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Comment by tluyben2 | Hacker News Reader

Same exact symptoms (the bass guitar string he heard is a thing that gave me ptsd like symptoms/crippling anxiety for a long time after) I had from a TIA when I was overworked. He waited getting a scan so they could've missed it later; my office was next to the hospital: nothing showed on the CT one hour after but on the RMI a couple of hours after they found a tiny lesion in one of the regions involved in forming speech (which, like him, I had issues with for a bit). Sounds more likely than glucose to me but that is because this looks too familiar to me.

Edit: with symptoms like this, treat it as an emergency, do not wait. I do not even understand how you go to sleep and not the hospital if you actually suspect a stroke? Within 3 hours they can do a lot even for far more serious strokes.

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I wouldn’t go to the hospital either. It’s funny because the more one tries to work and escape debt and financial ruin, the higher the chances are of needing to take an unexpected hospital and getting an unreasonably high medical bill.

Some people aren’t in a place to pay insane medical debt, especially in the case where a multitude of tests need to get run and a problem isn’t found.

There are a lot of weird things that can happen with the body that some have observed goes away with time, and this “wait it out” approach is sadly encouraged by the American healthcare system because the insanely high bills from previous emergency situations (coupled with the subpar treatment) are typically not worth the price.

Ah sorry, I am in the EU, so I guess it is slightly different. I see your point if this risks paying yourself. These visits cost me 0$ even in countries I frequent but am not resident in the EU.

But yes, since this scare, I definitely go faster, especially considering how bad this can get. You might wake up in a better or in a far worse state.

On top of that it sounds like this person was a contractor, which means their health insurance situation was probably even more shaky and/or non-existent

A stroke deprives your brain of oxygen, you literally do not want to ‘wait it out’ or ‘sleep on it’ cause you might not wake up from it and the damage is acute, to put it bluntly.

Had very similar symptoms as post. Was getting constant tia symptoms. 3 years of doctors visits later. Oh you have a genetic disposition for clotting. (Factor 5) Started on blood thinners and the TIA symptoms stopped in a few days, brain fog lifted. Plus lots other symptoms.

I had been having minor strokes constantly, just not large enough to show up on MRI.

My old-aunt had this. She would have small ones a lot even with blood thinners.

If I miss 1 days doses I start getting visual artifacts. Recovery is about a day.

2-3 days and I start to lose feeling one side and can no longer write. Recovery is usually 1-6 weeks.

I had more leeway before catching covid.

Older ones had higher chance of not being effective.

Is that "bass guitar string" thing common? I had it twice, both times in a hot and cramped train and shrugged it up to "heat stroke".

I'm curious about this too. I have also experienced this at times, although I wouldn't have found these words to describe it. I don't think it's been tied to any particular conditions like heat or stress. Usually it happens when I'm in bed and beginning to fall asleep.

Googling turns up https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome which sounds like what I've experienced.

Mentioning the falling asleep part reminds me of a few cases myself. I have trouble sleeping myself and when I fall asleep very slowly I've noticed similar 'illusions'. flashes of light, voices, fractal patterns, a conscious state while dreaming and the very rare loud noise that comes from nowhere. Usually the noise doesn't prevent me from finally falling asleep. I've always wondered how many people experience these effects.

>Despite the name, the sufferer's head does not actually explode.

Oh good, now I can sleep at night again

Hallucinations, particularly the auditory ones, are relatively common when falling asleep. If you haven't already, you could consider seeing a sleep medicine doctor to help with falling asleep and sleeping "deeper", which could also fix the hallucinations.

Purposefully inducing the "out of body experience" (whether it's imaginary is besides the point) is almost always accompanied by this rare roaring sound during the transition moment. I guess that most people freak out and snap back to the normal awake state. Edit: I find the wiki article describing the "problem" highly entertaining. It reminded me of a quote (from that gervais principle book probably) that the modern healthcare manufactures well adjustedness, i.e. they try to square peg everything unusual into their rigid grid of normalcy and if something unusual doesn't fit the square hole, the healthcare system doubles down with rough chemicals.

