I have tinnitus. I don't recommend it

5/22/2025 at 2:55:51 AM

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.

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.

by plaidfuji

5/22/2025 at 4:28:40 AM

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.

by sheepscreek

5/22/2025 at 6:28:21 AM

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?

by no_time

5/22/2025 at 8:06:17 AM

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

by t34t4hthh

5/22/2025 at 9:14:52 AM

It's so subtle I've for a long time wondered if it's something most people experience and don't notice, or they assume is normal, just because unless I think about it I don't really notice it either. I have been known to focus on details more than others do. Not sure if this contributes to my seemingly heightened sense of smell as well. But not being able to experience what others experience, makes me wonder if I'll ever know.

by circularfoyers

5/22/2025 at 10:03:10 AM

I always thought that was just blood flow in the ears. Would make sense if that would cause _some_ noise.

by laszlojamf

5/22/2025 at 10:49:56 AM

>It's so subtle I've for a long time wondered if it's something most people experience and don't notice, or they assume is normal

I wondered this myself too. One thing I do know is nobody was able to relate from friends and family when mentioning this. Visual snow syndrome (which according to affected people online can be very disabling) was only first described as late as 2015 according to wikipedia. So we may never know at this pace.

by no_time

5/22/2025 at 10:30:33 AM

heh welcome to the club I guess. I always knew it’s not only me, even though nobody knew what i was talking about when explaining these symptoms.

Not quite tinnitus, much less drastic than anyone describing their diagnosed visual snow symptoms. Could be a very mild case of VSS or an yet to be named condition.

by no_time

5/22/2025 at 1:24:18 PM

Aether noise is a great name for it. Just really quiet broad-spectrum noise.

I remember reading a long time ago that it was caused by "the neurons in your ears occasionally randomly firing" but I cannot find any source for that, so assume that it's untrue :)

by camtarn

5/22/2025 at 7:51:48 PM

The audiologist I went to said tinnitus is anything you can hear that doesn't have an external source. In his case, he's always been able to hear his own heartbeat.

by dakr

5/22/2025 at 9:51:20 PM

On that note, I can usually hear my heartbeat after any mild physical effort. Like a short brisk walk or waking up a flight of stairs very quickly. I’m not very athletic or fit, perhaps that could be a contributing factor. Not all the time though - if that is what your audiologist meant, that’s very cool.

by sheepscreek

5/23/2025 at 2:05:51 AM

There is research I only learned about recently that is showing that some tinnitus can be heard with a microphone (surprisingly), this is showing that some are due to spasms causing actual sound!

by mensetmanusman

5/22/2025 at 2:42:41 PM

I have the aural version of this. Buddhists might liken this to a nimitta, a qualia of your consciousness

by leche

5/22/2025 at 3:09:15 AM

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?

by sepositus

5/22/2025 at 3:42:50 AM

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.

by plaidfuji

5/22/2025 at 4:24:15 AM

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

by emeril

5/22/2025 at 12:40:03 PM

I haven't used this technique myself but I can ignore it most of the time, and I think that's an important place to get to. For me, I feel that a big part of it is simply acceptance. If I'd get worked up over it every time I'm noticing it, I think it would be a lot harder to ignore over time. It sucks but this way it sucks a lot less.

It's a funny thing - like a bear in the woods type thing. Sometimes, when its existence gets called to my attention, like when I started reading this story and the comments just now, I suddenly realize how loud it is - but also how I've gone about my whole day without any problems, despite it having been there all the time. Not sure if that makes sense, but that's my experience and it's - fine, really.

Not saying that you shouldn't try other things, and I also don't really know how to get there beyond going easy on yourself. I'm just saying that to me being able to ignore it makes a huge difference in my life quality and so I think it's very worth pursuing. Good luck!

by thrway482119

5/22/2025 at 11:39:45 AM

It reminds me to the intro to Odesza’s “A Moment Apart” album where an astronaut is up in space with a ticking sound and decides he has to fall in love with it for his sanity.

by tyleo

5/22/2025 at 6:28:33 AM

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.

by bvrmn

5/22/2025 at 8:46:28 AM

Next step would be to meditate on root cause of the condition. Whatever it is, your body/brain knows.

by Dolores12

5/22/2025 at 10:37:06 AM

The root cause is usually over loud sound breaking something in your ear.

by tim333

5/22/2025 at 1:24:59 AM

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...

by anonzzzies

5/22/2025 at 11:40:35 AM

From this I extrapolate people at risk of high blood pressure should be offered death metal concerts on prescription.

by harvey9

5/22/2025 at 6:27:43 AM

I'm in my 30s and I have tinnitus since my 16 caused by playing drums with my first band. From that day on I always wear earplugs to minimize extra damage. I really recognize the conference call thing. When i'm in group and I can't see people well or there are a lot of people talking at the same time I also noticed I lip read more than I thought.

by rzmnr

5/22/2025 at 6:52:59 PM

What band?

by khaoohs

5/22/2025 at 2:36:44 AM

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.

by jsphweid

5/22/2025 at 11:17:27 AM

I've had multiple times when my tinnitus has gotten noticeably worse. The path is always the same: some panic and desperation first, followed by some examinations and attempts of alleviation that do nothing, and finally familiarization and acceptance about 9-12 months afterwards that makes everything pretty much fine.

