Tinnitus

hunck said:
Mine is a constant high pitched white noise variety. It never goes away. Bloody annoying isn't it? You have to zone out of it somehow - having some sort of sound source like radio or something else helps in a quiet environment. It's one of those things that you don't want to get worse.
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Yes, it is annoying, I sympathise. I find if the telly is on, or music, I can for the most part (usually) ignore it, or at least I'm used to it. But in a quiet room, like at night, much more noticeable.


hunck said:
A noticeable loss one one side can seem like it - you feel somehow 'unbalanced'. Glad to hear it came back for you.
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I had a burst eardrum last year - went to bed with excruciating earache and strong feeling of pressure trying to push out of my ear , woke up in early hours of morning to find the pain and pressure had lessened, but there was also a discharge of fluid etc out of my ear.

Sitting in waiting room of doctors I had the curious sensation of sounds being from the opposite side to where they really were coming from... it was my left ear that had burst, and where I was sitting in the waiting area there was several chairs and then a wall to my left, but a corridor to my right. People walking past (on my right) sounded for all the world like they were on my left. It was the most bizarre feeling, which eventually went away but was disconcerting while it happened, being unable to discern which direction sounds were coming from.

Sometimes with the tinnitus when I get the occasional high pitched sort of whine noise, it often is accompanied by a sensation of my hearing moving across to just one ear. Then after not very long it feels normal again. Anyone else get that?
 
INT21 said:
Zebra,

Back in 2007 I had a TIA episode.

Ever since then I have had a 'zizzing' sound in my head. It phases in and out rather like the old short wave radio signals used to do. But it never goes away.

It isn't a problem except when I am listening to people talking really quietly, and then the noise drowns out the signal; so to speak.

INT21
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That sounds particularly annoying; I take it nothing can be done?
 
Schrodinger's Zebra said:
Yes, it is annoying, I sympathise. I find if the telly is on, or music, I can for the most part (usually) ignore it, or at least I'm used to it. But in a quiet room, like at night, much more noticeable.




I had a burst eardrum last year - went to bed with excruciating earache and strong feeling of pressure trying to push out of my ear , woke up in early hours of morning to find the pain and pressure had lessened, but there was also a discharge of fluid etc out of my ear.

Sitting in waiting room of doctors I had the curious sensation of sounds being from the opposite side to where they really were coming from... it was my left ear that had burst, and where I was sitting in the waiting area there was several chairs and then a wall to my left, but a corridor to my right. People walking past (on my right) sounded for all the world like they were on my left. It was the most bizarre feeling, which eventually went away but was disconcerting while it happened, being unable to discern which direction sounds were coming from.

Sometimes with the tinnitus when I get the occasional high pitched sort of whine noise, it often is accompanied by a sensation of my hearing moving across to just one ear. Then after not very long it feels normal again. Anyone else get that?
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Yes I've had that occasionally & am always thankful when it comes back. It's quite disconcerting when it happens.

The burst eardrum incident sounds horrible - has it healed & got back to your 'normal'?
 
Zebra,

No, nothing to do but carry on.

When I lost the hearing on one side I was lucky in that it was the right hand side.

I was a machinist, and relied upon the sound of the cutting to tell me how things were progressing.
The lathes had the work on my left, so I could still hear it.

INT21
 
It seems back to 'normal' (haha normal for us, eh? :) ) now - funnily enough it wasn't even in the ear where I get most of the tinnitus. I didn't know what had happened until I saw the doctor; apparently she could see 2 holes in it. She gave me antibiotics for it.

It took quite a few weeks to heal fully, during time my hearing was very bad in that ear to the point where I was actually putting subtitles on the telly so I could understand what was going on.

I've had ear infections many times, but that's the first time that's happened.
 
INT21 said:
Zebra,

No, nothing to do but carry on.
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Sometimes that's all we can do, isn't it, when life throws us these things. :)


INT21 said:
When I lost the hearing on one side I was lucky in that it was the right hand side.

