposedly are calibrated at the factory (around $25 in the US), to measure how loud the sirens are. Maybe they're louder than they need to be, and you can request for them to be adjusted, as a public health improvement.
I've been meaning to do something like this. My city has sirens throughout the day, but one particular ambulance company's seems much louder to me than any other company or other emergency vehicle -- dangerously louder. As someone who walks miles every day, on major streets and near hospitals, the near-daily potential hearing damage risk has started to get a bit concerning. I'd like to have data (and make sure it's not just a frequency sensitivity specific to me), before I ask them respectfully if the volume can be adjusted.
To get a rough reading, your smartphone can provide that data via app. Then you would have some numbers you can tell official people - and then they can measure again with calibrated eqipment if in doubt.
(PhyPhox on my phone says it wants to be "calibrated" against one of those meters, but I haven't checked how accurate it is without that.)
(1) One time when I was going to setup the drums to play for a band, walked front of a tall speaker and precisely when I stepped in front of it a loud boom scaped from it; and
(2) covid-19.
It's kind of in "stereo", in the right ear is a bit louder and with a higher pitch than in the left ear. I can't imagine how terrible it is for people with worse cases but in my case I can live with it despite sometimes I have trouble hearing some stuff - but it's kind of uncanny sometimes I even forget about it until I remember I have it, like now reading "tinnitus" in the title of this article. Something like the yawn effect.
Luckily it went away. I wear ear protection all the time now. agree that there should be laws governing sound volume.
Tinnitus has many causes. Most of them are avoidable but some (antibiotics) less so.
People's ability to internalise a coping mechanism also varies. My own ability rises and sets like the tide. Some days it's all encompassing and some days it's just the liveness check for the nuclear storage tank alarm which reassures me I'm not dead yet.
White noise can help. Tuned noise can help. Other sounds can help. Apple ipods are said to help. It's all subjective. Do you want to test a rather odd mouth fitted electrode plate and a series of tuned sounds? It might help, and is being licenced with Food and Drugs.
Seeing "the Who" live in Glasgow twice in the 70s probably triggered mine. Or a number of other over-amped gigs. But my GP assured me the drugs for blood pressure, or antibiotics, or any number of situations were just as likely or what is known as "idiopathic" which is Latin for "who knows"
My partners tinnitus is much more intrusive and causes her more grief, since she now misses much ambient bird song lost in the ear soup. Beyond commiserations there isn't much I can say, inside my own kilohertz whine sound bath.
Pete Townsend has said his own hearing loss distressed him enormously.
Last time I went to a party, I pulled out an AirPods when we were (practically) standing in front of the speakers. Still remember puzzled and “not cool, dude” looks, lol. I’m not taking chances with this tinnitus crap after what I read online.
Do you also get hurt when hearing loud bass / infra bass ?
My advice to anyone struggling with tinnitus is to avoid silence for a while. Focus on anything but the tinnitus. Never give yourself the chance to focus on it. Buy bone conductor headphones and listen to ambient music instead of sitting in silence. Buy a white noise machine for when you go to bed, or run a fan. Then spend a few minutes every waking hour of your day actively listening to the sounds around you
Eventually you'll have trained yourself to listen to something else. As long as there's something else to listen to, even if it is very quiet, you'll default to listening to that instead of your tinnitus until it becomes something you do passively.
I might as well not have tinnitus anymore. I can't speak for everyone, especially not in regards to hypersensitivity to noise like the author here has, but I went from mourning the loss of my daily comfort to completely forgetting about the problem in a couple of months.
So now I wear a helmet
They also thought they could adjust or move equipment without muting the channel on the mixer.
It is absolutely crazy to tap your mic when you know that booms are bound to reverberate from your powered-up PA system.
Microphones amplify human speech. They are not drums. Why not test them by speaking or singing in front of them?
I kept telling them that one day they would damage either a speaker, an amp, or someone’s perfectly good hearing.
In my case it was never severe but I've heard of people woken up by their tinnitus.
Thankfully it has mostly subsided. These days I barely notice it unless I'm in a very quiet environment.
https://therapistwithtinnitus.com/2023/01/31/is-tinnitus-tra...
Phillips JS, Erskine S, Moore T, Nunney I, Wright C. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing as a treatment for tinnitus. Laryngoscope. 2019 Oct;129(10):2384-2390. doi: 10.1002/lary.27841. Epub 2019 Jan 28. PMID: 30693546.
Rikkert M, van Rood Y, de Roos C, Ratter J, van den Hout M. A trauma-focused approach for patients with tinnitus: the effectiveness of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing - a multicentre pilot trial. Eur J Psychotraumatol. 2018 Sep 11;9(1):1512248
Moore, Tal & Phillips, John & Erskine, Sally & Nunney, Ian. (2020). What Has EMDR Taught Us About the Psychological Characteristics of Tinnitus Patients?. Journal of EMDR Practice and Research. 14. 229-240. 10.1891/EMDR-D-19-00055.
"This brief summary considered literature from both the hearing and trauma disciplines, with the goal of reviewing mechanisms shared between tinnitus and PTSD, as well as clinical reports supporting mutual reinforcement of both their symptoms and the effects of therapeutic approaches."
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/12/11/1585
"clinicians who offer tinnitus and hyperacusis rehabilitation should screen for suicidal and self-harm ideations among patients with symptoms of depression and a childhood history of parental mental illness"
https://tinnitustherapy.org.uk/adverse-childhood-experiences...
"Good mental health/EMDR treatment with tinnitus includes a comprehensive phase 1 history taking, targeting any precipitating trauma experiences, and “float back,” targeting the negative cognitions about the present experience of tinnitus."
https://www.emdria.org/blog/emdr-therapy-and-tinnitus/
I'm sure its more than that, but thats when i first noticed it.
Hate it, but have learned to just accept it.
If you’re going to concerts / loud venues regularly, please for the love of god invest in some decent earplugs. They go for $15-30 on amazon and come with a carrying case usually, it’s a simple habit that will save you lots of heartache down the line.
Suppressing side-effect information is every bit as bad as anti-vaxxing.