I'm sure it will happen again, and I can only hope that the acceptance phase keeps working.

by distances

5/22/2025 at 3:03:16 AM

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.

by mlinhares

5/22/2025 at 11:13:15 PM

> I remember reading this story about some woman in a scandinavian country who chose medical-assisted suicide because hers was so bad.

I think you are thinking of Gaby Olthuis. Her story is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzQ6kSqBOao

by magnetic

5/22/2025 at 7:38:05 AM

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.

by ajb

5/22/2025 at 3:33:19 AM

> 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.

by jay_kyburz

5/22/2025 at 3:52:29 AM

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.

by 0hijinks

5/22/2025 at 6:09:40 AM

Louder than you think, Dad! Louder than you think!

proceeds to rip off ears

by Biganon

5/22/2025 at 10:45:40 AM

I hear that theory but I don't believe it - I have tinnitus. Nothing else in the nervous system behaves that way - lack of light doesn't suddenly make you see blinding light etc. It's much more likely the sound sensor in the ear is jammed in the on position.

by tim333

5/22/2025 at 11:27:27 PM

There are various explanations about the genesis of the sound for T sufferers, and it obviously depends on the kind of T that one has (this chart [1] helps navigate the variants).

But if you are one of the "common kind", which is typically an insult to your hearing apparatus that damaged your cochlea, then the work from Susan Shore [2] is a reasonable explanation of what could actually be going on (genesis by the fusiform cells of the dorsal cochlear nucleus). You may be interested in checking out her publications listed in the wikipedia article quoted.

[1] https://www.tinnitusresearch.net/index.php/for-clinicians/di... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Shore

by magnetic

5/22/2025 at 11:33:47 AM

Amputees have phantom limb sensations including pain. I believe this is more than theory. Certainly medical science has collected at least some case studies over the past century about people who have had their auditory nerve severed for one reason or another. And, as I recall, the auditory system actually does behave unlike other parts of the nervous system like vision which is more mechanical and less dependent on the brain for basic functionality.

by ggandv

5/22/2025 at 12:03:20 PM

Well, perhaps some but I don't think it's the usual cause. Phantom limb isn't just loss of sensation, it's also having part of the body chopped off. Just having part of your body go numb doesn't usually cause that.

by tim333

5/22/2025 at 12:40:58 PM

It does and it is called neuropathic pain. Phantom limb is just an extreme case of it, but malfunction or damage to nerves can cause all kinds of phantom “pain”. Experiencing phantom sensations due to nerve damage is well known and widely documented, so phantom sound in the ear due to nerve damage is well in line with that.

by 542354234235

5/22/2025 at 4:46:25 PM

There is, audio nerve can be surgically cut, but this means complete hearing loss in one ear. The whole inner ear can be removed. You don't want it without a good reason.

From what I've rad tinnitus can be caused by a) shift in small transmission bones, can be age related. 2) inner ears sensors mess up, can be from loud sound. 3) something else, like infection, inflammation, inner ear pressure build up (may be Ménière's disease).

Hope technology develops fast, some sort of implant talking directly to the audio nerve. I think they already exist or are in development. This can give in theory ultra- and infra-sound sensitivity too, as a bonus.

by MoonGhost

5/22/2025 at 11:11:14 AM

I've read about an experimental surgery sometime in the past doing this, and the patient had no reduction in their tinnitus. Their sound wasn't generated in the ear.

by distances

5/22/2025 at 10:43:11 AM

I guess there might be ethical issues doing the surgery. Also it'd be quite hard to do as the nerves are in the skull up against the brain so basically brain surgery. But I was thinking if there was some way to figure which nerves were firing and kill those that could maybe fix it.

Maybe if you could stick something like a neuralink in there?

by tim333

5/22/2025 at 1:13:05 AM

There was an earlier thread on tinnitus https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21572827 where people had some techniques for relief. Maybe this could be useful.

by hyencomper

5/22/2025 at 5:55:56 AM

Several! In this one I shared what I did to deal with my case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33905368

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)

by mickelsen

5/22/2025 at 2:47:16 PM

so how is ur tinnitus is it completely gone or just reduced?

by firemelt

5/22/2025 at 5:21:10 PM

Gone, like 95% of the time. Reduced to me would mean lower pitch, quieter but still always there. My episodes resolve in a matter of hours.

by mickelsen

5/22/2025 at 3:58:25 AM

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.

by acjohnson55

5/22/2025 at 11:49:51 AM

This happens to me as well, I believe the official term for this is "Sudden Brief Unilateral Tapering Tinnitus". Seems like it is fairly common, and can occur regardless of whether one has tinnitus or not [0].