Not sure, but I had 'lighter versions' of that sound before getting a migraine after this(never had migraines before the tia): those episodes immediately caused extreme anxiety, as in: it is happening again, while I knew it was not because I had no speech issues or foggy brain, just an aura floating in front of my eyes. This is a long time ago and the way of getting rid of all of this was getting rid of and learning to cope with stress. Now I work more hours and take on far more responsibility than I did at the time but I do not feel any stress, at all. Never had any migraines or other symptoms I used to have anymore. For people who do not know what it is: chronic stress is living hell and dangerous. Better recognize it in time so you do not lose years of your life.

I would love to hear how you changed how stressed you feel.

For me: accepting I have "down" days. And trying to never push during those days. Put breaks, read a book (not related to work, not reading it to be better at anything because thats work as well), go out, exercise. Learning to say no. Not overengineering things (because thats a time sink and I have to throw away 2/3 of the prototypes I'm making anyway). Freeing weekends (or free days). Taking time to talk to people about things not work related. Reduced the "arguing because someone is wrong" (on the internet or not) helped as well, it takes a LOT of emotional energy.

edit: typo

I forgot! Reducing caffeine from coffee and using tea instead when I feel stress is increasing or when I didnt sleep well (thats the worst time to drink coffee for me as it starts a tiredness and anxiety circle that may last a few days). This reduced my anxiety a lot. And I also noticed that coffee increase my procrastination. Not sure why but I would likely put that on increased anxiety.

How do you not feel stress anymore? I started taking on less and expecting less in order to manage my stress levels and it worked. I also started listening to my own rhythm but that translates sometimes to brain dead days and other times with very productive days. I accepted that and am no longer pushing. But I still take on things but at a slower pace. Id still avoid taking on as much as I was doing in my early 20s, that would not end up well for me. How do you manage it?

I'm not tluyben2 and really interested in his secret, but here's what helped me most:

– not taking what my inner critic says too literal. I imagine someone else saying such critical things to me – it would be ridiculous and I'd tell them to go to hell. So I just accept that something fuels my inner critic and take care of it in a different way.

– enjoying the little things in front of me instead of obsessing about processes which outcomes I can't control. This has a purely hedonistical side too: I can focus on the pure pleasure on squashing this software bug. My food tastes so much better if I actively taste it. When I look outside the window, I see trees moving in the wind or some other tiny movement. It would be laughable to even try to imagine a world where I control the wind in the trees, so why obsess about other complex things outside my control?

– do some imagination/self hypnosis exercise. Write them for myself. Some (lizard) parts of our brains can't distinguish between imagination and reality, so it's exactly these parts that get anxious/stressed. I find it helpful to just dictate some calming exercise (a story how everything goes right) and listen to it in a relaxed state. It works really well since it's my own voice. I wrote an exercise for a friend and just yesterday did a recording of it: https://rybakov.com/blog/being_an_octopus/

one thing for me, was to realize that whatever is happening, its not about "me"

i think sometimes we internalize situations and make it about "us", and while we do indeed cause our own stressful situations sometimes, usually things are in motion (work, poliics, environment) that have really nothing to do with us and internalizing it, as if we are "100% responsible for it" can make one more stressed than it should be

another bad situation to be in is, being responsible but not "in charge", meaning one gets blamed but is powerless to fix the situation (work), then in those cases again, its better to not internalize because in a lot of those cases its politics or bad general management etc... better to see the big picture and put things into perspective...

then even if something was "100% our fault" then just take it as a learning experience "debugging reality", we can do everything right and still completely fail, and that is normal... better to learn and move on (easier said than done, i know)

at least for me, this kind of thinking helped alot with overcoming stress

Exactly, being responsible but not in charge is the mother of all stresses.

it certainly is...

In a hot, cramped train it could also be a panic attack. Go see a doctor in any case.

I've had that as well. Especially in stressful or tiredness situations. Exercising and better food made them go away. That may be a spurious correlation with my n=1 but I guess exercise and better food will help long term anyway.

