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Comment by _8j7i | Hacker News Reader

Is it possible that tinnitus is actually just a person's inability to ignore natural noise in the hearing systems? More of a physchological issue like chewing fingernails or having OCD, but which can be amplified by legitimate physical hearing damage?

I ask this because for all the life I can remember, I've always been able to perceive a high-pitched tone, even in completely quiet environments. If I actually focus on it, it's quite loud and annoying.

It's just that my "default state" is to not think or notice this tone, and instead focus on "actual" sounds.

I have been tested to not have hearing damage.

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I'm really skeptical of this. I've been dumb enough to fire a decent amount of ammunition without hearing protection, and I've had my (undiagnosed) tinnitus get worse over time in a way that seemed related to this. I'm also very aware of background noises (like 60 cycle hums), and get annoyed by them frequently. The tinnitus sounds very different than those, and I can concentrate on other tasks way easier with my tinnitus acting up than I can sitting close to flourescent lights and other appliances that emit noticable 60 cycle hums. Sometimes it actually helps, by masking out other background noises.

Edit: I'm not saying that personal annoyance doesn't factor into who notices that they have tinnitus, I just suspect that there is actual hearing loss (and subsequent over-amplication to correct for this) involved.

Part of this is a problem of trying to figure out what we're actually talking about. Tinnitus is a symptom that probably has at least several causes. It's generally believed to be a result of some form of damage to they hearing system. It includes:

1. The ear organ, which largely exists to protect the sensory tissue, and make things work smoothly.

2. The sensory tissue which is composed of hairs and mechanoreceptors (this is technically part of the ear).

3. The neurons that connect these mechanoreceptors to the brain.

4. The aural (audio) parts of the brain.

I think the theory is that the damage from tinnitus happens in 2, 3, or 4. If it is a problem in the brain, it's often impossible to tell if it's "psycological" or not, and that may be a false dichotomy. I think that some degree of tinnitus is normal in the healthy population, so maybe it's just a natural state that sometimes goes off the rails and gets bad enough to be labelled "disease".

Most tinnitus sufferers learn to ignore their noises to some degree. You're like me, where you have figured out how to turn it out. We're lucky sufferers, our noise is fairly constant. Some folks perceive more patterns in their noise, and that makes it much harder to ignore.

Yeah, I suddenly woke up with tinnitus a few months ago and while I can ignore it most of the time there are days where it's louder with a constantly changing pitch and it drives me insane

There are many possible causes for tinnitus. One potential cause is muscle tension in the neck, in which case the tinnitus should go away when the tension is relieved (through massage or some other means). I'd recommend just looking into various potential causes until you find the one (and hope it's something you can do something about).

I definitely learned to forget it. It was hugely annoying when I first noticed it, but after a time I forgot its there. And even when its quiet and I know its there, I still end up forgetting it.

Interesting, I damaged my right ear with loud earphones while DJ-ing. And in the beginning (about 20 years ago) I could hear it all the time. But with time it kind of went away there are times where I don't hear it for a year or so. The only times I hear it so it really bothers me is when I think about it. For example now that I read the headline it started immediately and it almost hurts. Therefor I'll concentrate on some other article so it stops.

Yea, I second this. I had my hearing tested and the results came out "very good."

I talked with the doctor and she basically said that what is most likely happening with me is that I have "better" hearing than most and this is what is making it difficult to hear. She said what is probably happening is that I hear a lot of ranges outside the test window and/or I just hear the lower background noises better than I hear human vocal range.

She talked about how she would like to do an experiment that allowed testing to be expanded but didn't have the resources or time to try it.

This sounds like me; I seem to have great hearing (I can still hear those "mosquito" devices used to annoy teenagers even though I'm over 40), but I have a hard time understanding human speech when there's a lot of ambient noise. Noisy restaurants are very unpleasant for me, and I'm constantly asking people to repeat themselves.

Yup, exactly my problem and why I went in for the test. Told that I just need to ask people to constantly repeat themselves.

I had that experience after attending an overly loud concert a couple months ago - had a much easier time hearing the cacophony of noise in the cafe than I did the person I was supposed to be having lunch with. Got a hearing test and learned I have better than average hearing for a person in his 30s, but there's no baseline since I hadn't been tested as an adult before.

Still haven't figured out if the concert gave me tinnitus, or if the fright of it has made me hyperaware of aural sensations and less tolerant of what I considered "normal" before.

I always, always wear earplugs to concerts. Once you have hearing damage, it never gets better.

I remember reading that many years ago radical surgery was performed for a few particularly severe tinnitus cases in which the auditory nerve was completely severed, yet even that didn't fix the tinnitus. So yes, I think there is something in your interpretation.

(I suffered tinnitus for a few years, the 'pulsatile' form which is definitely not psychological and is basically when the blood flow in your head is too close to your inner ear. Fortunately for me it cleared up.)

Experiencing tinnitus while having no discernible hearing loss on a standard audiogram could possibly be due to hidden hearing loss [1].

That said, I have read (anecdotally) that many people claim to hear a slight high-pitched tone in a quiet environment, so it could be quite a bit more common than one would imagine.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21940438

It might be similar to (albiet the oposite of) how putting on a pair of decent active noise cancelling headphones "sound different" (even if you were in an otherwise quiet room) and/or many people report a "head pressure" feeling.

Their brain is used to filtering out the background noise, so removing it causes strange sensations.

I don’t think the head pressure feeling is something the brain automatically adds to silence. I get that feeling from noise-canceling headphones but I don’t get it from a sensory deprivation tank.

That sounds like my experience. In quiet settings I can hear the high-pitched whine, but usually there are other sounds so I don’t notice it.

Absolutely, check out this paper about using neurofeedback https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5717031/. This technique is purely for psychological disorders. My wife has chronic tinnitus, and my theory is that initial onset of tinnitus is related to physical damage, then it turns chronic because the brain develops a fear response to the noise, which makes it amplify the noise over and over

I have the same thing. When I'm aware of it, it's really loud and annoying. Probably 90%+ of the time I'm not aware of it though. Was never sure if this qualified as tinnitus.

I think there is absolutely something to this. I have mild tinnitus and my hearing is fairly poor after too many years of loud headphone use. However, I rarely notice a bothersome perception of noise unless I focus on it.

Other similar phenomenon exist. For example, some people are strongly bothered by floaters in the eyes while others seem to take it more easily in stride, as the brain will naturally compensate the vision. It wouldn't surprise me at all if individual tolerance varies wildly to these issues.

Well, having both tinnitus and floaters in both eyes is certainly not a great experience. Sometimes I just hope my nose won’t start smelling bacon all the time.

I have a mild tinnitus, so I can sometimes tune it out. But when I'm tired it's much louder. It was much worse when it started and I couldn't tune it out. In my case my daughter's scream brought my this and I had trouble with balance at first and hearing in one ear. Balance was out like I was flowing through water.

Its not a real sound, Oona tried recording it with negative results http://www.windytan.com/2015/07/case-study-tinnitus-with-dis...

My experience as a moderate tinnitus sufferer the high-pitched tone you hear is basically the same thing but at a lower level - I think most people have it to some extent. But in sufferers the tone is much louder, normally after some damage to the ear from excessively loud sounds or similar.

I thought the 'ringing' frequency could actually be detected in the auditory nerve in tinnitus sufferers. It may still be possible to train away attention to this tone somewhat, but its a real thing!

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