[0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21970850/

by kaitak

5/22/2025 at 6:35:26 PM

Oh wow, I have tried to research it, but never came across the name. This is exactly it. The neurologist (who I saw for a cluster of similarly petty symptoms) and the ENT I've seen about it didn't provide that term for me.

by acjohnson55

5/22/2025 at 6:29:19 AM

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.

by jama_

5/22/2025 at 12:55:38 PM

Same with me. It usually happens when I've been reading in bed for long and I unconsciouly get in a bad posture (neck). Correcting it, doing some shoulder and neck light exercices help but I've never associated it with pressure caused by lower body, mainly legs. Which it might as it also happens when I'm cross legged (and somewhat torso twisted) at the computer desk for too long.

by keybpo

5/22/2025 at 4:24:20 AM

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.

by D13Fd

5/22/2025 at 5:40:36 PM

I've had this for as long as I can remember. I have distinct memories from being maybe toddler-aged and having this. I've found that the Valsalva maneuver can make it fade away faster, as can placing your palm over your ear and squeezing it to pump air around. Always figured it was something to do with the pressure in my ear.

by skeaker

5/22/2025 at 4:21:46 AM

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.

by packetlost

5/22/2025 at 6:31:48 PM

> I have this too. My theory is the random "drops" are caused by the inner ear hairs attuned to that frequency get disturbed by something (like a shift in fluid) and overloading their respective nerves, similar to the afterimages that come from staring at a bright light.

Interesting theory. Yeah, for me, it often happens when I'm sitting still working. I have never noticed it in response to sound. But, yeah, I can imagine it being some innocuous physical thing in the fluid.

> The low level tinitus in a quiet room seems pretty normal to me, it's your brain looking for really quiet noises that are at the limit of what your ears can pick up. Or something, I'm no expert on it.

Yeah, might be somewhat like the hum when the gain is turned up on a guitar amp and nothing's playing. Basically just amplifying the noise floor. I'm not sure if it's true tinnitus, or just my brain filling in for the white noise I normally have in the background.

by acjohnson55

5/22/2025 at 3:10:35 PM

I got this after chemo. It hasn't gone away and probably never will, but it's not so bad. Unfortunately I lost a lot of hearing, too. Turns out platinum is quite bad for the ears.

by const_cast

5/22/2025 at 10:17:08 PM

Same here. Some days are worse than others. Like some of the other comments, I notice it most when tired or stressed. But it is constant. Chemo also gave me optical migraines, that show up most along with the increased tinnitus. Glad you're still here!

by holuxian

5/22/2025 at 7:08:38 AM

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

by Barrin92

5/22/2025 at 3:27:23 PM

Perhaps consider seeing an upper-cervical (Blair) chiropractor. I know I'm probably going to get dog-piled for mentioning the word since so many people think it's nonsense... a lot of the practices are, but the Blair system is very effective.

My girlfriend at the time told me I needed to try this "new pillow that's the best." I woke up with a kink in my neck and an ear that was screaming at me (2300 Hz for those masochists that want to know what it sounded like).

Took around four years to track it down and get it mostly solved.

The screaming is gone most of the time now, but occasionally I'll move a certain way and it will suddenly come back. A firm press with my thumb in a particular spot on the back/side of my neck for a few seconds will be enough to get it to go away.

by marklubi

5/22/2025 at 2:10:57 AM

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.

by labadal

5/22/2025 at 2:45:29 AM

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

by DontchaKnowit

5/22/2025 at 5:20:55 AM

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.

by EvanAnderson

5/22/2025 at 4:31:29 AM

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.

by philiplu

5/22/2025 at 12:51:17 PM

Its the same for me. Its always been there. I've also done a lot of activities over my life that make it worse, like playing the drums, attending very loud electronic music parties, and motorcycling without earplugs. It's just a low-level background sound that is part of my life, and I'm lucky enough to be able to tune it out most times. But reading this post and going through this thread has made it a lot worse.

Interestingly, my five-year-old was complaining about ringing in her ears being distracting at bed time, so I wonder if it is genetic too.

by j00pY

5/22/2025 at 3:09:46 AM

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".

by lbourdages

5/22/2025 at 3:30:48 AM

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.

by toast0

5/22/2025 at 4:00:29 AM

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.

by neom

5/22/2025 at 4:16:09 AM

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

by mackeye

5/22/2025 at 2:38:21 AM

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.

by blackguardx

5/23/2025 at 1:51:29 PM

I've started wearing a night guard/TMJ splint, by the recommendation of a dentist. It helps a lot in preventing my jaw from locking up during the day. Have you given that a show to try and alleviate some pressure from the area?

by labadal

5/22/2025 at 2:21:21 PM

In my twenties, I was slowly developing tinnitus, it was driving me nuts.

I work with computers a lot and my spine was paying a price. In my late twenties I started working out and doing yoga and later pilates to strengthen my back and straighten my spine. My tinnitus went away. Something was being pinched in my neck, causing the tinnitus.

