
The Organ of the Universe: On Living with Tinnitus - fern12
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-organ-of-the-universe-on-living-with-tinnitus/#!
======
jpindar
My tinnitus is usually not bad enough to be bothersome, but when it gets
painful, I listen to
[https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/neuromodulationTonesGenera...](https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/neuromodulationTonesGenerator.php)

That's not just noise, it does... something... that provides instant relief.

That site also has a great variety of background sounds which you can adjust
and combine in myriad ways.

~~~
didgeoridoo
Holy. Crap.

I just listened to that for 5 minutes and my tinnitus (which was pretty bad
today) just vaporized. I feel like my jaw has relaxed for the first time in
weeks. How did I not know about this??

~~~
jpindar
Weird, huh? The sounds are similar to tinnitus in frequency, but since they
vary, your brain hears them as musical rather than noise... I guess.

~~~
jpindar
Which doesn't explain why the relief persists after you stop the sound. As an
electrical engineer, it's as if tinnitus is the audio processing part of your
brain being phase locked on one audio frequency and these external signals
make it lose the lock.

------
mmastrac
I think I've had it my whole life. It's that persistent high-pitched noise -
almost like the imperceptably high sound old TVs used to make when they were
turned on - when nothing else is making sound. If there's not a lot going on
around me I can hear it quite well. I pretty much tune it out and it doesn't
affect my quality of life.

I sort of understand where the author is coming from. About ten years ago I
ended up getting a ton of floaters in my eye and I struggled to accept them
for a few months. In the end my brain tuned those out as well... at least most
of the time.

Most of this comes down to acceptance of something you can't change. It sucks.
Nothing you can do about it.

~~~
guhcampos
Mine sounds exactly the same! I usually describe it as the sound of
"brightness" and it does feel like something coming from inside my head,
instead of from the outside word.

As many people, I cope with mine by just ignoring it, most of the time.
Sleeping has been hard though, since I can remember. Today I resort to some
kind of color noise, such as a fan, air conditioner, or white noise apps
(brown noise works best) or I just fall asleep (often with aid) watching TV or
listening to a podcast.

In the end, it's not really a practical problem, but a more philosophical one:
it makes me sad to think I'll never be able to experience silence.

~~~
Robelius
About 4 years ago I was listening to a podcast. One host was explaining to the
other that he had tinnitus, and what that meant. I still remember how shocked
I was when I heard the tinnitus host was in the minority of the population.
Never knew what tinnitus was, but had assumed everyone heard a low buzzing
noise. I always thought a low buzzing noise was what silence meant.

~~~
lovemenot
You might have been right all along.

As far as I know, many people who don't have tinnitus are able to experience
such auditory hallucinations in a sensory deprivation tank or similar.

If that assumption is right then the difference between tinnitus sufferers and
others is of degree: the level of background sensory input at which
consciousness of such hallucinations might kick-in.

Hence, tinnitus or not, lower auditory input tends to lead to greater
likelihood of auditory hallucination.

------
Flands
Place the palms of your hands over your ears with fingers resting gently on
the back of your head. Your middle fingers should point toward one another
just above the base of your skull. Place your index fingers on top of you
middle fingers and snap them (the index fingers) onto the skull making a loud,
drumming noise. Repeat 40-50 times. Some people experience immediate relief
with this method. Repeat several times a day for as long as necessary to
reduce tinnitus.Dr. Jan Strydom, of A2Z of Health, Beauty and Fintess.org.

~~~
figurehe4d
Do you know why this works? Because it jostles the sternocleidomastoid muscle
which connects to the base of your skull behind your ears.

If this technique cures/helps your tinnitus its because you probably sit/stand
with bad posture. You can attain more lasting results by regularly stretching
that muscle (massage/pull on it). This will not cure hearing-loss related
tinnitus.

Personal experience: this not only cured my tinnitus, but also cured a pattern
of headaches I was experiencing as well as pain from my eyes that I thought
was due to eye strain (from being latched onto a computer screen).