I was a machinist, and relied upon the sound of the cutting to tell me how things were progressing.
The lathes had the work on my left, so I could still hear it.

INT21
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That was fortunate, at least.
 
Well she got the wax out, such a lil bit causing that much hassle, and Zebra, the thing about hearing the sound coming from the side its not on, i got that, it does throw you a tad, I suppose its the brain trying to make it easy for us, like, there is a sound here, I know you cant hear it in that tab, I'll just send it to the other, bit like delivering a package to next door if you arnt in.
 
Shady said:
Well she got the wax out, such a lil bit causing that much hassle, and Zebra, the thing about hearing the sound coming from the side its not on, i got that, it does throw you a tad, I suppose its the brain trying to make it easy for us, like, there is a sound here, I know you cant hear it in that tab, I'll just send it to the other, bit like delivering a package to next door if you arnt in.
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Haha I love that analogy!!! :D

Did you get some wax removed from your ear, Shady? Has that helped?
 
I have had tinnitus for a long time now, but the wax made me slightly deaf in my left ear, and it annoyed the hell out of me because it seemed my tinnitus increased, probably because i could hear it more , but she got it out now and i can hear much better, ill never be rid of it so you just resign yourself to this fact for now, i really gotta stop coming here.
 
I had a similar issue - hearing loss in one ear, due to a ruptured ear drum, made the tinnitus much worse. I assumed it was because not being able to hear so well from external stimuli made the "internal" noise of tinnitus seem louder by comparison.

Mine comes and goes - usually a high pitched whine, occasionally something more akin to radio static, though less often that one these days. Sometimes hear what sounds almost like muffled music, a kind of auditory hallucination - I don't know if it's related, but I've read accounts of other tinnitus sufferers experiencing something similar.

In my case, it all comes from years of playing bass, DJing and going to gigs without ear protection until it was too late - it was only once I started suffering that I realised why people wear ear plugs, by which point it was all rather late to do anything about it!
 
I just read this
His treatment for this condition involved wearing a small electronic device that generated a low-level, broadband sound (white noise) that "helped his brain put the tinnitus in the background" – a process known as habituation.

Anybody heard of this and can throw any light on it?
 
I do know some factories and industrial facilities play "anti-noise" (there must be a technical term) to cancel out the sound of deafening machinery, so you don't need to wear ear protectors. Could be the same thing only smaller?
 
Shady said:
I just read this
His treatment for this condition involved wearing a small electronic device that generated a low-level, broadband sound (white noise) that "helped his brain put the tinnitus in the background" – a process known as habituation.

Anybody heard of this and can throw any light on it?
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Adding sound may be done for the sake of masking the apparent tinnitus noise in and of itself, or as an adjunct to achieving habituation.

Masking is an older approach to treating tinnitus. It involves adding preferable sounds (anything from music to white / pink noise) to cover up the perceived noise. It's a passive remedy, and it may or may not work well depending on the patient's particular situation.

Habituation basically means actively training (tricking?) oneself (or, more accurately, one's brain ... ) into reducing one's responses to the tinnitus stimuli. It doesn't remove the apparent noise per se - instead it's intended to mitigate the disruptive effects of the noise.

The first step is to minimize the stress-inducing aspects of the noise (i.e., training oneself to not be put 'on edge' in response to the perceived noise). As one progresses, each attained level or milestone is marked by the brain's increasing ability (as far as what the patient perceives ... ) to recede the tinnitus stimuli into the background or eliminate them from conscious perception altogether.

Adding sound is not a requirement for pursuing habituation. Some use added sounds, some don't.
 
GNC said:
I do know some factories and industrial facilities play "anti-noise" (there must be a technical term) to cancel out the sound of deafening machinery, so you don't need to wear ear protectors. Could be the same thing only smaller?
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No. Tinnitus is the perception of noise-like aural stimuli arising from the patient's own body (nerves; auditory organs; etc.). It doesn't involve external sounds at all (except as triggering events).