I'm not sure this is your problem, but it might help someone out there.

by einaralex

5/23/2025 at 1:47:49 PM

I have noticed that my traps and everything around it feel a lot better when I work out. Hopefully I can continue to work out, despite recent minor injuries.

by labadal

5/22/2025 at 12:56:19 PM

you could have gotten tinnitus from medication. some medications (quite a few of the stronger antibiotics) are known as being ototoxic. my tinnitus started while taking antibiotics for a bad infection. I cant prove it was my antibiotic, but the antibiotic was ototoxic

by mrbigbob

5/23/2025 at 1:48:53 PM

I'm starting to find correlations that make me feel regret...

by labadal

5/22/2025 at 2:56:34 AM

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.

by mattmaroon

5/22/2025 at 3:21:59 AM

> 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.

by teruakohatu

5/22/2025 at 3:38:09 AM

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.

by jay_kyburz

5/22/2025 at 6:06:07 AM

Young people like intense experiences, blasting your ears out is fun when you're 18-24.

by presentation

5/22/2025 at 9:04:23 AM

Kids cannot grasp long term health. The military likes recruiting them because they think they're invincible.

by Yeul

5/22/2025 at 11:51:56 AM

Also have fewer qualms killing other people. Young people are more idealistic/poltical/murderous on average.

by ggandv

5/22/2025 at 7:26:26 AM

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.

by tmtvl

5/22/2025 at 12:56:09 PM

99% of concert performers use Monitors to hear their own performance over the crowds and have nothing to do with the loudness of the audience speakers. Stage Monitors can be just speakers at the front edge of the stage pointed directly at the band [1] or they can be sound isolating earpieces so artists can hear exactly the sound mix they want [2].

[1] https://audioinstallations.co.uk/blog/stage-monitors-how-do-... [2] https://www.newsweek.com/taylor-swift-eras-tour-cruel-summer...

by 542354234235

5/22/2025 at 1:37:03 PM

Not necessarily because of the band members, but yeah, you want to cover up the noise of people chattering away in the back.

Music can also sound better when it's louder, up to a certain point - if you're recording and mixing a piece of music, you want to do so at a very moderate volume, because if you crank it up loud some of the imbalances in the mix become less obvious.

That said, there's 'loud enough that the music sounds good and you're mostly hearing music and not audience', and then there was the Prodigy concert I went to, where I was wearing earplugs and my ears still hurt. Amazing concert, but holy crap, probably the loudest situation I've ever encountered. I've also been right in front of the speakers at a festival dance tent, and my earplugs rattled due to sound pressure, which was unnerving but quite funny.

by camtarn

5/22/2025 at 10:51:52 AM

Also the tech's probably cheaper and more capable. You probably needed a lot of money to get 110db sound in the 60s.

by tim333

5/23/2025 at 1:43:11 AM

Right and back then you had one, maaaaybe two monitor banks. It was a lot harder to delay the signal to the speakers at various distances from the stage to prevent echo effect. Now it’s trivial.

by mattmaroon

5/22/2025 at 1:56:14 AM

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.

by atum47

5/22/2025 at 1:19:29 AM

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.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/08/29/business/3m-settlement-mi...

by le-mark

5/22/2025 at 1:23:08 AM

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.

by deepsun

5/22/2025 at 7:31:54 PM

Earpro in military & law enforcement is a relatively new phenomenon and much of the world still doesn't do it.

by snovymgodym

5/22/2025 at 6:47:53 AM

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

by MarkMarine

5/22/2025 at 2:46:56 AM

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.

by nozzlegear

5/22/2025 at 4:39:30 AM

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.

by ehrjfjrjrfjn77

5/22/2025 at 7:58:13 PM

Glad to hear yours disappeared! From what I understand, the pulsatile variety is usually linked to something physical in the ear, unlike regular tinnitus. It's definitely the case for me, as one of the most interesting things about mine is that I can make the sound completely disappear by pressing on my carotid artery (e.g. if I were to take my pulse). That little detail helped soothe the anxiety by realizing that it's just something funky in the blood vessels around my ear.

by nozzlegear

5/22/2025 at 2:50:44 AM

Here's a better alternative to YouTube noise loops: https://mynoise.net/noiseMachines.php

by telchior

5/22/2025 at 8:00:09 PM

Neat, thanks for the link!

by nozzlegear

5/22/2025 at 4:38:41 AM

[dead]

by Kivern7

5/22/2025 at 9:14:37 AM

Another bonus of wearing ear protection in concerts: The music will actually sound way better when it's not saturating your eardrums. I got a decent pair of silicone plugs and it's a huge difference, everything sounds clearer and there's none of the sibilance and distortion I hear without them on, which I previously had always just attributed to the speakers/bad venue acoustics.

by yuriks

5/22/2025 at 2:26:02 AM

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.

by HocusLocus

5/22/2025 at 12:46:01 PM

>Tinitus is misfiring nerves firing along the path somewhere from ear cochlea to cortex

I've had tinnitus in both my ears for 25 years.

Knowing that tidbit you mention, I've always wo dered if it would be possible to invent a "switch" that completely "cuts" the communication between the ears and the brain (making you temporarily deaf . So that you can turn it on at nights while in bed, and turn it on in the morning.

