New Tinnitus Therapy Can Quiet Torturous Ringing in the Ears | Hacker News Reader

New Tinnitus Therapy Can Quiet Torturous Ringing in the Ears

scientificamerican.com

4 points8bitsrule4 comments

I've had tinnitus for as long as I can remember. I can distinctly remember taking the hearing tests in school and it was sometimes difficult to distinguish the tone from the tinnitus ringing. Of course at the time I never knew what it was or that it was not normal. I guess I just assumed that the ringing was the sound of silence so to speak.

It's never bothered me or prevented me from sleeping. The only thing is that high pitched tones are difficult to distinguish but I'm old enough that I'm I've lost the very high range already. I know this because I can no longer hear the scanning frequency of tube TV's.

I've never really considered it bothersome or needing treatment even after I discovered it was abnormal. They say 10% have tinnitus, but I'm really curious how many people are like me where it doesn't effect them in any meaningful was vs those who suffer with it.

Same here, had it since I was a child. Like you, I assumed it was the sound of silence, or maybe it was so quiet I could hear the blood flowing in my ears or whatever. Until recently I could only notice it in a quiet environment, but here lately I can hear it with other stuff going on too.

Doesn't help that every industry I find myself working in revolves around loud machinery (fabrication, carpentry, servers) not to mention music (anyone been to an Electric Wizard show?).

I'd say I'm teetering on the line of having it "affect my life" in a meaningful way. Sometimes I do lose sleep, but I think maybe insomnia just makes it more noticeable.

I've started noticing "patterns" with it, almost like I can hear which sounds caused the most damage. Circular saw on metal roofing seems like the biggest cause of recent damage as far as I can tell, if my theory about the sounds being similar is correct.

Link to study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

If they were experts, they would know why its high frequency and not low frequency, consistent tones that hardly varies in any way.

Its the sound of an lesion.

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