Ask HN: Anyone else suffering from tinnitus?

Unfortunately, a lot of things that worked for you to make it 'largely gone' hasn't worked for me - it is ever present in the background and then gets amplified. I don't have a cochlear implant though since my hearing is still good.

Anyways, many many thanks for sharing your experiences and that link.

After getting ours, my girlfriend and I both noticed (although we didn't mention it to each other at the time) occasional sudden random hearing suppression in one ear, accompanied by a high-pitched tone. This would immediately start fading away and be gone in a minute or two.

After a second booster, I suddenly lost hearing in one ear and now suffer massive ringing. It turns out that this is a "known" thing that people just aren't talking (or warning) about until it's too late. It's a hideous destruction of people's lives.

My money is on COVID vaccine, which is emerging as a known likely cause of hearing damage: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8443418/

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/tinnitus-rare-sid...

I don't buy the "rare" BS, and it's time to take publications to task for declaring that something is rare without the scientific rigor necessary to make that claim. The far-more-likely truth is that it's wildly UNDER-REPORTED. I didn't find out about the connection until I was referred to a highly reputable clinic by my ENT, who never mentioned it. But to the clinic it was a known correlation. So... did they report it to some statistics-keeping organization on my behalf? Did my ENT? I doubt it.

I reported it through VAERS, but if you consider all the hurdles I had to make it through to file that one report... you get a tiny minority of cases recorded. I had the time, money, and wherewithal to go to three doctors until I found one who knew what he was looking at. Then I was informed and motivated enough to make the report.

I suspect this is a much bigger problem than is being admitted. Just like Cipro and its ilk destroying tendons for two decades before the FDA finally put a warning on it... and corticosteroids ruining people's vision by causing central serous retinopathy.

Earlier this year I came across this study with very promising results:

Sirh, Soo Ji, So Woon Sirh, Hah Yong Mun, and Heon Man Sirh. 2022. “Integrative Treatment for Tinnitus Combining Repeated Facial and Auriculotemporal Nerve Blocks With Stimulation of Auditory and Non-Auditory Nerves.” Frontiers in Neuroscience 16. https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2022.75857....

They found an acupuncture-based treatment which eliminates or significantly reduces tinnitus in more than 87% of cases (n=55). I'm hoping to be able to get this at some point. The study is out of South Korea though; it might be a while before the technique is available in the west.