That would be a huge relief. And can be "rougher" than trying to stop the specific misfiring nerves

by xtracto

5/22/2025 at 2:02:27 AM

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.

by rubitxxx10

5/22/2025 at 3:56:17 AM

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".

by acjohnson55

5/22/2025 at 5:26:28 AM

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.

by EvanAnderson

5/22/2025 at 5:31:02 AM

The whine you hear is not actually from the tube itself, but generated by the flyback transformer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyback_transformer

by AStonesThrow

5/22/2025 at 2:58:51 AM

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.

by tangoalpha

5/22/2025 at 1:04:21 AM

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.

by missedthecue

5/22/2025 at 3:20:04 AM

It's a zoomer thing. They turn off auto capitalization entirely to do it.

by SchemaLoad

5/22/2025 at 1:41:28 AM

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.

by alabastervlog

5/22/2025 at 2:08:50 AM

Somebody just discovered E. E. Cummings and thought "I'm gonna be original just like that guy!"

by MalbertKerman

5/22/2025 at 5:32:58 AM

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...)

by EvanAnderson

5/22/2025 at 2:55:30 AM

I did that in grade school. The teacher wasn't impressed.

by amanaplanacanal

5/22/2025 at 2:04:24 AM

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.

by forgotoldacc

5/22/2025 at 4:00:21 AM

> 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.

by wiseowise

5/23/2025 at 7:24:47 AM

Verily, it could thus be said that that grammar of thine is incorrect, could it not? Wherefore dost thou decide grammar shan't change?

today's right grammar is yesterday's wrong grammar. yesterday's right grammar is today's cringe tryhard writing. languages evolve

and tbh most people who demand strict compliance are always the ones who make grammatical mistakes and don't realize it

> What a motherf*ing garbage the new iOS keyboard is

is not grammatically correct. "a" breaks the sentence

by forgotoldacc

5/22/2025 at 2:08:06 AM

> it's not to stand out when every person types like this

Yeah, OK, I should have written "for social signaling".

> basically, it doesn't make it harder.

Iassureyou,capitalizationisn'tbecauseit'spretty.Aspectsofwrittenlanguageareoftenthereforverygoodreasonsrelatedtomakingreadinglower-effort.

by alabastervlog

5/22/2025 at 2:13:17 AM

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

by forgotoldacc

5/22/2025 at 4:01:58 AM

>> “it’s not signaling!”

> continues to provide reasons why it is signaling

by wiseowise

5/23/2025 at 7:21:54 AM

it's called communication, yes

if the mere act of people using language to communicate frustrates you, that is a personal problem

by forgotoldacc

5/22/2025 at 1:26:39 PM

[dead]

by thunderfork

5/22/2025 at 4:00:40 PM

Yes, that is how people type in chat, but a blog post isn't chat. What's fine in one medium can be annoying in the other.

by hooverd

5/22/2025 at 9:10:41 AM

It's standing out by doing what everyone else is doing ie being a teenager.

by Yeul

5/22/2025 at 2:02:31 AM

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.

by adamgordonbell

5/22/2025 at 1:30:13 AM

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.

by kayodelycaon

5/22/2025 at 1:49:00 AM

my thoughts are too profound and vibrant to slow down for the shift key

by khazhoux

5/22/2025 at 4:12:50 AM

It is also very important to reply “fr” asap, otherwise your “bestie” might think you’re “cringe”.

Like HFT, every nanosecond matters.

by wiseowise

5/22/2025 at 5:22:45 PM

also all proper keywords are in low case. if/then/else/define/inline/sizeof etc.. people develop a habit after a few years.

by MoonGhost

5/22/2025 at 1:34:00 AM

I don't know, but I find it quite unpleasant to read.

by hooverd

5/22/2025 at 1:46:49 AM

I hate it too. If you want to avoid capitalization, then at least go all caps like the Romans.

by grg0

5/22/2025 at 1:43:59 AM

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

by j16sdiz

5/22/2025 at 1:48:05 AM

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.

by msephton

5/22/2025 at 12:54:30 PM

Interestingly, I've noticed that when using my AirPods, it can change the sound of my tinnitus and make it sound like nothing I've ever heard. Its more of a fluttery sound.

by j00pY

5/22/2025 at 1:50:10 AM

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.

by richwater

5/22/2025 at 7:09:46 PM

If you think of tinnitus being a frequency (let's assume it's one for this example, but this all holds for multiple frequencies and losses) that is persistent, whatever you listen to will have that frequency masked or removed: you won't hear it because it is drowned out by your tinnitus. An audiogram hearing test (done via Health app, or third party app like Mimi) your hearing test will show that missing frequency (and more). After you activate "Headphone accomodations" what you hear will be boosted in all the right places by an amount that will counteract your hearing loss. So, you'll be able to hear the frequencies again! Music like you heard it in your teens. I think you can do the same on macOS, too. Headphone accommodations, Hearing aid and Personalised audio are separate but related features.

by msephton

5/22/2025 at 2:47:05 AM

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.

