The struggle of tinnitus

If mine was a proper chord, it wouldn't be so bad. But it's dissonant as can be.

Back when I was damaging my hearing, I actually thought it was funny when I couldn't hear right for days and everyone was talking in bad SSB voices when I could finally hear.

I guess this is the part where I pay for my sins. Alas.

a reply to: Bloodydagger
That's pretty harsh I got to say. If its not stop after a while its got to drive you nuts. I mean I cant even stand water dripping from the faucet in the background, it annoys the hell out of me. But that, well good luck dude. I however do get ringing in my ears, it comes once in a while, generally as I am going to sleep. Its rare though, sometimes I go for months without it happening, and it only lasts a few minutes at most or till I go to sleep.

There are a bunch of so called cures online for tinnitus, dont know if they work. Besides I think you probably tried them all already, but you never know, its always best to keep an open mind and look around, probably even try some of these wackier so called cures see if it does anything. I mean you have nothing to lose really. But ya! Its got to be annoying as hell, to always have that ringing/vibing in your ears.

a reply to: texasgirl
There are all kinds of sounds out of the range of human hearing, there all around us all the time, in some cases even the planets and the entire solar system vibrates at a certain range, if you had crazy superhuman hearing you probably could even hear the background radiation from the time when the galaxies were first formed. At least some of those sounds my not all be in your head. Or who knows, just saying you know.

Here try listening to this.

a reply to: Xtrozero

I know what you mean about the volume. There are times when my wife is sitting next to me I will suddenly look at her and say, "Can you hear that?". Of course she has no idea what I am talking about. Its so loud to me I cant believe everyone in the area doesn't hear it. Then I remember its not really there, its just for me. Don't I feel special...

originally posted by: galadofwarthethird
...in some cases even the planets and the entire solar system vibrates at a certain range

Sound doesn't propagate through a vacuum. The stuff you hear on youtube et al about being "the sound from venus" or the like is badly explained. It's radio signals from a receiver with some added manipulation to make them sound more interesting.

...if you had crazy superhuman hearing you probably could even hear the background radiation from the time when the galaxies were first formed. At least some of those sounds my not all be in your head. Or who knows, just saying you know.

Those would also be radio signals, not sound. You can't hear radio.

Tinnitus sucks. But I don't think there's a real group of never-ending dissonant violins out there somewhere serenading my right ear.

eta: you can actually pick up some people's tinnitus by shoving a really sensitive microphone in their ear. Never tried it with mine.

I have had tinnitus since I was 20, I am 38 now. I have ringing and sometimes a humming sound.

I don't really notice it in the day, but night time when its quiet, it really stands out.

I always say to people they are so lucky to be able to lie in bed and hear nothing , only the noise outside or a ticking of a clock.

Mine was caused by playing in bands and seeing a lot of live music when I was younger.

I just except it now. There is no cure, and I don't think there will be one in my life time.

It could be worse though. I went to a tinnitus group. and some people hear a single song being played over and over! Imagine having a Jed wood song or another song you hate played over and over again in your head!

yep, had it for many years, so long that i'm almost used to it. too many LOUD band rehearsals did for my hearing. some nights i'd return home and everything sounded like it was underwater, and stayed that way for 24 hours or more. now it's most annoying at night in the quiet of my bed, a continual, high-pitched drone that varies in volume.

a reply to: Bedlam
Well not all sound is sound, but its all interpreted as sound in the mind. You should be glad you can not hear radiowaves I suppose, it would then be a thousand times worse, so much crap out there.

Or I suppose hearing color would be even worse. Though this guy seems to get off it, he even trained himself the hear colors.

eta: you can actually pick up some people's tinnitus by shoving a really sensitive microphone in their ear. Never tried it with mine.

That may be a heart or blood pressure condition. Kind of like listening to you heartbeat on a silent night.

Mine is terrible. Sometimes it's so loud I have to turn up the volume on the radio, TV, or computer to hear it. I'm losing my hearing anyway, and the tinnitus is the icing on the sucky cake. While I've had bouts of it off and on since childhood, the constant loud ringing started 3 years ago. I had pneumonia and an antibiotic started it up. It's never stopped since. Caffeine intensifies it dramatically. But that's a "I'll just have to live with it" thing.

I truly feel for you, friend. Tinnitus is not fun.

/TOA

a reply to: Bloodydagger

My wife and I were both front people of our own bands for years. Her music was more pop-like and mine was pure metal. Guess who ironically got the constant ringing ears?

I do get it occasionally some nights but she has it 24-7 and pretty bad. She's learned to cope with it for the most part but some days it seems to get to her more.

One trick I learned for mine that works most of the time is yelling in my head at the same pitch of the ringing until I drown it out with my "brain voice". After I quit yelling at that pitch, the ringing of that pitch is also gone. I go through all the pitches of the ringing one by one until it's all gone. Doesn't always work but it does the trick most of the time.

Ear plug fell out at a shooting range in 2000.

Went completely deaf in right ear.

Tinnitus is extremely annoying.

originally posted by: Cuervo
a reply to: Bloodydagger

My wife and I were both front people of our own bands for years. Her music was more pop-like and mine was pure metal. Guess who ironically got the constant ringing ears?

I do get it occasionally some nights but she has it 24-7 and pretty bad. She's learned to cope with it for the most part but some days it seems to get to her more.

