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I got rid of mine for a year thanks to a comment on HN. The only reason it came back is because of my lack of discipline. It's bearable as I only notice it when I actively listen for it now. Anyway, I am sure this would just work again.
So there was a comment that claimed it was related to bad neck posture. Being a keyboard warrior in my late 30s at that time I suffered the same issue: Tinnitus and generally bad posture. I figured that even if that wasn't true, working on my posture might be a good invest either way. So a couple of YouTube videos later I started working on it. Turns out the process to straighten your neck - even after like three decades - with just some casual invest everyday only takes about a month or two. To my surprise the tinnitus was actually also gone.
As I haven't build a real habit around the exercises eventually a bad posture came back, and so did the tinnitus. Both are generally not as bad as they were before, though.
10/10, would do again.
Reminds me of advise someone gave me. Deadlifting gets rid of back pain. So I don't have an insane amount of weights, but I have roughly 30 to 40lb I can deadlift at home, which does not sound impressive at all, but coincidentally, mundane tasks that would give me back pain no longer did. Also coincidentally, my ability to do pull ups went from 0 to several reps per day. When I stopped, the back pain came back, but now I just deadlift once a week, I picked a mundane amount of weight that is easy, I take my time unless I feel like I can do it quickly with the smaller amount of weight.
You don't need to lift 300lb or whatever and weightlift max to make your body more efficient, you just need to weight lift just enough that you find yourself somewhat getting tired, I don't even work out until I am tired sometimes, and it still feels like it does a lot for my body.
So I've come to learn that in general exercise is good for you overall.
Agreed, bad posture (not just neck but in general) can cause both tinnitus and RSI-like symptoms in my experience and I have been able to tackle both with proper exercising.
Where I don't agree is the following:
> Turns out the process to straighten your neck - even after like three decades - with just some casual invest everyday only takes about a month or two.
While you can make progress quickly (in the sense that your symptoms become less severe), fixing your posture usually takes much, much longer than that. In fact, if we're being honest here, it's never a one-time fix that you do for some $TIME and then stop doing. The reason being that forces & activities that cause or exacerbate bad posture (sitting, carrying a back pack, sleeping on the side, various sports, doing no sport at all, wearing shoes with a high heel drop, …) are not a one-time thing, either. They act continuously, and so "fixing your posture" must be a continuous life-long activity, too.
That anecdotally matches my experience thinking about it.
After my initial hearing damage from someone clearing a rifle before everyone put on hearing protection it took a while for it to attenuate to background noise but flares beyond that volume. Things that certainly avoid flares is when I have a good sleeping setup where I avoid being crumpled or my neck kinked. I have good posture in general but sometimes weird working locations, off site meetings, hackathons, etc would lead to my tinnitus getting worse.
I chalked that up to being physically tired from travel and lacking sleep (both of which seems to also increase my tinnitus)but when reflecting back I don’t recall having much Tinnitus when my son was a newborn through a one year old and I basically slept walk that whole year.
I think on the count back the neck posture and likely the muscles in my neck and head lacking tension is what is keeping it from being worse.
Could you explain more about what "straightening the neck" entails in terms of exercise? I'm interested.
"with just some casual invest everyday only"
Very much so. Also applies to other exercises, for the back, joints .. if you make it a habit, you can do a lot of helpful things for your body, when you wait for something and can resist the urge to pull out your phone to distract yourself.
For me it was related to some benign brain mass'es arm touching my ear nerve. This causes me some hearing loss, and also it was causing tinnitus. However I realized tinnitus directly correlated with my blood pressure. So If I control my blood pressure I don't have it.
Bad posture, and perhaps even more importantly, sitting is a really, really bad thing. There is a reason why taxi drivers have massively shorter life spans than the general population - sitting all day and the following poor circulation is one of the worst things you can do to your body.