As a result, there's no exterior noise-cancellation strategy that's likely to have any effect on tinnitus (except, perhaps, for minimizing external trigger-noises).
 
So much for my dreams of making a fortune! What about an implant that makes a noise from within the ear?
 
I have tinnitus. I have found that acupuncture had very positive results in treating it, and my clinician insisted that it was related to my consumption of dairy products. After 2 treatments of acupuncture over 2 weeks the symptoms of tinnitus went away for 8 weeks. When my friend was training in TCM she was able to keep my tinnitus away for about a year as I agreed to let her practice on me provided I didn't have to pay. As a result I found that acupuncture was great at treating chronic aches and pains. I also had an interesting incident where while being treated for a headache I was given a needle between the toes that was so painful I yelped and jumped, but my headache, which had been ongoing for about 8 hours (asprin helped for an hour or 2) was also totally gone. While many modern medical practitioners dismiss acupuncture as non-scientific and basically snake oil, evidence based medicine studies show that it consistently performs over the threshold of placebo effectiveness. We must also remember that many modern medical practitioners have a vested interest in dismissing their competition. The purpose of this comment is not to belittle science, but to suggest there is more to acupuncture than they suggest. The notion that acupuncture affects the parasympathetic nervous system (which is very ancient and lies in our skin, which is probably our oldest organ), providing a means of "hacking" our body's responses is intriguing to me. For people who hate having tinnitus, I would suggest that if nothing else works for you, give acupuncture a go, for at least temporary relief.
 
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AlchoPwn said:
I have tinnitus. I have found that acupuncture had very positive results in treating it, and my clinician insisted that it was related to my consumption of dairy products. After 2 treatments of acupuncture over 2 weeks the symptoms of tinnitus went away for 8 weeks. When my friend was training in TCM she was able to keep my tinnitus away for about a year as I agreed to let her practice on me provided I didn't have to pay. As a result I found that acupuncture was great at treating chronic aches and pains. I also had an interesting incident where while being treated for a headache I was given a needle between the toes that was so painful I yelped and jumped, but my headache, which had been ongoing for about 8 hours (asprin helped for an hour or 2) was also totally gone. While many modern medical practitioners dismiss acupuncture as non-scientific and basically snake oil, evidence based medicine studies show that it consistently performs over the threshold of placebo effectiveness. We must also remember that many modern medical practitioners have a vested interest in dismissing their competition. The purpose of this comment is not to belittle science, but to suggest there is more to acupuncture than they suggest. The notion that acupuncture affects the parasympathetic nervous system (which is very ancient and lies in our skin, which is probably our oldest organ), providing a means of "hacking" our body's responses is intriguing to me. For people who hate having tinnitus, I would suggest that if nothing else works for you, give acupuncture a go, for at least temporary relief.
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totally get the benefits of acupuncture. It did wonders the first time on my cat who had cancer. Good p;ost.
 
Sticking your tongue in a socket at home is not encouraged.

Tinnitus—a constant ringing or buzzing in the ears that affects about 15% of people—is difficult to understand and even harder to treat. Now, scientists have shown shocking the tongue—combined with a carefully designed sound program—can reduce symptoms of the disorder, not just while patients are being treated, but up to 1 year later.

It’s “really important” work, says Christopher Cederroth, a neurobiologist at the University of Nottingham, University Park, who was not involved with the study. The finding, he says, joins other research that has shown “bimodal” stimulation—which uses sound alongside some kind of gentle electrical shock—can help the brain discipline misbehaving neurons.

