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I made tinnitus my friend, then it disappeared [video]

mynoise.net

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Re: I made tinnitus my friend, then it disappeared [video]

#61

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 o…

Any in-ear headphones can cause ear infections from prolonged use, the airtight seal makes for a nice humid environment bacteria like.

The solution is to not wear them as long, especially right after a shower or the like, when there is extra moisture in your ear.

Alternatively you can put alcohol in your ears to kill the bacteria, sort of like you’d do with mouthwash. Any pharmacy will sell over the counter ear drops with alcohol, meant for drying out swimmers ear. You’d have to keep doing it once every week or two, but it would keep the infection away.

Re: I made tinnitus my friend, then it disappeared [video]

#62
post #11

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…

Very similar to my experience. I just woke up with it one day in my early 30s.

It drove me a bit mad at first, I wanted someone to 'cure' it and make it go away. Then I tried all sorts of things, I narrowed down the frequency (IIRC it's 13.5kHz) and tried masking by playing that in my right ear. I tried white noise. I tried 'notching' all my mp3s to remove that frequency band. I don't think any of it really helped.

But somewhere towards the end of all that I guess I started to accept it. It's here now because of this thread and sometimes it's present at night, especially if I drink too much, but most of the time I'm just not conscious of it any more. Occasionally I think it's actually gone-gone, but then if I 'look' for it then it usually returns.

The only way (for me) to proceed was to zen it out. Accept this is how it is and likely how it will be forever and suddenly it's just not very important.

Though I acknowledge that some folks likely have a harder time with that due to relative severity of the condition.

Re: I made tinnitus my friend, then it disappeared [video]

#63
post #46
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I’ve had it for 15 years and until now I’ve never thought it may be connected to also being «treated» for glue ear as a kid. Do you have more info on this and how you came to that conclusion?

(I see you use another quoting style, so I'll try to keep my language to the point) I only heard about the term tinnitus as a 'teen or perhaps later. ENT: Ear, Nose and Throat - a medical specialism. My earliest memories are from around 18 months. I used to have very bad earache whenever I had a cold or influenza. My mother told me that I used to burst into tears, unprovoked or without any of the usual baby related r…

The bane of your life, yet helped clear the tubes. Interesting

Re: I made tinnitus my friend, then it disappeared [video]

#64
post #15

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…

also have floaters. there have been moments in life where i overfixated on them for a month or two at a time and would think theyre getting worse. and then i would get busy with something (like having a child) and i would forget about this problem entirely and then randomly remember they exist. the brain is very good at ignoring things.

Re: I made tinnitus my friend, then it disappeared [video]

#65
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.

Re: I made tinnitus my friend, then it disappeared [video]

#66
post #15

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…

I had floaters for years, they slowly disappeared. Occasionally start coming back again and disappear. When they disappear, I initially kinda miss them, because I start using them as stopwatch. Just spent 5 mins checking; I don't have any right now. I really think I would enjoy having one or two of different sizes and speeds, permanently. I guess that's just wishing for a superpower.

Re: I made tinnitus my friend, then it disappeared [video]

#67

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 ar…

I haven't used this for years and I don't know if it helped me or not, but the below is a bash script which will duplicate a directory of mp3s and 'notch' everything using the linux command line tool 'sox'. You'll have to figure out the frequency band you want to remove, it's currently set to remove approximately a half-octave notch around my target frequency, 13.5kHz. Sox can do lots of file formats but you'll have to adapt the script if you want anything but mp3s altered. And no I'm not 100% sure why I felt the need to multi-process enable it...

  #!/bin/bash

  HIGHFREQ=16000
  LOWFREQ=-11500

  if [[ -z $1 || -z $2 ]] ; then
      echo "Usage: " $0 "  "
      exit
  fi

  OLDDIR=$1
  NEWDIR=$2

  echo pushd $OLDDIR
  pushd $OLDDIR

  TEMP=0
  BUFSIZE=1024000
  CONCURRENCY=1
  IFS=$(echo -en "\n\b")

  for file in `find |grep mp3`; do
      mkdir -p $NEWDIR/"`dirname \"$file\"`"
      TEMP=$(($TEMP + 1))
      TEMP=$(($TEMP % $CONCURRENCY))
      echo $TEMP $(basename $file)
      if [ "$TEMP" = "0" ]; then
          sox --multi-threaded --buffer $BUFSIZE --temp $NEWDIR/"`dirname \"$file\"`" -V2 "$file" -C -0.1 "$NEWDIR/$file" gain -hen sinc $HIGHFREQ$LOWFREQ
          wait
      else
          sox --multi-threaded --buffer $BUFSIZE --temp $NEWDIR/"`dirname \"$file\"`" -V2 "$file" -C -0.1 "$NEWDIR/$file" gain -hen sinc $HIGHFREQ$LOWFREQ &
      fi
  done
  wait
  popd

  cp -R --update=none $OLDDIR/* $NEWDIR

Re: I made tinnitus my friend, then it disappeared [video]

#68
post #15

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…

Anecdotal but I heard some people with autoimmune issues have their floaters go away when they change their diet in a way that improves the autoimmune symptoms.

Re: I made tinnitus my friend, then it disappeared [video]

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start eating pineapple, you will be surprised of the effect on the floaters.

Interesting. This is from personal experience? Has anyone else eaten pineapple and had a similar experience?

Pineapple contains enzymes that digest flesh. I don't know if that's relevant here, but it seemed worth mentioning.

Re: I made tinnitus my friend, then it disappeared [video]

#70
post #64
post #15

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…

also have floaters. there have been moments in life where i overfixated on them for a month or two at a time and would think theyre getting worse. and then i would get busy with something (like having a child) and i would forget about this problem entirely and then randomly remember they exist. the brain is very good at ignoring things.

Your brain keeps ignoring like 25% of what you see -- your nose. Unlike blind spot, eyes really see the nose, and differently so depending on where you look.
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