By the way, do you have any youtube videos perhaps saved that you followed?
jealous. i've had tinnitus ever since i had memories. my literal earliest memories are laying down when i was put down for a nap and vividly paying attention to the sound. dunno if i was born with it or had some crazy ear infection or what but ive just given up that anything can be done. i'm fortunate it's not all bad but i can't sleep without a fan.
i sometimes get sad that i genuinely don't know what no sound is like. i've never experienced true silence :/ when im super tired i get some weird auditory effects like the tinnitus sound gets super choppy almost like a rumbly gating flutter like the tubes deep in my ear are spazzing out as im drifting off to sleep. im probably gonna die idk
> Turns out the process to straighten your neck - even after like three decades - with just some casual invest everyday only takes about a month or two
Could you provide some detail? Even YouTube links would be helpful.
They use to call it rounded shoulders then labeled it as upper cross syndrome.
Our back should be subconsciously contracted. That's the opposite of how we develop and takes effort to develop and more to correct.
Mine is pretty light and I am sure it's neck related because I can change its frequency by moving my neck. However this doesn't mean everybody has this.
"straighten your neck" is not the right phrase. Your neck has a natural curve and it actually becomes straight with bad posture.
I think the vagus nerve is often implicated and probably highly stressed by keyboard warriors from neck to arse.
Over the years I have seen a few threads on tinnitus. I have it very mildly and doesn’t bother me much. On the other hand I have had “floaters” in my eyes since I was a teenager (probably just when I noticed them). Until I saw a doc I thought I was going blind but apparently they run in my family. They are like visual tinnitus and my god do they drive me crazy. I find wearing sunglasses helps me ignore them but they can be brutal. I am a big skier and in flat light they drive me bonkers. Not sure I have seen these discussed here but maybe I missed it.
It's almost certainly my own damn fault I have it, but after at least 35-40 years dealing with it,tinitus sure as hell isn't my friend.
Mine is high pitched, and varries in intensity but has gotten worse lately. Sometimes it makes jus existing down right hard, but usually it's only moderately annoying and I can mostly ignore it.
I've tried an assortment of sound based methods to mask it or train my brain to tune it out, but nothing has worked more than fleetingly.
The only thing that reliably gives me a break is if I can really focus on something. Music (passive or active), cooking, and programming are the most reliable, but sometimes reading, gaming, or good conversation works. Usually, though, everything is done with a constant backing track of flyback transformer whine.
Wear hearing protection, kids, or you may well live to regret it!
I really, really notice mine when meditating. You’re in a quiet room. You pause to listen to the sounds around you. You most loudly hear “eeeeeeeeeeee”.
For myself, I noticed that observing it cheerfully, like “oh, hey, little whining sound!” makes it disappear into the background and I stop noticing it.
of course even reading a thread on tinnitus makes mine worse. The mere fact of paying attention to it makes it worse, so I have a hard time seeing how a drug is going to help much. I do wish there was something.
Ostensibly mine is from high frequency hearing loss, which I absolutely have, but I now wear hearing aids and it has no measurable impact from my point of view.
I take comfort in that I can go long periods of time without noticing it, and I know that even though I'm focused on it now and it's loud, it will slowly drift to the background and below conscious notice before too long.
I certainly don't befriend it, but I when I notice it, I acknowledge that I notice it and move on with whatever I'm doing. Eventually I'll notice again, days or weeks later and realize I hadn't noticed it at all in the intervening time. So I just relax and move on.
For people looking for treatment for long-term tinnitus, notched sound therapy has been statistically shown to help by reducing brain activity in relation to the perceived tinnitus frequencies (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8832119/). In other words, it doesn't go away, but it becomes less "important" to the auditory centers.
There are various professionally provided therapies of this style, but there are also simple self-therapy apps that find the perceived frequencies and then play white noise or a music library with the sound adjusted to produce the notched effect in that small frequency window. For example: https://audionotch.com/ https://www.tinnitusnotch.com/ https://www.tinnaway.com/
I've had tinnitus for 25+ years after neglecting an ear infection while I was working overtime.
It's never disappeared, but the "rain on a tent" sounds from mynoise.net, fan noise, and having a Twitch stream on in the background masks it enough that it's not bothersome during the day.
"Befriending" it though? Naah, I don't think so.
I have had occasional tinnitus, and once it lasted for a few months and then went away. Sometimes it appears suddenly, and I've taken vitamin B12 and magnesium and it goes away in a few hours. Vitamin D might also help according to some studies, but in my case I think it might make it worse. Not sure if placebo or not.
