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

Treatment for Tinnitus with Stimulation of Auditory and Non-Auditory Nerves

frontiersin.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 119 posts

Re: Treatment for Tinnitus with Stimulation of Auditory and Non-Auditory Nerves

#61

Post by PennRobotics »

vprcic wrote: post #33
mettamage wrote: post #32

Are there any people with tinnitus that have figured out how to sleep with earplugs on? My tinnitus gets worse when I try to sleep with earplugs on. I currently use my Airpods Max (at home) or Bose QC 35 (when traveling) to mask noise. Now that I've read that noise cancelling doesn't protect from sound, I'll only use this for sleeping and use actual earplugs in other situations.

My tinnitus also gets worse with earplugs, and I wear them since I'm a light sleeper, with a bedroom close to a somewhat busy road. What I've managed to convince myself is that if I focus on in, instead of ignoring it, I can "use" it as an inbuilt white noise generator. I've probably conditioned myself to get a reassuring feeling out of it, but I guess that's what counts. I know it sounds ridiculous, and it might be…

I have musician's earplugs. It sucks. You often cannot hear the conductor, some frequencies occlude more than others, and your tinnitus is louder than ever. (I realize the filter can be weakened and fit improved, which I plan to do, but I'm on my fourth fitting and second filter.)

The alternative? Take them out and enjoy the rich, sonorous, ever-so-slow hearing loss!

Re: Treatment for Tinnitus with Stimulation of Auditory and Non-Auditory Nerves

#62

Post by ljf »

jader201 wrote: post #16

Not sure why I click into comment threads on HN about tinnitus, hoping for positive news or anecdotes, but it’s almost always the opposite. So I’ll share my positive anecdote. I’ve dealt with it for over 10 years, and while I can’t imagine how happy I would be to find an effective treatment, I’ve learned to cope, and do what I can to protect hearing going forward. And once you realize you can cope with it, it makes f…

This! Ruined my ears with a combination of loving dancing against speakers, always having my headphones at max volume, and a few ear infections.

Tinnitus was keeping me awake at night, and like others said it made it hard for me to follow conversations in pubs/bars/busy places..

Then one day I read about the massive artery next to your ear, which you cannot hear (OK sometime you can when you are running or have a pounding headache) but the realisation that this sound was always there but you don't hear it, was amazing for me.

Within a week I'd largely tuned it out. It is still there and if I think about it I can always hear it. But it no longer upsets me and is just a thing and not an issue for me.

Re: Treatment for Tinnitus with Stimulation of Auditory and Non-Auditory Nerves

#63

Post by wruza »

nosianu wrote: post #46
jader201 wrote: post #16

Not sure why I click into comment threads on HN about tinnitus, hoping for positive news or anecdotes, but it’s almost always the opposite. So I’ll share my positive anecdote. I’ve dealt with it for over 10 years, and while I can’t imagine how happy I would be to find an effective treatment, I’ve learned to cope, and do what I can to protect hearing going forward. And once you realize you can cope with it, it makes f…

Just to say that in advance, although I'm a CS guy, I also have quite a bit of background in life sciences, so what I'm saying is not from someone naive about bio-chem or physiology. I got rid of my tinnitus - which was not even the goal, it was not too bad compared to all the many other issues I increasingly had and which forced my hand - after removing the remaining amalgam fillings in my teeth and starting chelati…

Not a downvoter, but for me this comment was hard to read, grasp and squeeze the sense of.

Re: Treatment for Tinnitus with Stimulation of Auditory and Non-Auditory Nerves

#64

Post by tomohawk »

traspler wrote: post #20

I am currently participating in a study using tEAS (transcranial electrical and auditory stimulation) for tinnitus. Can‘t say much about if it works or not especially as the study was redesigned and will contain less treatment, so I‘m not too optimistic. (Background: 10y tinnitus without any known cause, was coping very will for the last 8y, had a terrible last 2y but I am starting to get over it again so in general…

Interesting side effect of making USB ubiquitous. There are even laws saying it must be used instead of proprietary connectors.

At this point, it is likely cost prohibitive to make a proprietary connector that is not USB.

Perhaps the relevant standards body should take these sorts of needs into account for things like USB which are meant to be used universally. The last thing we need is 'medical grade USB' that costs 100x normal USB.

Re: Treatment for Tinnitus with Stimulation of Auditory and Non-Auditory Nerves

#65

Post by avion23 »

nosianu wrote: post #46
jader201 wrote: post #16

Not sure why I click into comment threads on HN about tinnitus, hoping for positive news or anecdotes, but it’s almost always the opposite. So I’ll share my positive anecdote. I’ve dealt with it for over 10 years, and while I can’t imagine how happy I would be to find an effective treatment, I’ve learned to cope, and do what I can to protect hearing going forward. And once you realize you can cope with it, it makes f…

Just to say that in advance, although I'm a CS guy, I also have quite a bit of background in life sciences, so what I'm saying is not from someone naive about bio-chem or physiology. I got rid of my tinnitus - which was not even the goal, it was not too bad compared to all the many other issues I increasingly had and which forced my hand - after removing the remaining amalgam fillings in my teeth and starting chelati…

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I had a lot of your symptoms. Did you have the overwhelming urge to pee?

The cramps were hell. Completely random also. Did you also have trouble balancing?

I looked into chelation because I grew up next to a big lead mine. But the doctor talked me out of it, because this topic is mostly covered by pseudoscience. Do you have any recommendations how to not fall in the hypochondriac trap?