~~~
koube
Do you have a source for this? It seems dubious that tapping a muscle 50 times
would be an effective treatment for muscle strain.

~~~
sevenfive
...isn't that sort of what a massage is?

------
sswaner
My tinnitus is a side effect of a double stapedectomy, replacing the stapes
bone in my middle ear with a titanium replacement. I have no regrets, my
hearing went from 20% of normal to 80% and allowing me to have mostly normal
hearing.

At first, the tinnitus was maddening, I would wonder if I would rather be deaf
then have the constant ringing. Then I read an article about counseling and
training as an effective method. I ended up training myself to not focus on
it, now it isn’t an issue unless I think thoughts like “wow, I haven’t thought
about my tinnitus in a long time”, am asked about it or see a mention of it.

My ENT surgeon told me at my last checkup after surgery that the tinnitus is
in the brain and that I would have ringing even if he removed the inner and
middle ear. I sometimes wonder if the ringing is there if I am not thinking
about it.

~~~
codesnik
they replace this tiny bone with titanium now? unbelievable!

------
Nursie
The first rule of tinnitus club is... don't talk about tinnitus. Because then
you remember you have it and start hearing it again.

Had it about a decade now, I can ignore it most of the time.

~~~
0xfaded
I hate this. I always thought that if I had some ailment I would research
everything about it and try fix it. I still do that with tinnitus, but when I
do I'll hear it.

~~~
Nursie
Yeah it sucks. I went through a few emotional states on my journey to 'meh'.
One of the phases was a sort of desperation (there has to be a way to fix it!
has to be!) and I did a lot of reading, went so far as to do stuff like
notching my music collection...

But in the end all that actually helps has been acceptance with an
undercurrent of mild annoyance.

------
dpflan
This is another article about tinnitus:

> A Music Lover’s Guide to Tinnitus:
> [https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2985](https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2985)

It has great resources too:

> Hearing Wellneaa for Musicians:
> [http://journals.lww.com/thehearingjournal/Fulltext/2017/0400...](http://journals.lww.com/thehearingjournal/Fulltext/2017/04000/Hearing_Wellness_for_Musicians.11.aspx)?

> American Tinnitus Association: [https://www.ata.org/](https://www.ata.org/)

(And warns about apps like this: Tinnitracks:

[http://www.tinnitracks.com/en](http://www.tinnitracks.com/en))

— UPDATE —

It was also posted to HN; here it is:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14618455](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14618455)

~~~
erik_p
wait, what's the ATA warning about tinnitracks? On the surface seems like a
good idea to me... but couldn't find reference to it good or bad on the ATA
site.

~~~
dpflan
Ah, should've grouped things better: the linked Resident Advisor article
warns.

"Notch therapy has been around for a while and, as with many tinnitus
therapies, its efficacy is disputed. Various online resources can help you
explore it for free, but it has also been repackaged and marketed as a (paid-
for) app by the likes of Tinnitracks. It's worth treating their miracle-cure
claims with scepticism."

(The "Various online resources" is a link to:
[http://www.notchtherapy.com/](http://www.notchtherapy.com/))

------
interfixus
Constant dog-whistle in my right ear for the last ten years+. Perceived sound
is constant, but effect ranges from insignificant basic condition to friving
me up walls, and keeping me awake at night. Never really did the loud music
stuff, and no headphones/earplugs, really. A grinning, idiot colleague once
emptied a huge bucket of glass bottles into a container where the broke and
shattered as I was standing right by. Felt my ear flattening, and that was the
start of it.

------
tylerjwilk00
There is a Visual version of tinnitus that goes by the name Visual Snow[1].

I developed both at the same time. The visual snow was maddening and tinnitus
is unpleasant. There is apparently a link between the two and seems both are
mostly noise artifacts of the visual and auditory systems of the brain. It
makes sense that these systems would have some innate noise in the signals.

Eventually I was desensitized to the new baseline noise levels. Kinda like
Exit signs at movie theaters, You don't notice until someone points it out.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_snow](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_snow)

~~~
sgt
That makes floaters [1] seem like a piece of cake. I've had floaters for many
years due to myopia. As a developer, I always seek out dark themes in IDE's
and such because if I have a white background I see the little guys floating
by.

Most of my life I managed to ignore them, but a few years ago I became
obsessed with the floaters and I saw them a lot more than usual because my
mind was constantly looking for them.

So take my advice; if you have floaters - do NOT try to think about them or
actively seek them out. It's a dangerous path. It took me a couple of years to
get back to where I am now.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater)

------
osrec
I have a theory that everyone experiences some form of tinnitus, but only some
are bothered by it. It's like when you start thinking too deeply about how
your intangible mind controls your body, it can be rather suffocating, as
there is no escape from the unanswered sense of emptiness that thought can
generate. Similarly with tinnitus, once you start focusing on it too much, it
feels like like something you can't escape from. I've helped a few of my
friends with tinnitus by simply helping them focus on other things (especially
when alone).

