Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We ‘may’ have discovered a potential remedy for tinnitus

linkedin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 341 posts

Re: We ‘may’ have discovered a potential remedy for tinnitus

#91

Post by _fy0z »

_8j7i wrote: post #81

Is it possible that tinnitus is actually just a person's inability to ignore natural noise in the hearing systems? More of a physchological issue like chewing fingernails or having OCD, but which can be amplified by legitimate physical hearing damage? I ask this because for all the life I can remember, I've always been able to perceive a high-pitched tone, even in completely quiet environments. If I actually focus on…

Experiencing tinnitus while having no discernible hearing loss on a standard audiogram could possibly be due to hidden hearing loss [1].

That said, I have read (anecdotally) that many people claim to hear a slight high-pitched tone in a quiet environment, so it could be quite a bit more common than one would imagine.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21940438

Re: We ‘may’ have discovered a potential remedy for tinnitus

#93

Post by shawnz »

dvdhnt wrote: post #41
h2odragon wrote: post #5

Interesting. How very kind of them to mention this to the public for further experimentation. Has this individual now opened themselves to liability for IP theft, stealing potential billions of treatment money from the company that gets it approved by the FDA?

Right, a possible dramatic improvement of quality of life for those with tinnitus, but your first thought is IP theft? I surely hope those kinds of thoughts, and the arcane system that nurtured them, does a swift and painful death as we retake basic human rights and healthcare from the clutches of capitalism’s greasy claws. Edit: I’m criticizing how a society can create such a connection in the first place.

I think you've got it all backwards. We created capitalism in our image, not the other way around. Capitalism is also what achieved those things which you are suggesting we should retake in the first place. Would it be better to not have capitalism if it meant not having those things?

Re: We ‘may’ have discovered a potential remedy for tinnitus

#94

Post by penagwin »

_fy0z wrote: post #91
_8j7i wrote: post #81

Is it possible that tinnitus is actually just a person's inability to ignore natural noise in the hearing systems? More of a physchological issue like chewing fingernails or having OCD, but which can be amplified by legitimate physical hearing damage? I ask this because for all the life I can remember, I've always been able to perceive a high-pitched tone, even in completely quiet environments. If I actually focus on…

Experiencing tinnitus while having no discernible hearing loss on a standard audiogram could possibly be due to hidden hearing loss [1]. That said, I have read (anecdotally) that many people claim to hear a slight high-pitched tone in a quiet environment, so it could be quite a bit more common than one would imagine. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21940438

It might be similar to (albiet the oposite of) how putting on a pair of decent active noise cancelling headphones "sound different" (even if you were in an otherwise quiet room) and/or many people report a "head pressure" feeling.

Their brain is used to filtering out the background noise, so removing it causes strange sensations.

Re: We ‘may’ have discovered a potential remedy for tinnitus

#95

Post by [deleted] »

jitendrac wrote: post #4
mjlee wrote: post #2

This reminds me of the technique that went viral via Reddit a couple of years ago: https://lifehacker.com/this-weird-trick-might-give-you-brief... I don't suffer from tinnitus, but I know people who do and some of them have said that this helped them.

Trust me, It never helped me. Edit: never knew telling your experiences gets you downvotes.

[deleted]

Re: We ‘may’ have discovered a potential remedy for tinnitus

#96

Post by swinglock »

dspillett wrote: post #62
jitendrac wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trust me, It never helped me. Edit: never knew telling your experiences gets you downvotes.

> never knew telling your experiences gets you downvotes I think this case is more specific than that: expressing personal experience as something that must therefore be true for everyone often gets you downvotes, at least here, unless you experience agrees directly and completely with local group-think (and even then some who disagree with the local group consensus will downvote without explanation). Frame personal…

The answer is much simpler. Before the comment was edited, it said "Trust me, it never worked", which does not describe a personal experience but dismisses everyone else's.

Re: We ‘may’ have discovered a potential remedy for tinnitus

#97

Post by manmal »

It's not a cure, and the sample sizes are low, but low level laser therapy (LLLT) has been shown to bring significant improvement to some people with tinnitus:

"Over half of the patients (56.9%) had some form of improvement in their tinnitus symptoms. Mild improvement was reported in 33.8% of patients, moderate improvement was reported in 16.9%, and full improvement was reported in 6.15%. Of the patients who reported dizzy spells as a symptom of their tinnitus condition, 27.7% reported mild improvement and 16.9% reported full improvement."

(My own note regarding that study: 5mW at 650nm does not penetrate tissue very deeply; one could e.g. use 100mW at 850nm to penetrate up to 5cm deep. Exposure time would likely have to be reduced by at least an order of magnitude.)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3658799/

Also:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3830897/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3063436/

Re: We ‘may’ have discovered a potential remedy for tinnitus

#98

Post by dicknuckle »

cevn wrote: post #82
SkyPuncher wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's as if my ear is trying to compensate for the lack of sound. Holy crap. You just blew my mind. "Silence is deafening" makes more than just figurative sense. From a young age, I've always noticed a light ringing while in extremely quiet places. Not enough to bother me, but enough to notice my ears straining to hear sound.

I hear it right now. Doesn't everyone?

My office has plenty of hum and hiss, so no.

Re: We ‘may’ have discovered a potential remedy for tinnitus

#99

Post by hawski »

I have mild tinnitus so that's what brought me here, but I wonder about something else from the article. They wanted to test for motion sickness while facing backwards. That's my minor pet peeve. I think that we can't realistically think of driving in something in a size of a car facing backwards, because it's just inherently dangerous. In case of an accident anything in your hands will hit you hard in your face, neck or chest. Same with whatever people in front of you would have. So: hot coffee, bottles, books, laptops and phones.

Re: We ‘may’ have discovered a potential remedy for tinnitus

#100

Post by diffeomorphism »

jitendrac wrote: post #4
mjlee wrote: post #2

This reminds me of the technique that went viral via Reddit a couple of years ago: https://lifehacker.com/this-weird-trick-might-give-you-brief... I don't suffer from tinnitus, but I know people who do and some of them have said that this helped them.

Trust me, It never helped me. Edit: never knew telling your experiences gets you downvotes.

If you had written "It never helped me" that would have been telling your experience.

"Trust me, it never helped me" is entirely different.

Post reply on HN