Over the years I have seen a few threads on tinnitus. I have it very mildly and doesn’t bother me much. On the other hand I have had “floaters” in my eyes since I was a teenager (probably just when I noticed them). Until I saw a doc I thought I was going blind but apparently they run in my family. They are like visual tinnitus and my god do they drive me crazy. I find wearing sunglasses helps me ignore them but they can be brutal. I am a big skier and in flat light they drive me bonkers. Not sure I have seen these discussed here but maybe I missed it.
I've had them all my life. I remember watching a some video a few years back that said they're more noticeable against a bright/white background, which checked out with my past experiences. And judging by your skiing comment, probably for yours as well!
It's almost certainly my own damn fault I have it, but after at least 35-40 years dealing with it,tinitus sure as hell isn't my friend.
Mine is high pitched, and varries in intensity but has gotten worse lately. Sometimes it makes jus existing down right hard, but usually it's only moderately annoying and I can mostly ignore it.
I've tried an assortment of sound based methods to mask it or train my brain to tune it out, but nothing has worked more than fleetingly.
The only thing that reliably gives me a break is if I can really focus on something. Music (passive or active), cooking, and programming are the most reliable, but sometimes reading, gaming, or good conversation works. Usually, though, everything is done with a constant backing track of flyback transformer whine.
Wear hearing protection, kids, or you may well live to regret it!
I remember about twenty years ago reading a method on a forum somewhere for dealing with tinnitus to create temporary relief. Many folks claimed to experience relief from trying it. Maybe it will help you?
what the author is advocating for "befriending tinnitus" is a well established form of therapy (Acceptance and Commitment/ACT), it's generally very effective because avoidance or compensatory behavior ("trying to make the tinnitus go away / distract myself") is teaching the brain that tinnitus is a problem and is only going to increase the kind of alertness that leads people to focus on their tinnitus. It's the same way with insomnia, people who try to produce sleep efforts tend to worsen their insomnia, you need to befriend being awake.
There's a big psychological component to tinnitus that sustains itself because people view tinnitus as a problem, that's often larger than the physical impairment.
I have had occasional tinnitus, and once it lasted for a few months and then went away. Sometimes it appears suddenly, and I've taken vitamin B12 and magnesium and it goes away in a few hours. Vitamin D might also help according to some studies, but in my case I think it might make it worse. Not sure if placebo or not.
My dad has it really bad because he worked in a nightclub in his twenties. He would say it's like a jumbojet idling its engines nearby, all the time.
It's thanks to him that I started taking ear protection seriously.
I've had tinnitus for 25+ years after neglecting an ear infection while I was working overtime.
It's never disappeared, but the "rain on a tent" sounds from mynoise.net, fan noise, and having a Twitch stream on in the background masks it enough that it's not bothersome during the day.
of course even reading a thread on tinnitus makes mine worse. The mere fact of paying attention to it makes it worse, so I have a hard time seeing how a drug is going to help much. I do wish there was something.
Ostensibly mine is from high frequency hearing loss, which I absolutely have, but I now wear hearing aids and it has no measurable impact from my point of view.
I take comfort in that I can go long periods of time without noticing it, and I know that even though I'm focused on it now and it's loud, it will slowly drift to the background and below conscious notice before too long.
I certainly don't befriend it, but I when I notice it, I acknowledge that I notice it and move on with whatever I'm doing. Eventually I'll notice again, days or weeks later and realize I hadn't noticed it at all in the intervening time. So I just relax and move on.
Yeah, that's nice and all, but people suffering from tinnitus will tend to get downright angry when you tell them: "Just change your attitude to it." There's nobody with tinnitus who hasn't heard it 100x already. And it's not that easy.
It's unfortunate and surprising that there's still no effective drug, though lidocaine does, in fact, work. (Very temporarily, sadly.)
And time does help, at least sometimes. Over the past ten years, my tinnitus has gone from a 5/10 (highly annoying and noticeable above ambient noise, but not debilitating in any respect,) to something like a 1/10 (I don't even hear it unless I'm in an extremely quiet room and trying to sleep).
...But it sure ain't my friend, and never will be. It's hard to interpret it as anything but an annoying side-effect of self-inflicted nerve damage.
I've had it all my life. I'm 55. Mine is bearable and generally I don't notice it. Mine was caused by "glue ear" or more likely the operations to "cure it", which caused ear drum scarring and what not. I don't think that glue ear is a modern diagnosis anymore. Mind you doctors were only beginning to not advise people to smoke for their health in the early '70s.
I know what a variety of tinnitus is like (I've never known anything else) and I'm sure that other varieties can be horrendous. In my case time does not help.
Perhaps we ought to insist on a tinnitus spectrum, with multiple dimensions and some TLAs. I don't think that advice from a single data point is very helpful, or being charitable: annecdata. I'm glad it disappeared for OP.