~~~
WaxProlix
Objectively not true, because people go from not having the condition to
having it over a period of time. Unless you're contending that they always had
it but went from not experiencing it to experiencing it after an especially
loud concert or something like that?

~~~
osrec
Yes sort of. Basically I think people become hyper aware of it, then the hyper
awareness may subside and perhaps come back later.

------
keitmo
I developed tinnitus in 2009, a neurological "gift" from a case of swine flu.
(The other gift was chronic paroxysmal hemicrania, a nightmarish migraine-like
condition that threatened to destroy my life until I got it under control with
medication.) The tinnitus was exacerbated a few years later after a freak
accident while inflating a mountain bike tire. The tire exploded off the rim,
more-or-less directly into my right ear. I'm now partially deaf on that side,
but of course I hear the tinnitus load & clear.

~~~
dvtv75
Mine was a "gift" from my mother's physically abusive boyfriend, who would
haul me around by my ears when I was five or six. I have three high pitched
tones in my right ear, two in my left.

If you're familiar with the high pitched squeal of a CRT television, even the
lowest of my tones is far, far higher pitched than that. Now that I'm in my
40s, it's probably well outside my actual hearing range.

------
blunte
Ultra low frequencies are my problem. When it is quiet (at night), if there is
anything generating low frequency waves anywhere around, I may hear it. It
feels like an incredibly subtle repeating gentle puff of air entering the ear
(which makes sense, given that it's a pressure wave). And unfortunately, one
ear is more sensitive to it than the other, which gives me a feeling of uneven
pressure from one side of my head to the other.

There is no cure for this, as far as I know, because it is an external sound.
And it's nearly impossible to identify the source for many reasons (difficulty
in detecting/recording, ease of transmission through solid objects (such as
the ground), and long waves which can carry very far).

It just takes a little ambient noise to mask it. The sound isn't painful, per
se, because it's very low amplitude. But when there is nothing else to
distract, it feels like having your head inside a washing machine.

Sources can include large engines (locomotive, truck, ship, whatever.), heavy
equipment (particularly at factories), and my favorite - wind over a mountain
ridge. The last one can carry for miles!

~~~
IAmGraydon
What you're describing is spasming of the tensor tempani muscle.

~~~
blunte
What I'm describing is very location dependent, just as sound waves will be
louder depending on your proximity to their half or full wavelength.

I don't doubt there can be internal explanations for some sounds, but what I
experience is often dependent on location within a few feet, with some spots
being much louder than others. Also, I'm not always the only person who hears
it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum)

~~~
davidzweig
I get that a bit late at night, I think from the noise of the fridge
compressor motor that reverberates against the wall. If I put in an earplug it
stops.

~~~
blunte
For low frequency sounds, earplugs make it worse - they reduce higher
frequency sounds much much more than they reduce the vlf sounds. The result is
a more acute awareness of the annoying low freq sound.

But hey, if it works for you, great!

------
toomanybeersies
I've had tinnitus for as long as I can remember. Most days I don't even notice
it, it probably helps that I listen to music for 12 hours a day, but even
sitting in a quiet area without music it's not intrusive unless I focus on it.

Oddly enough though, it really flares up when I'm stressed, especially if it's
emotional or relationship stress. I'm not sure why that is. It never really
gets "bad" in that it causes me distress, but it gets very noticeable.

------
orionblastar
When I was young I had many earaches, and they had to put in ear drops and a
cotton ball to keep the medicine from coming out of my ears. I heard a noise I
could not explain, it sounded like radio noise I said at the time. The doctor
thought I said static but it was more like radio feedback.

I had a hearing test, and I was told I had normal hearing.

It comes and goes, and at times I can ignore it or it dies down for a while
and starts up again.

Doctors say it is not Tinnitus, I am not sure what it can be?