[0]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/120992

by turnsout

5/22/2025 at 7:12:23 PM

Headphone Accommodations (what I was referring to, adjust to audiogram), Hearing Aid (boosts speech, reduces background noise, and perhaps also audiogram) and Personalised Audio (measure your ears, and other features) are separate but related features.

by msephton

5/23/2025 at 3:26:16 PM

Yeah, Apple has made it as confusing as possible. But bottom line, if you do the hearing test you'll get an audiogram, which is great.

by turnsout

5/22/2025 at 3:11:56 AM

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.

by th3o6a1d

5/22/2025 at 10:23:23 AM

Yep. Had a DJ mate who religiously wore plugs to every night, wise dude.

Wear ear plugs at gigs, kids. Older you will thank you.

by specproc

5/22/2025 at 3:46:23 PM

What is amazing about my spinal-meningitis-induced-by-high-body-temperature partial hearing loss is tinnitus is more there.

Decades later, after taking one pill of Zyban (to help quit smoking, Wellburtin-class), I lost the rest of my hearing in less than 30 minutes … permanently, but tinnitus went like mind-deafening.

7 years later, I opted for cochlear implants: and what do you know, tinnitus is barely there, almost gone.

not sure how to explain this, but it is largely gone, this tinnitus. I suspected that natural background noise is keeping this feedback loops (tinnitus) from mainfesting in my auditorial part of the brain.

Hearing largely restored in terms of jumpy crescendo yet fuller-spectrum, but dang, I hear farther than ever did before, like in Jamie Sommers of Bionic Woman.

I still operate in a high-stress environment of frontline cybersecurity, yet am more calmer and more responsive.

Highly recommended, unless you value your musical skill over tinnitus.

by egberts

5/22/2025 at 6:43:54 AM

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.”

[1] https://www.dwmaudiology.com.au/services/hyperacusis/

by anotherevan

5/22/2025 at 1:30:35 AM

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”.

by jorgesborges

5/22/2025 at 1:41:02 AM

> 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.

by technothrasher

5/22/2025 at 1:42:41 AM

Are we talking about that thing you hear when in absolute silence in the dead of night? Is absolute silence even a thing?

by grg0

5/22/2025 at 1:52:35 AM

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.

by technothrasher

5/23/2025 at 5:01:55 AM

I realize just now I hear this as well. Always have. Always thought it was normal. Guess it isn't.

by rossant

5/22/2025 at 2:41:44 AM

Same. I guess that’s tinnitus, but I feel lucky that most of the time I seem to filter it out.

by turnsout

5/22/2025 at 1:15:16 PM

Having tinnitus for a couple decades at this point, I can tell you for a fact "absolute silence" is definitely a very clear memory for me. I would lie in my bed before sleep, and enjoying the experience of complete silence was almost part of my go-to-sleep routine. I'm quite surprised people in this thread seem to assume everyone always has some low-level hiss. I certainly didn't.

by davidivadavid

5/22/2025 at 1:41:32 AM

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.

by RHSeeger

5/22/2025 at 5:26:15 AM

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.

by whatevermom

5/22/2025 at 3:45:16 AM

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.

by justmedep

5/22/2025 at 12:22:47 PM

Sadly not everyone is able to keep anything in their ears for a longer period of time. For me, it quickly gets very tiresome to the point where my ears start to hurt.

by JayDustheadz

5/23/2025 at 1:32:55 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNjDBOJfMfY changed and possibly saved my life. I still have Tinnitus but it hardly bothers me anymore

by vldr

5/22/2025 at 3:22:31 PM

If I understand the ear correctly, you actually hear in the frequency domain (spectrum) rather than in the time domain (waveform) where a large number of "hair cells" are each sensitive to a particular frequency and once damaged they don't regenerate.

Thus older folks lose high-frequency hearing because those hair cells deteriorate first; thus you may lose hearing at certain frequencies and... why not, the cells can be damaged in a way that causes them to hear things that are not there, with the frequency spectrum of the tinnitus "tone" mapping onto the damage.

Comments? I don't see a single reference to "hair cell" in this comment stream so far.

As for broad spectrum hearing damage, and how young people think all parts of their body are immortal. I once in my early 20s spent a single afternoon playing ping pong in a basement in which a very loud amateur rock band was also practicing. They were to my right. It was so loud it physically hurt. A few years later, I happened to have a hearing test as part of the induction into my workplace, and... would you believe it... my right ear is about 3dB less sensitive than my left. The brain makes up for the imbalance, but threshold-of-hearing tests don't lie.

