

Case study: tinnitus with distortion - Sami_Lehtinen
http://www.windytan.com/2015/07/case-study-tinnitus-with-distortion.html

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paublyrne
I had/have a similar low frequency tinnitus that began in 2009 during a period
of stress. It was so loud that it made it coloured every day sound including
speech and music, and made sleeping a nightmare.

I eventually worked out a correlation to muscle tension in the muscles in my
shoulder on the same side as the effected ear.

I worked a programme for muscle improvement through strengthening, stretching,
and relaxation techniques, which alleviated noise almost completely, although
occasionally I still get it a little, at a very low level.

~~~
mattmanser
Any more detail? I have had quite variable tinnitus for three years now on one
side and am beginning to suspect it's related to muscle tension in that
shoulder.

~~~
paublyrne
As child comment mentions, do get this checked by an ENT who will check for a
few things, including tumours. I went to two, neither of whom were able to
help much, but it is important to check.

Personally, there was mystery for a long time, but rather than trying to solve
the mystery fully, I tried to be pragmatic and do what helped.

I found that my range of motion turning my head one way was less than the
other, having become restricted physically and psychologically, in a feedback
loop.

I eventually went to a dentist who specialises in fascial pain who put me on
muscle relaxants. These helped a little, but did not solve my issues. However
they were a clue that some of my symptoms related to muscle tension. I was
also experiencing increasing amounts of physical pain in my neck and face
during this time.

Look into muscle shortening. It can be cumulative, as the pain caused by
shortening causes the muscle to react more to strain, by shortening further.

I tried to compare my range of motion and both sides, and gradually try to
match them through gentle stretching.

You could look into these things, and also trigger points. I can't say that my
exact set of issues will be the same as yours, but feel free to contact me on
Twitter if you want to chat. @paulbyrne

~~~
biomcgary
My sister had progressive severe hearing loss, severe vertigo, and tinnitus.
She resisted any treatment until she was completely incapacitated. Friends
dragged her to an ER where she was scanned for tumors. Follow-up visits to
ENTs (ear, nose, throat) confirmed substantial hear loss, but could not
identify a cause. Despite skepticism, she went to a chiropractor and has
started recovering her hearing (measured by ENT as 30 decibel improvement) and
balance. About a week ago, she was adjusted and within 2 minutes noticed her
hearing improve. She still has a long way to go though.

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gone35
Interesting; that's indeed an uncommon form of tinnitus. If you are curious,
here are some simulated samples[1].

Make sure though you set the volume at a comfortable level first, and listen
all of them to get a representative idea (the first half are noisy/low-
frequency; the second half are of the high-pitched variety, like my own).

[1] [http://www.hearing.nihr.ac.uk/public/auditory-examples-
sound...](http://www.hearing.nihr.ac.uk/public/auditory-examples-sounds-of-
tinnitus)

~~~
nothrabannosir
Oh my, that's horrifying. I have #9, but that is apparently very lucky. My
thoughts go out to those who suffer from any of the first few.

~~~
visarga
I have a mix of 75% no. "6" and 25% no. "9". It is loud enough that I can hear
it while talking to people or walking on the street, but if I don't mind it or
forget about it, I can go for days or months without hearing it. When I focus
on it, it comes back shining.

Recently, I am trying to be mindful of my inner sound in a similar way to
breath mindfulness.

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amelius
FWIW,
[http://www.microtransponder.com/?page_id=118](http://www.microtransponder.com/?page_id=118)

~~~
rndn
Is it not possible to stimulate the vagus nerve at will, for example by
coughing?

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tim333
>My next plan was to use a small in-ear microphone setup to try and find out
if there was an objective sound present.

As someone with some tinnitus myself I've been tempted to try that. The usual
explanation you see of tinnitus is that the sound sensors break and then the
nervous system makes up sounds to compensate but that's never really made
sense to me. Usually if you don't get input to the nervous system because say
a limb goes numb or you lose sight you don't get that kind of effect.

The ear seems to have a built in amplifier using positive feedback - the
"cochlear amplifier is the outer hair cell which increases the amplitude and
frequency selectivity of sound vibrations using electromechanical
feedback."(Wikipedia). I wouldn't be surprised if that mechanism goes out of
wack and makes a noise in the way that you can get a squealing feedback from a
public address system when the gain is set too high. I'm not sure that's been
experimentally tested in a way that makes if clear if that's a thing or not.

~~~
windytan
The sound is back so I did the experiment now, updates are there.

~~~
tim333
Thanks for posting. Googling elsewhere it seems only about 5% of tinnitus is
objective as in being audible in a stethoscope or similar. Though it's
remarkable how sensitive the ear is. Apparently at the threshold of human
hearing the vibrations at the basilar membrane are of the order of 1/1000 of
the width of an atom so I guess there could be stuff going on that you can't
pick up with a microphone/stethoscope, perhaps.

[http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/19...](http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1961/bekesy-
lecture.pdf)

~~~
windytan
Yes, it is indeed very rare and exceptional.

~~~
tim333
I did some more reading on how the ear works and I think my comment on there
being positive feedback is wrong. Looking at how the bits are laid out and
wired up it looks more like it uses amplified negative feedback in the manner
of an op amp. The diagram I looked at is in Purves et al, Neuroscience 5th
edition. I'm now thinking the tinnitus may be from the input maxing out when
the negative feedback breaks. From a practical point I've found carrying wax
earplugs helps my ears recover.

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EliRivers
The author of this, Oona Räisänen, is one of my standard examples of someone
who is genuinely a hacker in the proper (by which I mean, the Stephen Levy
"Hackers" definition; if you want to use the prior MIT prankster meaning, I
won't stop you) sense.

This post of Oona's - [http://www.windytan.com/2014/02/mystery-signal-from-
helicopt...](http://www.windytan.com/2014/02/mystery-signal-from-
helicopter.html) \- in which she extracts, from the audio of footage from a
news helicopter, the location of that helicopter, is an excellent example.

Given that someone here recently defined "hacker" to me as "person who can
write code", the word is in serious danger of being so devalued as to be
useless.

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HOLYCOWBATMAN
Its the first blog i have bookmarked in years. I just couldnt stop reading all
the previous posts. Every post is full of interesting content not just empty
useless rants. This is quite the change from the typical wannabe philosopher
blogs "durr web is broken." or "10 Things To Know When Making Web App in
<yyyymmdd>"

...ok back to reading the rest of the posts!