Re: Treatment for Tinnitus with Stimulation of Auditory and Non-Auditory Nerves

#66

Post by traceroute66 »

e7b9 wrote: post #54
traceroute66 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Use them even when you think it makes you look dorky at the club or concert or sporting event. Yeah, but that's the problem, just like the Western world attitude to masks and COVID. With COVID, all those Western big babies referring to masks as muzzles, nappies etc. and shouting about "muh freedom". All this despite indisputable objective scientific evidence to the contrary that masks work, let alone all the subjec…

Yes, it really needs to be that loud. Above a threshold (about 90-100 decibels (dba or dbc - can't recall)) the vestibular system in the inner ear (the balancy bit) is stimulated, which ?induces dancing? and ?feels good? ... https://sci-hub.se/https://asa.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1121...

Meanwhile, in other news .... noise-induced vestibular damage.

Re: Treatment for Tinnitus with Stimulation of Auditory and Non-Auditory Nerves

#67

Post by gibs0ns »

syspec wrote: post #29
gibs0ns wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine this, you're laying in bed at night, it's quiet outside just as it should be when sleeping, except for the constant ringing of your tinnitus. You roll over, maybe you cover your ears or put a pillow over them, but the ringing sound doesn't change. In fact you realise nothing you do has any effect on the ringing sound - it's coming from within your head/ears, how do you block out a sound which is emanating fro…

That sounds really rough, I used to listen to my music very loudly when I was young and getting tinnitus is one of my fears as I get older. How did you get tinnitus? Is the loud music thing a myth? Is yours at least not getting progressively worse?

I can cope with it during the day by keeping my mind active along with background noises, it has really turned me into a workaholic.

I too used to listen to loud music when I was younger, I never noticed it cause issues for me at the time. The original cause was a hit on the head by a falling metal beam - nothing noise related - this caused the occasional distortion of sound but was a minor inconvenience really, it didn't affect my sleep or day-to-day life. After a few years of it like that, I found myself at a music festival which did make it worse. It turned into a high pitched alternating tone which is now there 100% of the time.

Re: Treatment for Tinnitus with Stimulation of Auditory and Non-Auditory Nerves

#68

Post by bryans »

bigDinosaur wrote: post #51
traceroute66 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Use them even when you think it makes you look dorky at the club or concert or sporting event. Yeah, but that's the problem, just like the Western world attitude to masks and COVID. With COVID, all those Western big babies referring to masks as muzzles, nappies etc. and shouting about "muh freedom". All this despite indisputable objective scientific evidence to the contrary that masks work, let alone all the subjec…

Not sure I follow: OH&S rules often require adequate hearing protection be warn in employment, and everyone basically follows those rules without complaint (edit: perhaps I should state 'relatively little complaint', compared to protests about masks). If you have to wear earplugs or whatever at a venue, the problem is that it's too loud.

> If you have to wear earplugs or whatever at a venue, the problem is that it's too loud.

It's a little more complicated than being "too loud" though. The problem for venue sound is that everything is being projected from a single stereo source at the stage, meaning it generally needs to be at the very least 6dB "louder" at the source to reach the back row, and it usually ends up being more like +12dB for a larger venue -- due to both natural air resistance and bodies soaking up sound. So if it's a high energy gig and people want to dance, they need to be hearing it at a minimum of ~95dB (and we're more accustomed to over 100dB at this point), which means the front row levels may already be upward of 112 or 118, which nobody should be listening to for prolonged periods.

But that's just the average SPL. The bigger problem this all leads to, is when things aren't hard-limited properly and every single snare hit for the entire night is spiking to 130dB and over. It would be nice if it were as easy as slapping a limiter on the master and calling it a day, but it takes some pretty intense math to do it properly, because there may be dozens of speakers even in a small venue, and all of those sound waves are intersecting with each other and bouncing off walls and people. And that's presuming the venue was properly sound treated in the first place -- if it wasn't, then all of those compounding sound wave situations are made so much worse and unpredictable.

Ultimately, the problem is laziness and greed. Venues absolutely need to invest in supplemental systems to provide reasonable SPL at the middle and back, rather than trying to push it all out of two speaker columns on the stage.

Re: Treatment for Tinnitus with Stimulation of Auditory and Non-Auditory Nerves

#69

Post by kaliatech »

jawngee wrote: post #39

I have tinnitus from heart meds. I've found tapping the back of my skull with both index fingers 20-40 times reduces it considerably. Not sure if it's placebo or not, but it does the trick for me.

The tapping back of skull has been reported a few times here and other places. I suspect it is a very common fix (even if temporary) for people on hackernews:

- https://trudenta.com/this-simple-trick-may-help-with-tinnitu...

First time I did it, it was profound. I hadn't realized how much I missed complete silence.

Re: Treatment for Tinnitus with Stimulation of Auditory and Non-Auditory Nerves

#70

Post by cptnapalm »

I've had tinnitus as long as I can remember with the exception of one day: the first time I had my ears cleaned. Earwax compacted to being rock hard was pulled out and I was told that it had probably been building up in my ears for more than a decade. I was 17 at the time. My ear canals are very narrow, there's a lot of hair in my ears, my wax is mushy rather than flaky. Also, I had a lot of ear infections when I was a kid.

That was the one and only day I heard silence and it drove me crazy. I constantly made noises to make sure I wasn't completely deaf. The one thing I remember vividly actively hearing was the turning of a door knob. I could hear all the little individual metallic sounds instead of a single generic crunch.

The next day, the ringing was back and has never left despite further ear cleanings. I am 49 now.

Post reply on HN