Tinnitus ranges from, say, me (I'll live) through yourself (fuck! but I'll live) to committing suicide in despair at the extreme end.
> It's unfortunate and surprising that there's still no effective drug, though lidocaine does, in fact, work. (Very temporarily, sadly.)
There's some research, but yeah, I'm surprised that something that affects so many people and in some cases affect them very severely isn't receiving more attention.
At least there are things one can do immediately after the fact to limit nerve damage (applying intratympanic steroids etc), but even these things are often missed and haven't become part of routine procedure yet.
And I'm very curious why Shore's device is still stuck in FDA hell while the (from what I've heard) inferior version, Lenire, passed a long time ago.
30 or so years here, still 5/10 after all these years. I don't let it bother me for the most part, but it'll certainly never be anything but a negative thing.
I'll be honest, this is the first time I'm hearing "just change your attitude towards it" though. It's like the terrible advice someone with depression gets- just be happy!
Meh. My tinnitus is a result of high-frequency hearing loss. The hearing loss is not noticeable - maybe I can't hear something just below what dogs can hear? - but the tinnitus is noticeable.
I have no idea how it happened - I never used headphones much, I don't work around machines or jet engines, etc. One doctor said it's just wear and tear.
It doesn't bother me though. I figure that nobody has a full stack of bricks when it comes to health, and here's one of the places I'm short. Compared to some of the places where other folks have health problems, this is not a biggie.
IIRC it's only for a specific, rare variant, though?
There's also that surgery where they sever your auditory nerve and render you deaf. Some have done this in an extreme last-ditch effort to cure their tinnitus. Sadly, it doesn't always work -- many of those who tried became deaf and yet remained stuck with tinnitus.
I mean people with tinnitus can choose to get angry about it or they can... change their attitude toward it.
I have it. I've changed my attitude toward it and made it my friend. I don't really know what else to tell you, but if you want to, the way is open for you. Or you can continue to see it as an aversive thing, and it will continue to be so.
If you do not already use MyNoise to help you focus at work, then, like, what are you even doing? Sometimes I'll listen to music of various kinds if my work isn't too deep, but whenever I need to concentrate deeply on a problem, MyNoise will have the perfect noise blocker. Go explore the site. It's a lovely little corner of the "classic" internet: no ads, no shenanigans, just this one dude making a technical masterpiece that you can enjoy.
Over the years I have seen a few threads on tinnitus. I have it very mildly and doesn’t bother me much. On the other hand I have had “floaters” in my eyes since I was a teenager (probably just when I noticed them). Until I saw a doc I thought I was going blind but apparently they run in my family. They are like visual tinnitus and my god do they drive me crazy. I find wearing sunglasses helps me ignore them but they can be brutal. I am a big skier and in flat light they drive me bonkers. Not sure I have seen these discussed here but maybe I missed it.
I've had them all my life. I remember watching a some video a few years back that said they're more noticeable against a bright/white background, which checked out with my past experiences. And judging by your skiing comment, probably for yours as well!
It's almost certainly my own damn fault I have it, but after at least 35-40 years dealing with it,tinitus sure as hell isn't my friend.
Mine is high pitched, and varries in intensity but has gotten worse lately. Sometimes it makes jus existing down right hard, but usually it's only moderately annoying and I can mostly ignore it.
I've tried an assortment of sound based methods to mask it or train my brain to tune it out, but nothing has worked more than fleetingly.
The only thing that reliably gives me a break is if I can really focus on something. Music (passive or active), cooking, and programming are the most reliable, but sometimes reading, gaming, or good conversation works. Usually, though, everything is done with a constant backing track of flyback transformer whine.
Wear hearing protection, kids, or you may well live to regret it!
I remember about twenty years ago reading a method on a forum somewhere for dealing with tinnitus to create temporary relief. Many folks claimed to experience relief from trying it. Maybe it will help you?
It was text back then but nowadays there are videos. Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YyT9ZwWy5Jc
>tinitus sure as hell isn't my friend.
what the author is advocating for "befriending tinnitus" is a well established form of therapy (Acceptance and Commitment/ACT), it's generally very effective because avoidance or compensatory behavior ("trying to make the tinnitus go away / distract myself") is teaching the brain that tinnitus is a problem and is only going to increase the kind of alertness that leads people to focus on their tinnitus. It's the same way with insomnia, people who try to produce sleep efforts tend to worsen their insomnia, you need to befriend being awake.
There's a big psychological component to tinnitus that sustains itself because people view tinnitus as a problem, that's often larger than the physical impairment.
I have had occasional tinnitus, and once it lasted for a few months and then went away. Sometimes it appears suddenly, and I've taken vitamin B12 and magnesium and it goes away in a few hours. Vitamin D might also help according to some studies, but in my case I think it might make it worse. Not sure if placebo or not.
My dad has it really bad because he worked in a nightclub in his twenties. He would say it's like a jumbojet idling its engines nearby, all the time. It's thanks to him that I started taking ear protection seriously.