One trick I learned for mine that works most of the time is yelling in my head at the same pitch of the ringing until I drown it out with my "brain voice". After I quit yelling at that pitch, the ringing of that pitch is also gone. I go through all the pitches of the ringing one by one until it's all gone. Doesn't always work but it does the trick most of the time.

Thanks for sharing!

Luckily, mine isn't THAT bad. But I am curious if it starts out soft and gets worse? Ive had mine for 20 years now and its always been about the same noise ratio.

posting this old rehearsal tune as a more visceral explanation of my tinnitus. this was recorded live in our rehearsal room back in the day, using 2 mics hung from the ceiling, the signal fed into a stereo cassette tape deck. i very much doubt anybody's hi-fi system will truly replicate the gnarly volume level that was involved.



eta the pics are just random war stuff off google for something to look at.

This stuff may be also somewhat internal interpretation of the brain. I mean if you blown your ear drums and the hair cell follicles are dead, technically you should have a harder time picking up any high vibration noise, and not the other way around. Its like your brain is so used to the noise, even after it stops, it still processes it, simply because it knows there should be something there that is not.

That or it could be a warning mechanize to tell you to wear earplugs in noisy situation. Maybe the tinnitus noise its just there because there is nothing there to pick up, so it just leads to a sort of hollow remembrance of lost signals, kind of like an echo of how things used to be, only minus the sound as it is strictly the brain trying to interpret the physical changes that it once used to pick up.
The physical ear

You know kind of like the ghost limb felling. People who lose a hand or leg, still report like they feel its still there. There brain and mind has not fully processed that its not there since they have operated with it for such a long long time. Could explain why some say the sound changes from one ear to another, or any of these other things, if it was a physical actual sound vibration there picking up that should not happen.

It also may be a sort of placebo effect. Because right after I first posted on this thread a few days ago. When I went to sleep I started thinking about it. And lo and behold the sound was there, not normally like I sometimes get but just something that was there. After I stooped thinking about it, well it went away, just like that. Also last night was a friends birthday, he and a bunch of others went to a sports bar.

I was there for 4 hours or so, the place was blasting music like crazy. I generally do not go to such places or out all that much. But yup! Once again, when I got to the car, and things got quite there was the sound again, but only if you thought about it, if not it was like that background noise which you dont notice. If anything could just be agitation in the physical ear from the previous hours exposed to crazy loud noise. So ya! Tinnitus may be just as much a mental symptom as a physical debilitation, or most likely to be more correct a mental symptom of a physical debilitation.

a reply to: Bedlam

If mine was a proper chord, it wouldn't be so bad. But it's dissonant as can be.

I'm right there with you. I guess I'm also paying for all that youthful stupidity. Funny thing is, when I was young I somehow thought I either would never get old or I wouldn't care about anything then... Wish I could go back in time and stick some earplugs in.

to galadofwarthethird

This stuff may be also somewhat internal interpretation of the brain.

That's exactly what it is, the brain, not the ears.

a reply to: Bloodydagger

seriously, you think you have it bad? try trigeminal neuralgia.

a reply to: wtbengineer
Thats what I was saying in the earlier posts. Not all sound is technically sound or actual sound-waves but its all interpreted by the brain and mind as sound. Its likely akin to the whole phantom limb phenomenon then anything else.

That is unless, you think older people who generally experience or have tinnitus they basically can not hear in those ranges. Yet they can still process it, physical hardware vs software sort of issues insure its most likely a sort of type of deal going on.

Or as these videos illustrate there points. They both do have a point but I am to lazy to correlate or try to explain what I mean, you know. Visual representation is a pretty efficient thing to communicate with. I suppose the videos will say different things to different people. General point however is still gotten across.

Ive often wondered if the ringing is in our ears at all and originated from our heads instead. You hear about so many cases (like mine) where the ringing switches from ear to ear every several months or so.

a reply to: Bloodydagger
Well if you watched the vid above. Generally the older you get the more you lose your ability to hear certain pitches and higher frequencies. It could be a placebo effect only backwards. Or it could just be your brain interpreting things that were once there but are not there anymore, echos of past lifes. Or who knows maybe the hair follicles cells or your ear drums even though deteriorated could still pick up other things which they were not intended to while you were younger. Its not likely but it could be that as well.

Or you can test it out, I mean if in a soundproof room were there is no noise whatsoever or no noise can get in, and your with other people some who could hear a lot better then you, or you could even put some devices which can pick up all kinds of sound vibrations. And then if its only you who can hear anything, then I would say its likely to be as much a mental thing as anything else. I dont know why they did no do some sort of experiment like that already, or its probably been done but we dont know about it.


Sound like vision and everything else is just a picking up of senses by way of the bodys physical sensors ears being one such. But which are just electrical signals for the most part and are ultimately are interpreted in the brain and mind to the things and world you see and hear around you.

So really what you see and hear your not sensing it or them or the world around you. Your more or less interpreting the world around you using those sensors we like to call sight, hearing, tasting, felling and all else ect ect. The brain merely picks all that up as electric signals and interprets them all in split seconds for you day in and day out from your frist step as a kid, till your last step as you grow old.

But ya! It would be better somebody did an experiment to see just how much of a physical ie actual heard sound this tinnitus thing is, and how much of it is a placebo, or ghost limb effect.

a reply to: galadofwarthethird

I'm sure some of this comes from age related hearing loss, but at my last appointment they said I had none of that, only hearing loss from loud noise. I'm 56 so I guess when I do get the age related stuff it will really get bad... I can't imagine it being any worse to tell the truth. Mine is so loud I can't imagine it being any louder.