------
Fezzik
Tinnitus really is a horrible. I suffer from it and find the ringing detracts
significantly from my cognitive abilities; my train of thought is often
derailed because my brain is being goofy and fighting with the noise.

I also had headphones glued to my ears all through middle-school and high-
school, and even though I was careful with the volume I can only assume this
is the culprit for my current auditory state.

I wish I could make it go away.

~~~
biggieshellz
Have you seen an audiologist and gotten your hearing checked? Often, if you
have a hearing loss, if the missing frequencies are boosted by a hearing aid,
the brain doesn't feel the need to fill in with the tinnitus (or at least as
loudly).

------
julian37
An interesting collection of research papers on Tinnitus:
[https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/4725/towards-
an-...](https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/4725/towards-an-
understanding-of-tinnitus-heterogeneity)

------
GuardianCaveman
I have had tinnitus and it was pretty terrible the first year but I got used
to it almost completely. Then I woke up one day with a new thing called
diplacusis where I hear a tone on top of sound for certain frequencies. So my
wife says hi how are you and I hear that plus a tone for each word. It sounds
kind of like the radios in the xwings in Star Wars. I’ve been adjusting for 3
months but it’s very hard to habituate. Fortunately it has softened in that
time. But it seems to be extremely rare associated with a sudden dip in one of
the hearing ranges where the rest of hearing is mostly normal. Oh well...

------
khaledh
I've had mine for 11 years now. It started out mild and got much worse over
the first year or two. It has since plateaued to high-pitched noise. I learned
to tune it out most of the time, but occasionally I'd get those sudden extreme
attacks that last for several seconds before subsiding to the normal level.
Thankfully I've trained myself to cope with it, which as the article author
mentions our brains are good at doing. I've been living mostly a normal life,
but occasionally I get reminded of it if it's too quiet, or when reading an
article like this.

------
CapTVK
A good way to deal with tinnitus is by trying to find sounds/background noise
to tone it down or drown it out (and by drowning out I mean not loud, more
like a gentle distraction). This can be anything from the sound of the rain, a
shower, car with windscreen wipers on, the tumbling and rumbling of a dryer, a
train, the winds, birds chirping, waves etc..

There are plenty of white noise generator apps available, just experiment and
if you find something that seems to help set a timer. It will help getting to
sleep. Rest is so important.

~~~
biggieshellz
Note that if you're trying to habituate to the tinnitus, they recommend that
you keep the masking noise just below the volume of the tinnitus. That way,
your brain learns to ignore the noise in a way that it wouldn't if it were
masked out entirely.

------
coldcode
I had it for a couple months earlier this year and it was terribly annoying.
My ENT took all sorts of images (CAT, MRI) and in the end just gave me some
strong antibiotics in the ear. After a few days I was like, what is wrong, and
realized it was gone. Of course there are many reasons but in my case it was
some oddball bacterium.

~~~
davidzweig
Could you tell us a bit more? How did the doctor establish that bacteria was
the problem? I started having problems after having something like a flu, with
thick yellow stuff coming out of my eyes. The ear doctor I saw didn't have
many ideas.

~~~
biggieshellz
If the ear doctor you saw couldn't diagnose the problem, you might want to
look for an otologist or neurotologist. It's a more specialized version of an
ENT that deals with problems of the inner ear.

------
dekhn
I have two things- a constant, quiet hissing noise that doesn't bother me (can
only hear it when things are completely quiet). And another, which happens
sporadically- it will feel like a rapid pressure change in my head followed by
a high pitched noise that gradually decays. Annoying, but not critically so.

------
empath75
I have intermittent tinnitus from djing but I barely notice it 90% of the
time, even when it’s quiet. Every once in a while something will trigger it
and it’ll be overwhelming and I’ll have to find something to listen to to
drown it out.

------
3327
I suffer from it in my right ear, I discovered some foods exasperate it.

~~~
michrassena
Do you cut the foods out of your diet and see an improvement? Which ones?

~~~
TwoNineA
For me it's alcohol.

~~~
loceng
That may be yeast related.

~~~
evincarofautumn
Alcohol itself is also ototoxic, damaging the cochlear hair cells.

------
diyseguy
I've been treating my occasional tinnitus with a combination of neti pot
rinsse with the valsalva maneuver. It's mostly gone since I started doing this
every so often.