I've had tinnitus for 25+ years after neglecting an ear infection while I was working overtime.
It's never disappeared, but the "rain on a tent" sounds from mynoise.net, fan noise, and having a Twitch stream on in the background masks it enough that it's not bothersome during the day.
"Befriending" it though? Naah, I don't think so.
of course even reading a thread on tinnitus makes mine worse. The mere fact of paying attention to it makes it worse, so I have a hard time seeing how a drug is going to help much. I do wish there was something.
Ostensibly mine is from high frequency hearing loss, which I absolutely have, but I now wear hearing aids and it has no measurable impact from my point of view.
I take comfort in that I can go long periods of time without noticing it, and I know that even though I'm focused on it now and it's loud, it will slowly drift to the background and below conscious notice before too long.
I certainly don't befriend it, but I when I notice it, I acknowledge that I notice it and move on with whatever I'm doing. Eventually I'll notice again, days or weeks later and realize I hadn't noticed it at all in the intervening time. So I just relax and move on.
Yeah, that's nice and all, but people suffering from tinnitus will tend to get downright angry when you tell them: "Just change your attitude to it." There's nobody with tinnitus who hasn't heard it 100x already. And it's not that easy.
It's unfortunate and surprising that there's still no effective drug, though lidocaine does, in fact, work. (Very temporarily, sadly.)
And time does help, at least sometimes. Over the past ten years, my tinnitus has gone from a 5/10 (highly annoying and noticeable above ambient noise, but not debilitating in any respect,) to something like a 1/10 (I don't even hear it unless I'm in an extremely quiet room and trying to sleep).
...But it sure ain't my friend, and never will be. It's hard to interpret it as anything but an annoying side-effect of self-inflicted nerve damage.
I've had it all my life. I'm 55. Mine is bearable and generally I don't notice it. Mine was caused by "glue ear" or more likely the operations to "cure it", which caused ear drum scarring and what not. I don't think that glue ear is a modern diagnosis anymore. Mind you doctors were only beginning to not advise people to smoke for their health in the early '70s.
I know what a variety of tinnitus is like (I've never known anything else) and I'm sure that other varieties can be horrendous. In my case time does not help.
Perhaps we ought to insist on a tinnitus spectrum, with multiple dimensions and some TLAs. I don't think that advice from a single data point is very helpful, or being charitable: annecdata. I'm glad it disappeared for OP.
Tinnitus ranges from, say, me (I'll live) through yourself (fuck! but I'll live) to committing suicide in despair at the extreme end.
> It's unfortunate and surprising that there's still no effective drug, though lidocaine does, in fact, work. (Very temporarily, sadly.)
There's some research, but yeah, I'm surprised that something that affects so many people and in some cases affect them very severely isn't receiving more attention.
At least there are things one can do immediately after the fact to limit nerve damage (applying intratympanic steroids etc), but even these things are often missed and haven't become part of routine procedure yet.
And I'm very curious why Shore's device is still stuck in FDA hell while the (from what I've heard) inferior version, Lenire, passed a long time ago.
30 or so years here, still 5/10 after all these years. I don't let it bother me for the most part, but it'll certainly never be anything but a negative thing.
I'll be honest, this is the first time I'm hearing "just change your attitude towards it" though. It's like the terrible advice someone with depression gets- just be happy!
Meh. My tinnitus is a result of high-frequency hearing loss. The hearing loss is not noticeable - maybe I can't hear something just below what dogs can hear? - but the tinnitus is noticeable.
I have no idea how it happened - I never used headphones much, I don't work around machines or jet engines, etc. One doctor said it's just wear and tear.
It doesn't bother me though. I figure that nobody has a full stack of bricks when it comes to health, and here's one of the places I'm short. Compared to some of the places where other folks have health problems, this is not a biggie.
There's surgery...
IIRC it's only for a specific, rare variant, though?
There's also that surgery where they sever your auditory nerve and render you deaf. Some have done this in an extreme last-ditch effort to cure their tinnitus. Sadly, it doesn't always work -- many of those who tried became deaf and yet remained stuck with tinnitus.
I mean people with tinnitus can choose to get angry about it or they can... change their attitude toward it.
I have it. I've changed my attitude toward it and made it my friend. I don't really know what else to tell you, but if you want to, the way is open for you. Or you can continue to see it as an aversive thing, and it will continue to be so.
The post beneath this one is titled:
How Golden Is Silence, Actually?
If you do not already use MyNoise to help you focus at work, then, like, what are you even doing? Sometimes I'll listen to music of various kinds if my work isn't too deep, but whenever I need to concentrate deeply on a problem, MyNoise will have the perfect noise blocker. Go explore the site. It's a lovely little corner of the "classic" internet: no ads, no shenanigans, just this one dude making a technical masterpiece that you can enjoy.