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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

#141

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…

Next step would be to meditate on root cause of the condition. Whatever it is, your body/brain knows.

The root cause is usually over loud sound breaking something in your ear.

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

#142

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…

> I remember reading this story about some woman in a scandinavian country who chose medical-assisted suicide because hers was so bad. I'm surprised there is not some method to surgically disconnect the brain from the ear.

I guess there might be ethical issues doing the surgery. Also it'd be quite hard to do as the nerves are in the skull up against the brain so basically brain surgery. But I was thinking if there was some way to figure which nerves were firing and kill those that could maybe fix it.

Maybe if you could stick something like a neuralink in there?

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

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I remember reading this story about some woman in a scandinavian country who chose medical-assisted suicide because hers was so bad. I'm surprised there is not some method to surgically disconnect the brain from the ear.

Tinnitus is sometimes neurological, seemingly caused by the brain compensating for a loss of sensation. I can imagine a horror story in which this just makes it a thousand times worse, on top of permanently losing all hearing. Now, being able to use a hot-swappable audio sensor instead of an ear made of tissue would be pretty dope.

I hear that theory but I don't believe it - I have tinnitus. Nothing else in the nervous system behaves that way - lack of light doesn't suddenly make you see blinding light etc. It's much more likely the sound sensor in the ear is jammed in the on position.

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

#144

I got mine from a worn out bearing on a Toshiba 2.5" drive in a Toshiba laptop in the 90's. As this was a gradual thing, the machine getting louder every day over a year or more, you don't notice until too late.

That must have been a very loud drive.

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

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but yes! I've had the exact same "symptoms" my entire life. - A faint multi-tonal background "hiss", only apparent during silence, never goes away but is quite relaxing. I'm hesitant to even call it tinnitus - Visual snow. I have early memories from at least 5 or 6, staring at the blue sky and noticing it's not pure (I see blue as everyone else, but with a very transparent layer of static) I have attributed i…

It's so subtle I've for a long time wondered if it's something most people experience and don't notice, or they assume is normal, just because unless I think about it I don't really notice it either. I have been known to focus on details more than others do. Not sure if this contributes to my seemingly heightened sense of smell as well. But not being able to experience what others experience, makes me wonder if I'll…

>It's so subtle I've for a long time wondered if it's something most people experience and don't notice, or they assume is normal

I wondered this myself too. One thing I do know is nobody was able to relate from friends and family when mentioning this. Visual snow syndrome (which according to affected people online can be very disabling) was only first described as late as 2015 according to wikipedia. So we may never know at this pace.

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

#146
post #124

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…

Concerts have to be so loud because audiences are loud. As in the band members on stage wouldn't hear anything but the audience levels of loudness.

Also the tech's probably cheaper and more capable. You probably needed a lot of money to get 110db sound in the 60s.

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

#147
I've got mild tinnitus from noisy clubs and find one thing that helps a bit is to carry earplugs 247 (cheap wax ones) and stick them in if the noise gets over 90 db or so (free phone app). The absence of further ear strain seems to let the ears gradually recover a little.

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

#148

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…

> I remember reading this story about some woman in a scandinavian country who chose medical-assisted suicide because hers was so bad. I'm surprised there is not some method to surgically disconnect the brain from the ear.

I've read about an experimental surgery sometime in the past doing this, and the patient had no reduction in their tinnitus. Their sound wasn't generated in the ear.

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

#149

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…

I've had multiple times when my tinnitus has gotten noticeably worse. The path is always the same: some panic and desperation first, followed by some examinations and attempts of alleviation that do nothing, and finally familiarization and acceptance about 9-12 months afterwards that makes everything pretty much fine.

I'm sure it will happen again, and I can only hope that the acceptance phase keeps working.

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