Hubert Lim, a biomedical engineer at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, hit on the role of the tongue in tinnitus by accident. A few years ago, he experimented with using a technique called deep brain stimulation to restore his patients’ hearing. When he inserted a pencil-size rod covered in electrodes directly into the brains of five patients, some of those electrodes landed slightly outside the target zone—a common problem with deep brain stimulation, Lim says. Later, when he started up the device to map out its effects on the brain, a patient who had been bothered by ringing ears for many years, said, “Oh, my tinnitus! I can’t hear my tinnitus,” Lim recalls. ...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/electric-shocks-tongue-can-quiet-chronic-ringing-ears
 
Newly announced research results suggest there may finally be an objective way to identify and measure tinnitus.

Finally, Scientists Have Developed an Objective Way to Measure Tinnitus

Some experiences in life are hard to describe, but that doesn't make them any less real. Around the world up to 20 percent of people experience a chronic phantom ringing or buzzing in their ears, known as tinnitus.

The sounds - often high-pitched - are not connected to any known acoustic stimuli, and today, diagnosis depends solely on subjective experiences relayed by patients. Now, scientists in Australia think they have devised a method to 'see' the perception of tinnitus in the brain.
It could be the first objective clinical tool for measuring someone's tinnitus, and a step towards finding ways to treat this widespread and incurable condition.

In recent years, brain imaging studies in both animals and humans have shown tinnitus is linked to an increase in neural firing as well as changes in connectivity within certain brain regions. Still, it's only with the advent of new technology that we've come closer to a proper assessment based on this relationship.

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a non-invasive, portable and virtually silent instrument that allows scientists to measure brain blood flow activity related to sound better than ever before.

In 2014, fNIRS was used for the first time to measure tinnitus perceptions in the brain, and the results revealed increased blood flow activity in the right auditory cortex. Further clinical research using this technology showed increased activity not just in the auditory cortex but also in nearby non-auditory regions, such as the frontal cortex and some visual processing areas. ...

FULL STORY:
https://www.sciencealert.com/scient...-to-objectively-measure-tinnitus-in-the-brain

PUBLISHED RESEARCH REPORT (In Full):
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0241695
 
I bought some special tinnitus-reducing earplugs made by Flare Audio recently.
They don't work for me.
 
Mythopoeika said:
I bought some special tinnitus-reducing earplugs made by Flare Audio recently.
They don't work for me.
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How are they claimed to work? As far as I know there's nothing currently available which will reduce tinnitus.
 
hunck said:
How are they claimed to work? As far as I know there's nothing currently available which will reduce tinnitus.
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It depends ... Tinnitus (perception of persistent / troublesome sound(s)) is a symptom, not a specific causal condition. The perception of sound may be caused by factors that are 'internal' (e.g., within the nervous system; unrelated to objective sounds), 'external' (sensitivity or magnification of actual incoming sound) or both.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
hearing aids do.
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Not really - you wouldn't have hearing aids unless your hearing was a bit iffy. For deaf people with tinnitus, because they don't hear well, the tinnitus can seem very loud because they don't have so much external sound input.

What a hearing aid does is amplify the external sound so it becomes louder in relation to & helps to mask the tinnitus which remains at a more constant apparent volume.
 
hunck said:
Not really - you wouldn't have hearing aids unless your hearing was a bit iffy. For deaf people with tinnitus, because they don't hear well, the tinnitus can seem very loud because they don't have so much external sound input.

What a hearing aid does is amplify the external sound so it becomes louder in relation to & helps to mask the tinnitus which remains at a more constant apparent volume.
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No it does, I'm a bit deaf have tinnitus, and wear hearing aids - they really tone the tinnitus down.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
No it does, I'm a bit deaf have tinnitus, and wear hearing aids - they really tone the tinnitus down.
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I would still contend that that what's happening is you're masking the internal tinnitus by increasing external sound. When you take the hearing aids out, is your tinnitus less? If not, they aren't decreasing it.

Whatever, it's good that you get some improvement & relief from the hearing aids.
 
Research into motion sickness in driverless cars as shown that this can be reduced by having
a small vibration device just being the ear, one of the people on the trial was also a tinnitus
sufferer and found the device also reduced tinnitus to the point were she did not want to
return it.
 
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