Ask HN: Anyone else suffering from tinnitus?

Had it in both ears but the right one is more sensible. It started back in 2020, then it took almost a year to come down. It came right after stopping Bupropion, where it seems I had a sort of sudden but delayed allergic reaction. I'm already sensible to dust mites and certain detergents, so this compounded a lot. Standard hearing test in the clinic days after the event showed no hearing loss.

What helped:

- The biggest one: a course of corticorsteroids (betamethasone) and chlorphenamine. In a week the tinnitus was gone, but it came back midly after this, which I solved with the next tips. BTW some people need strong steroid injections in their inner ear to keep it at bay! Fortunately this was not my case.

- Check your environment for triggers such as allergens, they worsen the drainage of water in the eustachian tubes, which you may feel as some water clogging your inner ear. I changed the laundry detergent, washed even the curtains with the new one too, put a HEPA filter running during the day. Wash your nose with a nasal rinse like Neilmed.

- Do you sleep on your right side? Try sleeping on the other one and see if you wake up with tinnitus. See if sleeping with nothing touching your ears makes you wake up better on the sensible side

- Reduce your headphones usage. Change the pads or switch pairs if the are the big ones, they get disgusting. Try other eartips if in-ear, keep them clean and moisture free. Lower the volume and take some time off them.

- White noise and modulation helps. This app is amazing and free: https://tinnitusplay.com/ - there's also this artist called "Tinnitus Works" in Spotify which I know from his collab in another app, MyNoise. Nice stuff to mask the sound. The masking actually helps retraining your brain a bit to tone down the noise. Do NOT point loud noises even if 'white' directly to you, like a fan or portable aircon, this actually makes it worse.

- Less caffeine. Less stimulants. Check your blood pressure.

- Check for a TMJ disorder. Stay mindful of this, maybe use a nightguard, muscle relaxant + benzo course if needed. Same for the neck. Added face muscle stress is a known tinnitus trigger.

- I brush my teeth religiously, but had frequent tonsil stones. Removed the tonsils this year, it also contributed to less tinnitus frequency. The explanation seems to be that there's less pressure around this area.

- Sertraline, an SSRI did help with the catastrophic thoughts when I had tinnitus bouts, didn't have such a fatal outlook on my future which in turn reduced my attention to it. Anxiety and stress are also triggers, in my case probably because I started to stress my face muscles with the worry, but in some people it's purely psychogenic. All in all, this stuff helped, and 9 months was enough.

- Don't hang out on tinnitus forums. Yes, probably too late, I spent hours there too checking the Bupropion connection which is a saga on its own.

Now I only get a tinnitus episode like once a month, but even then it's very mild, almost unnoticeable and more likely because I screwed up, like listening to loud music for hours.

Hope this helps a bit, best of luck! Don't give up!

I don’t use them as much, but in my case, yeah, they’ll increase the volume of the tinnitus. In a weird way though, I’ve found that if that’s all you’re hearing then you can kind of get used to it and your mind starts to kind of drown out the noise. You can also meditate and focus on the tinnitus with the same effect, and there too the earplugs can help.

I don’t tend to wear them for more than an hour or two since even the soft ear plugs seem to make my ear ache.

I’ve always had it bad because of my career as a musician / producer / audio engineer.

If I do happen to become aware of it for whatever reason, it rarely takes long for for it to drift into the background again.