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

Ask HN: Has anyone gotten complete, permanent relief from tinnitus?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 402 posts

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone gotten complete, permanent relief from tinnitus?

#181

Post by nzoschke »

vjaswal wrote: post #143

I can't help with tinnitus itself, but I highly recommend "Eargasm High-fidelity Ear plugs", or similar devices, to help prevent further damage. They work really well to dampen loud sounds and, importantly, they let conversation through, though it sounds muffled. But you can feel the difference. They are much better than using foam ear plugs, which muffle everything. I used to go to a lot of concerts without any ear…

Amen to always having good ear plugs.

I tried many including the Eargasms and never found a comfortable fit. So I got molds and custom ear plugs from Westone.

They are so comfortable and high quality they often improve the quality of the music at a concert.

My only regret is not getting great ear plugs sooner, as I recently developed mild tinnitus from DJing and going to lots of clubs and concerts.

The good news is that with the ear plugs I have returned to all my previous behaviors and the tinnitus is not getting any worse and actually mellowing out.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone gotten complete, permanent relief from tinnitus?

#182

Post by leviathant »

hbossy wrote: post #99
MichaelMug wrote: post #82

I’ve had tinnitus for about one year now. There is no permanent relief or treatment. Lots of snake oil. My hearing was tested by an Audiologist and my hearing was normal. The “sound” I observe is high pitched. Using a tone generator I matched it to around 16,500 Hz. Interestingly, if I play that tone I get temporary relief on the order of 2-10 minutes. As far as I understand my tinnitus is the result of something goi…

Have you tried playing that tone and shifting it's phase to cancel the imaginary signal?

What I've done is to tune a sine wave to match the frequency of the tinnitus, then notch that frequency in white noise, and blast the result for a few minutes. My tinnitus has not been permanent, it's just the rare occasion where I forget earplugs for a concert, and come home work ringing in an ear.

This technique makes the ringing go away for a while, but it creeps up again after some time. Thankfully, it has always completely gone away after a day or two.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone gotten complete, permanent relief from tinnitus?

#183

Post by culebron21 »

Had it after sickness at the age of 14, it dissappeared itself, but at 32-33 had it because of neck issues. Yoga and neck exercises solved it, as blood vessels became less obstructed.

Some diehard yoga exercises like standing on my neck with legs up lead to neck- and head-ache for couple of days accompanied with noteable noise in ears.

I have a friend who's an osteopath. He points out that if, at wakeup, you have symptoms like feeling of swollen head or cant breathe with nose despite there's no snoot, and these symptoms go away in few minutes, it's neck issues and obstructed blood vessels and lymph,,which work ok with gravity, but not in horizontal position.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone gotten complete, permanent relief from tinnitus?

#184

Post by Twirrim »

stinos wrote: post #152
MichaelMug wrote: post #82

I’ve had tinnitus for about one year now. There is no permanent relief or treatment. Lots of snake oil. My hearing was tested by an Audiologist and my hearing was normal. The “sound” I observe is high pitched. Using a tone generator I matched it to around 16,500 Hz. Interestingly, if I play that tone I get temporary relief on the order of 2-10 minutes. As far as I understand my tinnitus is the result of something goi…

There is no permanent relief or treatment. Lots of snake oil. That's not what this recent book [1] says, at all. In Ducth, but [2] is a translation of the main point in an interview. As far as I'm aware, this guy is rather far away from snake oil. What is true though is that not all audiologists are caught up yet. Which is a bit weird because I already read about multidisciplinary approach working a couple of years a…

> "My message is not to learn to live with that beep, but to train your brain to classify that sound as harmless, allowing you to forget about it"

This is essentially what I do. I've had it tinnitus for some 20 years now. Both ears, a constant high pitched ringing.

Most of the time I honestly don't notice it, even in quiet rooms. As soon as something reminds me about it, or I'm trying to listen for something quiet, or certain high pitch sounds go off (my least favourite is flashbang like effects on TV or in games), it'll come back with a vengeance. So e.g right now because I saw this HN post, it's feeling especially loud.

It'll probably be about an hour before I'll forget to think about it (for want of a better description), and I go back to not noticing it.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone gotten complete, permanent relief from tinnitus?

#185

Post by Cthulhu_ »

MichaelMug wrote: post #82

I’ve had tinnitus for about one year now. There is no permanent relief or treatment. Lots of snake oil. My hearing was tested by an Audiologist and my hearing was normal. The “sound” I observe is high pitched. Using a tone generator I matched it to around 16,500 Hz. Interestingly, if I play that tone I get temporary relief on the order of 2-10 minutes. As far as I understand my tinnitus is the result of something goi…

There was one treatment - I think it was posted on HN - that played sounds slightly above and below the frequency, which provided temporary or permanent relief.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone gotten complete, permanent relief from tinnitus?

#186

Post by dranudin »

I got tinnitus during a particularly stressful (job related) situation in my life. It stayed for about a year or two. Now it is completely gone. I did not do any therapy. It seems what helped for me was "just" to get rid of the stress. I was in my early thirties at the time when I had it.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone gotten complete, permanent relief from tinnitus?

#187

Post by DavidPiper »

culebron21 wrote: post #183

Had it after sickness at the age of 14, it dissappeared itself, but at 32-33 had it because of neck issues. Yoga and neck exercises solved it, as blood vessels became less obstructed. Some diehard yoga exercises like standing on my neck with legs up lead to neck- and head-ache for couple of days accompanied with noteable noise in ears. I have a friend who's an osteopath. He points out that if, at wakeup, you have sym…

Do you happen to have a list of the neck exercises you did? I've got a set now and wondering if there could be any relation (unlikely, but you never know).

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone gotten complete, permanent relief from tinnitus?

#188

Post by nzoschke »

Not complete or permanent but it’s mellowing out over time to where I almost never hear it during the day, and it’s no bother at a quiet night, and easily masked by a fan or a podcast.

The main things for me were

- take a major break from djing and clubs. I was playing out a lot - get great earplugs. I have westone custom molds - talk to friends about it

In talking about it I have been absolutely shocked to learn how pervasive hearing problems are.

Lots of friends have some form of tinnitus and some have shared major problems like major tinnitus from playing drums a long time or loss of sound in one ear from rocket explosions in the military. All was a complete surprise, I just assumed everyone’s hearing was great.

This greatly helped with my initial depression which presumably was causing me to focus on the sounds more rather to accept and ignore it.

Health problems are coming for all of us. Take great joy out of whatever health you do have, try to reduce harm from unhealthy habits, but have fun too.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone gotten complete, permanent relief from tinnitus?

#189

Post by slyall »

Not permanent but there is a trick to make it go away for a short time. I read about it recently and it works for me.

   1. Place both hands on your ears. Palms tight on the ears and fingers backwards
   2. Now tap with your fingers on the back of your neck. It doesn't have to be hard. It will sound very hollow.
   3. Keep tapping for 30 seconds
   4. Stop and remove hands from ears
Your ringing should have gone away. For some people it goes away for hours, others just a few minutes.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone gotten complete, permanent relief from tinnitus?

#190

Post by spacebanana7 »

Over the past 4 years my tinnitus has gradually gotten better to the point of being almost unnoticeable.

I'm not sure whether it's actually gone away in a medical sense or whether I'm just heavily desensitised at this point.

For context, my tinnitus onset coincided with loud music exposure and what I believed to have been eustachian tube dysfunction. I did take some treatment steps like staying away from live music / nightclubs and using antihistamines for the eustachian tube dysfunction.

Post reply on HN