So I got to be stupid once. No tinnitus, no obvious disability. But ever since then the rule has applied: If it hurts, it's causing permanent damage, so avoid. Ear plugs, at least the wax type (Ohropax, from Germany) can be fairly discreetly worn if you must be cool and party near the big loudspeakers.

by MarkusWandel

5/22/2025 at 4:53:44 PM

> Comments? I don't see a single reference to "hair cell" in this comment stream so far

Hairs can mess up from loud sound. there was a story a few year back, a man killed himself a month after a loud concert. This is only one possible reason.

by MoonGhost

5/22/2025 at 1:39:30 AM

There is lots of active research:

https://www.tinnitustreatmentreport.com/

by 1970-01-01

5/22/2025 at 3:35:54 AM

Most, if not all, of that funding has been cut.

by freen

5/21/2025 at 10:56:25 PM

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.

by ggm

5/22/2025 at 1:39:08 AM

Was seeing The Who in their prime worth the tinnitus?

by sonofhans

5/22/2025 at 1:50:30 AM

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.

by ggm

5/22/2025 at 8:40:30 AM

You’re a good writer

by tomcam

5/22/2025 at 1:52:21 AM

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.

by VladVladikoff

5/22/2025 at 1:56:42 AM

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.

by dexwiz

5/22/2025 at 1:41:48 PM

As another commenter posted above, this seems to be known as 'sudden brief unilateral tapering tinnitus'. It seems fairly normal.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21970850/

by camtarn

5/23/2025 at 12:23:45 AM

I have permanent continuous tinnitus as a result of being exposed to high intensity noise and concussion association with 155 mm artillery in my work with Army. Although it never stops I can mentally block it out somehow but whenever I think about it it is always there, a loud, high pitched continuous tone. If I'm tired, sick or stressed it can be worse.

by Padriac

5/22/2025 at 1:36:32 AM

> 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.

by neilv

5/22/2025 at 1:59:28 AM

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.

by lukan

5/22/2025 at 2:09:44 AM

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.)

by neilv

5/22/2025 at 2:59:33 AM

If you're on iPhone you can use "NIOSH SLM", which is pre-calibrated for iPhones.

by gruez

5/22/2025 at 2:22:20 AM

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.

by lukan

5/22/2025 at 1:42:39 AM

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.

by obloid

5/23/2025 at 12:44:04 AM

I have tinnitus for a couple decades for completely random medical reasons.

Except for occupational hazard of being reminded of it once a year in IT newsletter by people spreading awareness, it's mostly fine. It only takes a couple of weeks to forget about it again.

Probably I should make an IT blog that brings awareness to the process of breathing.

by gettingoverit

5/22/2025 at 1:00:20 PM

For those who have tinnitus there are two sites i like to visit. one is a site that tracks new/experimental treatments for tinnitus (gives me a little hope on bad days) https://www.tinnitustreatmentreport.com/

the other is tinnitustalk support https://www.tinnitustalk.com/. it also covers upcoming possible tinnitus treatments and ways of coping with it

by mrbigbob

5/22/2025 at 1:15:27 AM

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.

by Gualdrapo

5/22/2025 at 2:40:40 PM

I have it for 3 years already, I feel so sad, I got this after my middle ear have infection because I cleaned my ear with cotton bud.

I think the doctor have done some malpractice to my ear.

I cleaned my ear because my sony xm4 in ear keep clogged and dirty

if I know, I would change the eartips to silicon since beginning instead foam, fuck the redditard who ridicule me for asking about tips to reduce the dirtyness of sony eartips

by firemelt

5/22/2025 at 5:15:10 PM

And what is the right way of cleaning ears? There are a lot of things on amazon, like endoscopes with silicon tips. These are new development.

by MoonGhost

5/22/2025 at 1:48:10 AM

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.

by rietta

5/22/2025 at 1:47:23 AM

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.

by saltcod

5/22/2025 at 5:25:25 AM

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.

by memsom

5/22/2025 at 10:58:51 AM

I've got mild tinnitus from noisy clubs and find one thing that helps a bit is to carry earplugs 247 (cheap wax ones) and stick them in if the noise gets over 90 db or so (free phone app). The absence of further ear strain seems to let the ears gradually recover a little.

by tim333

5/22/2025 at 2:22:59 AM

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

by poink

5/22/2025 at 1:51:07 AM

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.

by mlconnor

5/22/2025 at 12:32:12 PM

Wasn't there a research where they put very sensitive microphones in the ears of a tinnitus-affected woman and they actually were able to record something (noise/sound)? I wonder what came out of that.

by JayDustheadz

5/22/2025 at 4:10:10 AM

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.

by wiseowise

5/22/2025 at 10:03:46 AM

I got mine from a worn out bearing on a Toshiba 2.5" drive in a Toshiba laptop in the 90's. As this was a gradual thing, the machine getting louder every day over a year or more, you don't notice until too late.

by PeterStuer

5/22/2025 at 10:49:01 AM

That must have been a very loud drive.

by tim333

5/22/2025 at 4:16:11 PM

In the laptop under the palmrest is relatively close to the ear.

by PeterStuer

5/22/2025 at 1:04:12 AM

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.

by cheema33

5/22/2025 at 4:22:38 PM

Sounds like a ruptured eardrum if it physically hurts.