I got mine at a super loud music concert a few decades ago, and I worsened it at another concert which wasn't supposed to be as loud as it was. Despite wearing the in-ear hearing protections, it became louder and never went to previous state. So now I am very carefully selecting what I allow others to put in my ears, avoiding big concerts in closed venues altogether.
The high pitch is around 7000-8000 Hz with no single frequency that I can isolate. That means the cilia closest to the entrance got damaged.
So, f*ck you all the "audio engineers" who work around the bad acoustics of a venue merely by increasing volume. I hope you'll get the same suffering as you cause to others.
I never considered using my tinnitus as a perfect pitch reference. I’m pretty sure my tone changes over time, so it might not work for me, but I’m at least going to try.
I love mynoise, and Neuormodulator masks my tinnitus, but the T is usually worse when I turn off Neuromodulator. The one that has worked for me is White Burst Noise (https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/whiteBurstsNoiseGenerator....). I’m surprised Stephane didn’t mention it, but the first time I heard it, the response was immediate and very strong - during the silent phase, my tinnitus volume would audibly drop, to nearly gone. That was the first thing that gave me real hope I might be able to get rid of it.
Well, it’s not gone, and White Bursts aren’t as effective as they used to be, but “ignoring” the tinnitus does work okay-ish. The trick for me is to focus intensely on other sounds, to listen carefully to quiet things and try to hear them past the tinnitus.
This page has so many dang scripts and the iframe doesn't do it any favors. I've allowed everything and it still doesn't load. There are far too few specialists that work on tinnitus and so many dental and ENT specialists choose to not take it seriously enough.
I have high pitched 7k hz bi-lateral ringing, 24x7. I've had it my whole life. I am convinced part of it is due to being born very premature (I was 1 lb 11 1/2 ounces). I believe it may be cervical and/or neurological (vascular, specifically).
It's so frustrating because nothing has happened. Masking only does so much. Sitting around reading a book, or trying to sleep is almost impossible.
I've been wanting to make a documentary style video on this diagnosis/issue, because a more people suffer like this than people realize. One medical professional that was helping me passed away a few years ago and that still eats away at me, because he really cared that he wasn't able to help me and it ate away at him. I still miss him.
I don't even know why I have tinnitus. It's not end of the world bad tinnitus, but sometimes does get a little annoying. It is louder in the evenings/nights than in the mornings. I have it since primary school 4th grade or so, when I realized I have it, because an old teacher described her own tinnitus. But as far as I can remember there was no very loud sound event before that causing the tinnitus. Maybe it comes from bad posture or so, already in primary school. Too heavy school bag with too many books? Who knows. Have had it ever since. Most effective masking method for me is sound of rain whitenoise like that rainymood website.
there is precedent for this, you don't really feel your heart beating or hear your blood rushing most of the time. the brain learns which signals aren't important to you.
tinnitus also happens to be a very predictable signal, so the key is to convince your brain that it's noise to be filtered out. if you focus on it you will convince your brain of the opposite.
My dad has it really bad because he worked in a nightclub in his twenties. He would say it's like a jumbojet idling its engines nearby, all the time.
It's thanks to him that I started taking ear protection seriously.
I had a strong feeling that I was developing tinnitus after my my usage of Apple's airpods[1] for meetings, video calls (personal and Official) and such, especially after years of Work From Home. I used to get puss from my ears, and sometimes that tweet/humming sound after a long day's use.
Later I switched to Bone Conduction headphones. I felt like BC Headphones has improved my condition a lot. No ear pain or puss or the humming noise. I hope it stays that way!
I have it after I shot an indoor USPSA (IPSC) match right after a major ear infection. I always wear double ear plugs and muffs. The ENT I saw said he thought it was the infection that did it not the shooting. My hearing test came back very good despite the ringing. It’s always there, especially when it’s dead silent but after about four years, I don’t think about it anymore most of the time. I always wear shooting grade earmuffs even when doing yardwork with a lawnmower and the weedeater, I baby my hearing the best I can. It is a good reminder that we only get it once.