I agree a suspected stroke deprives your brain of oxygen, you do not want to sleep on it! Slurring speech and facial droop are textbook warnings to call 911 immediately, you might not even be able to speak anything but gibberish so get someone’s help immediately if possible. Stroke awareness is sadly lacking by the young and generally healthy SV demographic.

What the f is there in the head that can make a sound like a bass guitar string?

Neurons constantly oscillate - firing at least to us randomly. It makes sense that after a “reboot” of sorts, your neurons may fire in something resembling the “frequency” that triggers “bass string” experience. Like the “bong” when you boot an old Mac.

So an auditory hallucination?

Could be auditory processing of random synaptic firings.

I wonder how random that sort of thing is. I mean if the brain needs to make you pay attention because you’re overworked / burnt out, what better way than to fake a bass string sound?

That would totally freak me out.

Your brain. All sound perception ultimately comes from there.

It’s wild that the brain can just make sounds up like that. Now I’m wondering how much of the soundscape I hear is real.

Seems like that’s something that could be exploited.

to go all sophomoric on you; that sure depends on what you think “real” means!

(you might like listening to the mcgurk effect, or shepard tones)

Real as in generated by the external world, rather than generated by the brain.

what’s the difference? where does “external” start and “brain” end?

Unfortunately if the brain has been trained to create fake sounds, then that becomes really difficult to determine.

But conceptually there is an thing which is the brain and there are things that are external to the brain.

The same is true of every sense. How do you think hallucinations work? I’ve experienced phantom sounds and sensations. Visual almost never though.

My impression was that hallucinations only happened under extreme conditions, like drugs, alcohol, heat etc, but it’s a bit worrying that it could happen basically anytime.

If the brain “learns” that it can accomplish things via this method, then that could be really problematic.

Possibly... I have had minor auditory hallucinations while I'm falling asleep. Most often it is a single sound, like a high pitched ding or bong. It sounds like a notification, but very unlike one from my phone. It is definitely purely internal.

That’s interesting, I hadn’t considered the falling asleep state. Yeah maybe that has happened to me too.

It’s hard / practically impossible to determine exactly what it is though. It might be someone in the next room, someone walking past, another sound entirely that got morphed into the sound you heard to fit your brains narrative as you were falling asleep. Might even be that your phone was hacked!

Something sort of similar: I used to feel phantom phone vibrations when I had the vibration feature activated.

It's more than that; the soundscape you hear is all in your head. You don't have "direct" experience of anything! So there's not really any distinction between "real" and "made up" sounds.

And yes, it's exploited in every lossy audio codec.

Yes of course, ultimately the brain generates all the sounds, but they tend to be “copies” or at least in some way in sync with something happening in the outside world.

The exploitation I was referring to was surreptitiously (or maybe even in some unentered way) training the brain that it can get what it wants by self generating sounds.

The brain exploits these powers all the time. The most well known example is the blind spot, but that's just the beginning of it.

Our wiring is incredibly improvised throughout and the brain works hard to paper it all over.

A generous reading of Kahneman and Tversky suggests your brain even hides its own workings from itself.

A quite simple demonstration is to be in an environment with constant but not overwhelming repetitive noise, such as a slightly loud fan. While you are concentrating to do something else, perhaps reading, the sound will disappear from your awareness. Now suddenly the sound stops. It is a strange sensation, as if a new noise was present, but in fact it is a silence or lack of noise. An auditory illusion like some optical illusions of staring at a spot then looking elsewhere and having an afterimage.

Nothing sensual is presented directly: it is all contextual.

I don’t think I’ve experienced that. Noises do ‘go into the background’ so to speak, but even when they disappear completely from consciousness, when they re-appear I know / remember they were in the background. Maybe occasionally I’m a bit unsure if it’s a new sound or not.

sounds in the world and percepts of sounds to you are at best loosely related.

What do you mean by loosely? Whenever I hear a car horn, they always sounds very similar.

pressure waves in the air are objective. Your conscious experience (“percept”) of them are subjective and contingent on your current mental state, health, attention, etc. Psychoacoustics is a real wild trip.

my point was that in order for you to hear a bass guitar sounding noise, no external stimulus is required.

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