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I have tinnitus. I don't recommend it

blog.greg.technology

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Re: I have tinnitus. I don't recommend it

#61

I also have tinnitus, as well as hearing loss related to loud music from nightclubs and concerts, and of course natural aging. AirPods Pro and the ability to adjust the audio to be personalised to my audiogram (hearing test results) is a huge quality of life increase. All done on device, no need to go anywhere or see any specialists.

Hey there...could you expand on "the ability to adjust the audio to be personalised to my audiogram"? Sorry i'm not familiar with AirPods pro but suffer from tinnitus.

AirPods Pro 2 are now FDA approved to act as hearing aids, and during the setup, you will take a hearing test that generates an audiogram (essentially a personalized EQ adjustment). [0] I have pretty mild hearing loss, but it was very wild to turn it on for the first time. It’s like taking OFF a filter.

With that said, I don’t think it would lessen tinnitus, and I don’t think the parent comment was suggesting it would.

[0]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/120992

Re: I have tinnitus. I don't recommend it

#62

I've got the typical high-pitched ringing kind that I've had for as long as I can remember, along with pulsatile tinnitus that developed several years ago, meaning I can hear a whooshing sound in my ears to the rhythm of my heartbeat. When I tell people about the pulsatile tinnitus, I like to joke and compare it to the heartbeat from Edgar Allen Poe's story "The Tell-Tale Heart." Luckily neither of these tinnituses b…

Here's a better alternative to YouTube noise loops: https://mynoise.net/noiseMachines.php

Re: I have tinnitus. I don't recommend it

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids doing weird shit to stand out, like every generation. It makes reading harder, and with modern tools it certainly isn't any easier to write—with both those things working against it I doubt it'll stick around.

Somebody just discovered E. E. Cummings and thought "I'm gonna be original just like that guy!"

I did that in grade school. The teacher wasn't impressed.

Re: I have tinnitus. I don't recommend it

#64
I “got over” mine after many months of “tinnitus meditation” (there’s a short book on this written by a guy who has some crazy disease that causes extra-bad tinnitus). Basically, you meditate by purposefully focusing on your tinnitus. It starts to flip your brain’s response from one of fear to one of relaxation. Even within the first session, you’ll find that when you try to focus on the noise for as long as you can (use a timer and start with 5 mins), you eventually get distracted and think about something else, even if just for a moment. Then you realize that your brain isn’t “forced” to notice it - and the more you practice this, the better you’ll get at noticing it and gently pivoting your attention back to.. the rest of the world. The noise never goes away, your ability to ignore it just improves over time.

The book is a quick read and helpful: https://a.co/d/ckOzbSq

I no longer meditate as often, but when I do, it’s actually still quite effective. I now see it more as a “retreat” of sorts - I can just kind of dissociate and let the ringing take over. Reading this article brought it back, incidentally.. but I’m ok with it. Once you fully surrender to the noise, you can start to let go of it. It’s the mental resistance that makes it hard to deal with.

Re: I have tinnitus. I don't recommend it

#66
Think you mean plugging, not plucking, your ears, unless sirens make you remove hair, in which case they did you a favor.

I got some nice ear plugs designed for concerts (Loop) because I go to a concert and I already have mild tinnitus and don't want it to get worse.

I do not know why concerts have to be SO LOUD. Loud, sure. Permanent ear damage loud, why? It should tell you something that the guys on stage wear ear plugs.

That's a really good point about hearing damage vs eye damage, the only thing I can think of is it's a lot harder to measure and people don't care as much. It would be really hard to prove you had hearing loss in a court of law, let alone that it came from one specific event, and you'd have a much easier time proving that a high powered laser blinded several people, perhaps. And nearly 100% of people would choose "deaf" if they were forced to pick between that and blind.

Re: I have tinnitus. I don't recommend it

#67
post #42
post #20

> so now, i am one of those people that plucks their ears when an emergency vehicle goes by with the siren blaring. You might get one of those low-end decibel meters that supposedly are calibrated at the factory (around $25 in the US), to measure how loud the sirens are. Maybe they're louder than they need to be, and you can request for them to be adjusted, as a public health improvement. I've been meaning to do some…

I feel you, but I also think you don't need to buy special equipment, they might ignore anyway. To get a rough reading, your smartphone can provide that data via app. Then you would have some numbers you can tell official people - and then they can measure again with calibrated eqipment if in doubt.

[deleted]

Re: I have tinnitus. I don't recommend it

#68
Got permanent tinnitus due to damage to auditory nerve from an accident back in 2010.

Coping was hard. Distracting yourself with various things so you dont think about it was key.

Things to try - 1) Keeping yourself distracted or occupied and trying to not be conscious about it for 50% of the day to start with, gradually improving to 90% of the day 2) White noise apps for sleep 3) Carry ear plugs at all times. Plug them in if watching a movie in a theatre or attending to an Indian wedding. Prevents worsening of the situation.

To those out there: you're not alone. The journey is different for everyone, and what helps one person might not help another — but with patience and experimentation, many find ways to manage and live fully despite it.

Re: I have tinnitus. I don't recommend it

#69
post #48
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you, but I also think you don't need to buy special equipment, they might ignore anyway. To get a rough reading, your smartphone can provide that data via app. Then you would have some numbers you can tell official people - and then they can measure again with calibrated eqipment if in doubt.

Is there an app you'd recommend? (PhyPhox on my phone says it wants to be "calibrated" against one of those meters, but I haven't checked how accurate it is without that.)

If you're on iPhone you can use "NIOSH SLM", which is pre-calibrated for iPhones.

Re: I have tinnitus. I don't recommend it

#70

Took 1-2 years before I went a single day without thinking about tinnitus after I gave it to myself playing drums. I was so happy to be smashing those punk drums in the first rehearsal of this band. I remember exclaiming afterwards to one of my bandmates, "Wow my ears are ringing! That was awesome!" He said, "Ya, mine have been ringing for 30 years." My heart immediately sank knowing what I had just done. I spent a l…

When I'm very focused I can be in complete silence, but these moments are very few, once I notice the silence the ringing comes back again.

Mostly I'm at a point i don't hear it at all unless I get very distracted or see anything that mentions it. Like right now reading this post and the comments LOL.

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