People say hearing loss is permanent, that may be true and I thought tinnitus was that, but its a separate correlated thing that doesnt have to be permanent
Ever since I got better earplugs and kept them on my keyring for more routine use, the symptoms have dissipated over time
Not going to name a brand since aficionados all have opinions about their deficiencies in favor of another brand thats equally open to debate
But I’m glad my tinnitus symptoms haven't seemed to be permanent
I haven't had ringing after music festivals in years now, and I can hear people again in loud environments
I've had tinnitus for 20+ years. I've tried so many things from white noise, to acupuncture, psychotherapy, meditation, different supplementation, and more. There are a couple of parts in this video that demonstrate what tinnitus sounds like to a "normal" person (which is great to help people understand my condition).
I really identify with one of his comments that his anxiety (both general and about the tinnitus itself) made his tinnitus worse. Unfortunately, the most affective treatment for me has been benzos, which has lead to a 10+ year reliance on those drugs. Now I am in the very slow and long process of trying to get off of them. Benzos never cured my tinnitus, but they made me feel less crazy and more adept at ignoring or not noticing it. Now, I just want to get back to just having tinnitus and no drug dependency.
PSA that if you have pulsatile tinnitus, where you hear a sort of whooshing sound in time to your heart beat, it might be treatable by surgical intervention (such as stenting). It could even be caused by dangerous issues in the blood vessels around your ear, so it's worth getting that checked out. An MRI Angiogram (MRA/MRV) with gadolinium contrast seems to be the best way of catching those issues. Interventional neurologists are the folks who are best suited to help you.
Just some information I wish I had known at the start of my tinnitus journey.
I can induce tinnitus if I want by thinking about it and then after a while it goes away. Very similar to consciously thinking about blinking which causes you to be aware of it but then after a while you stop being conscious about it again but you never know when it stopped.
Always been confused about it.
A couple of months ago I saw a Reddit post where the author suggested putting palms over your ears and drumming with your fingers on the back of your head for 30 seconds. This seems to often make the tinnitus go away or reduce its volume.
There's a book that briefly mentions the same effect on cluster headaches. They are not the main topic, but in the foreword author tells a story about having them as the reason he started the the journey. "The Presence Process", Michael Brown.
It took a while but this worked for me (no gimmicks either)
Why do we have trigger warnings for things of little importance, but not for this?
You know, I wasn't focusing on my tinnitus until seeing this on page one. Thanks, OP.
I befriended mine a while ago although despite its recent crescendo. I can't see pitch black either when I close my eyes so why expect total silence.
Yeah, that's nice and all, but people suffering from tinnitus will tend to get downright angry when you tell them: "Just change your attitude to it." There's nobody with tinnitus who hasn't heard it 100x already. And it's not that easy.
It's unfortunate and surprising that there's still no effective drug, though lidocaine does, in fact, work. (Very temporarily, sadly.)
And time does help, at least sometimes. Over the past ten years, my tinnitus has gone from a 5/10 (highly annoying and noticeable above ambient noise, but not debilitating in any respect,) to something like a 1/10 (I don't even hear it unless I'm in an extremely quiet room and trying to sleep).
...But it sure ain't my friend, and never will be. It's hard to interpret it as anything but an annoying side-effect of self-inflicted nerve damage.
If you live in an apartment where the hallway or laundry room gets industriallly vacuumed, you might get it from that too
just a reminder there is a temp solution that worked for me that is kinda well know its about holding your hands agaisnt your head and drumming your fingers for 10 seconds on teh back of your skull, for some reason it clears it up for about a minute, something like that please google it
If you do not already use MyNoise to help you focus at work, then, like, what are you even doing? Sometimes I'll listen to music of various kinds if my work isn't too deep, but whenever I need to concentrate deeply on a problem, MyNoise will have the perfect noise blocker. Go explore the site. It's a lovely little corner of the "classic" internet: no ads, no shenanigans, just this one dude making a technical masterpiece that you can enjoy.
The post beneath this one is titled:
How Golden Is Silence, Actually?
I've had tinnitus for years. At best it's usually isolated to my left ear and sounds like crickets. At worst it sounds like a choir of crickets in a large cathedral.
Funnily enough I only just remembered it because of this post and yes the crickets are still there. Thanks for that OP.