I’ve had tinnitus since my childhood. I’m used to it and it’s mild enough that it’s only a faint electrical sound that I hear when everything is quiet, but it would be nice to experience true quiet for once
I have tinnitus and I think it was induced by firearms and heavy machinery and equipment from when I was a young boy and teen. I’m indigenous so we did a lot of hunting and my family ran a construction business that I started working in when really young. We never knew anything about hearing protection back then.
But I can remember absolutely loving it as a kid to be able to hear complete absolute silence. Especially on a quiet, windless winter day at freezing minus 20 or minus 30 degree weather. The frozen dry air and snow everywhere completely removes all ambient sound. It’s even better at night time because the sky is so clear and the sight of so many stars and the absolute quiet makes it feel like you are floating in space.
I haven’t been able to enjoy that since I was about 12 or 13.
I have a question. Is the sound of the tinnitus the same as an old TV turning on for you too? That’s exactly how it sounds for me. A strange purely electrical sound that only is made by old TVs turning on.
I don’t know because I’ve had this comparison with other sufferers in the past and its hard to describe between strangers. What I do know is that there is one sound that is the same across many people … its the sound you hear after something hitting your head. Ever get hit in the head with a basketball, rubber ball or a flat object and you hear that loud pitched electronic noise? I hear that at a low level all the time forever. Most of the time my brain tunes it out and I live with it but when I get tired, upset or just not well … that noise is unbearable.
I hope yours gets better or at the very least, you get moments of peace in your own way.
That’s a good way to describe it
Mine is similar, a constant high pitched airy whine that never stops. Every once in a while I get the classic “ringing in the ears” that’s more of a pure tone that fades after a few seconds. Every doctor has been all, "your hearing is fine bro ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ "
Ugh. I was doing well blocking mine out until I read the headline.
Honestly just nice to see an article on a medical advance that isn’t full of breathless hyperbole.
Please, for the love of God, find a cure. I just want to be able to experience silence. Or even listen to quiet music without hearing ^eeeeee atop it.
Please everyone listen 👂 closely… eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
I can modulate my tinnitus sound by pushing on the trigeminal nerve on the side of my head. So it being nerve related (at least in my case) checks out.
Yes please! My right ear is driving me nuts, it’s never ending :'(
Same. I have to use a white noise generator on my computer when I sleep. I don’t know what I would do if the power went out at night. Maybe I should look around online for a good backup option.
Look into other types of noises, too. Like brown, green and violet noise. I found that violet noise better cancelled out my tinnitus and green was more soothing at night
At the risk of sounding childish, I’m not sure brown noise will help me …
To be honest, I’m only assuming that my noise generator is “white” noise. I couldn’t be bothered to look for one at the time, so I wrote up a core for Retroarch that just sends random numbers to the sound callback.
Yeah I encountered the idea of color noise and then just found 10 hour long examples on newpipe
i’ve been using mynoise.net at the office following a recommendation from elsewhere (probably from an old reddit post). i like it, because it’s easy to mix and change the audio, and what i need to help mask the monster in my head changes.
find a setting that works for you, donors to the site can get mp3 for offline use.
at home i use an mp3 on a loop, played by an old low-power (ulv chip, small ssd) laptop, its battery is its backup power. use vlc for the software, its original (and stripped-down) windows as the os, configured to not sleep when the lid is closed. it used to have linux but had issues with audio drivers. need to revisit that some day and set it up to boot off a usb flash drive instead for more ‘portability’ (use any pc).
i do not know if the mynoise web site works without internet once it’s going–haven’t tested that and haven’t had the internet go out at the office to ‘force’ a ‘test’ on me.
Been dealing with both of mine for over 20 years… Damaged them at an Ozzfest back in high school. Today the sound is maddening! I’d be happy just for slight relief!
Momp! Momp!