I had tinnitus and hearing loss due to rock concerts, but not pain. Get it checked

by hoppp

5/22/2025 at 7:44:26 AM

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.

by fexed

5/22/2025 at 9:21:34 PM

lift your hand to your hear and cover you ear with your fingers placed on the spot between the base of your skull and neck

then start drumming

thump thump thump thump a couple of times

will quiet it down a bit

then white noise machines at night if it's getting to you, until it doesn't

by thedudeabides5

5/21/2025 at 10:59:46 PM

I pray every day for a cure.

by inverted_flag

5/22/2025 at 1:09:25 AM

The bilateral stimulation devices aren't a cure, but they do meaningfully help. My tinnitus is much quieter after using it.

by Spivak

5/22/2025 at 1:14:38 AM

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.

by inverted_flag

5/22/2025 at 11:50:57 AM

Yep, I used Lenire. Based on the the comments on the internet I expect the other device to work better but Lenire was what was available and it did the job for me.

by Spivak

5/23/2025 at 12:26:32 AM

I’ve been reluctant to seek out the Lenire since a number of people claim it made their tinnitus worse

by inverted_flag

5/22/2025 at 11:17:32 AM

I've heard that even mentioning the word Tinnitus can onset it again for people who have managed to get rid of it.

by splendicious

5/22/2025 at 1:01:28 AM

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 ?

by ttoinou

5/22/2025 at 4:27:52 PM

Title is

"i have tinnitus. i don't recommend it."

Does it get automatically uppercased, I wonder?

by -__---____-ZXyw

5/22/2025 at 2:55:55 AM

Tinnitus may be a symptom of hearing loss. I recommend you get checked by an Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) specialist.

by vladdrak

5/22/2025 at 10:21:45 PM

Will someone please turn off the cathode ray tube Sylvania television? That high pitched whining is irritating!

by jaketheweasel

5/22/2025 at 3:06:37 PM

I have always been extremely sensitive to sounds. I can't even vacuum without ear plugs. While annoying, I feel like it has always been a blessing in disguise because I still have great hearing and no issues with tinnitus. People used to laugh at me/question me when I would wear earplugs at concerts when I was younger. I don't want to be one of those, "I told you so" people; however, if I could talk to many of them again, I would tell them, "I told you so."

by hirvi74

5/22/2025 at 1:14:46 PM

I keep foam ear plugs in my backpack. You never know when you might need them. They can be useful in the office too with noisy coworkers. ANC is good too, but sometimes it's not enough. Of course it takes much stronger events to cause tinnitus.

by OutOfHere

5/22/2025 at 4:04:45 AM

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.

by RIMR

5/22/2025 at 4:03:12 AM

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

by m3kw9

5/22/2025 at 2:21:50 AM

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

by mirawelner

5/22/2025 at 1:20:45 AM

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.

by AStonesThrow

5/22/2025 at 1:33:13 AM

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.

by pier25

5/22/2025 at 3:49:43 AM

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).

by Tsarp

5/22/2025 at 8:27:00 AM

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.

by instagib

5/22/2025 at 1:13:10 PM

Some medicines cause permanent tinnitus too by killing of hearing cells. Stopping them medicines then does not make the tinnitus disappear; it is permanent. One such medicine is valproate.

by OutOfHere

5/23/2025 at 12:38:55 AM

Valproic Acid is such a unique drug. They did studies which included it and found using only that substance instead of a compound with it led to the benefit without other significant side effects.

It’s on my list. Great news, 11% chance of tinnitus reported in one study and 7% in another. Tinnitus > Migraines any day.

https://reference.medscape.com/drug/valproic-acid-343024

by instagib

5/23/2025 at 4:39:02 AM

I hsd used it briefly for pressure migraine. It gave me permanent tinnitus.

by OutOfHere

5/22/2025 at 4:53:13 AM

Can it somehow be related to having tight neck / jaw muscles?

by wellthisisgreat

5/22/2025 at 12:47:41 PM

When I got tinnitus after months of high stress, the ENT told me that all of my jaw clenching may have changed the pressure on the muscle that's connected to the inner ear, and that could be the cause. I never got a definitive answer about the cause, and that seems pretty common.

I've heard that TMJ can cause it as well.

by PretzelPirate

5/22/2025 at 9:14:25 PM

Yes, that’s often pointed by doctors as either a potential cause or an amplifier.

by ku1ik

5/22/2025 at 2:22:07 AM

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.

by senectus1

5/22/2025 at 12:01:52 AM

"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."

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/

by rendx

5/22/2025 at 3:18:15 AM

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.

by medhir

5/22/2025 at 3:29:06 AM

[dead]

by gitroom

5/22/2025 at 3:08:22 AM

[flagged]

by DidYaWipe

5/22/2025 at 4:27:14 AM

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.

by timmytokyo

5/22/2025 at 8:46:34 AM

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11150672/

Some reporting in there, Facebook group survey, and Tinnitus (12,532) is the 44th complaint among nearly 700,000 reported in the Vaccine Adverse Effect Reporting System.

by instagib

5/22/2025 at 3:19:44 AM

[flagged]

by aerodog