An FDA approved device offers a new treatment for tinnitus | Hacker News Reader

An FDA approved device offers a new treatment for tinnitus

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303 pointsandsoitis178 comments

I've had a mental visualization I've used to control tinnitus flares for about 20 years now - i.e., "biofeedback".

I image the entire soundscape (what I'm possible of hearing) as a long, thin line which is warbling a bit, as I'm hearing things right now -- like the line in an oscilloscope. The present tinnitus represents itself as a sharp spike in this visualization, the location dependent upon its texture (sharp pings, or a low muffled warble).

I then imagine a giant hand (my hand) on top of that spike, pushing it down, slowly, and as I push it down, the tinnitus subsides (since I know what that subsiding sensation feels like). Sometimes I have to do this pushing motion a few times before the spike slowly attenuates by itself and it joins the surrounding levels.

The entire process takes about 30 seconds, and doesn't work every time. If after a few attempts it fails, I abandon the visualization exercise (lest my brain somehow learns the pushing motion to be ineffective).

It's not entirely clear to me how / why this works: mapping a physical phenomenon onto an abstract mental visualization / picture, and then manipulating that mental picture and thus the physical phenomenon.

I'm also very musical, so these sorts of visualizations tend to come very naturally to me.

Holy crap this works! I've the loud high-pitched type all evening and i've just used your method to reduce its volume significantly! Thank you!

It gives me goosebumps that this method works with others. I thought it to be very idiosyncratic...but it seems not? Either way, I'm glad it could help!

Our brains are very weird, but there's a lot of common weirdness. There's a pretty wide range of common 'weird dreams', for example driving from the backseat, mandatory test or you'll be ungraduated from high school where you haven't been in 10+ years, various flying/falling, the tetris effect, etc.

You can also try this trick which works for me

You place the palms of your hands on the sides of your head or over your ears and then drum/tap your fingers on the back of your head. After about 10-15 seconds, it will stop the ringing.

I showed this trick to a guy at work and it was really funny and cool seeing how shocked he was that it worked

Nice move! This reduced the high pitched noise, but I still sense a general overall ambient signal ready to increase.

Holy crap, just tried it and it worked! Thank you! Mine has started to get bad the last year, and especially at night. Driving me CRAZY!

I always thought that this worked by providing a really loud noise that desensitizes you to the ringing. What do you think?

Oh this sounds really interesting, thanks!

Sometimes during my daily meditation practice I use my tinnitus as an object of awareness, like you would with your breath, which, coincidentally, I did this morning. There's so many more frequencies and changes going on when you meditate with it, including tones that definitely only arise when you're practicing with it. I find it helps and I'm definitely going to try it with your visualization.

I don't have tinnitus, but I do have this thing where when I'm falling asleep, my eyes (despite being closed and in a dark room) will start to feel like they are looking at a brighter and brighter light. This is very irritating for me.

For that I usually open them really briefly and imagine some kind of equilizer level-set thing happening and that makes it dark behind my eyes again. I wonder if there is a way to do it without opening them

These feedback things are interesting, thank you for sharing

This is actually an experience that people that engage in the tantric practices in Vajrayana Buddhism -- of which Tibetan Buddhism belongs to -- cultivate. I've encountered the instructions as part of the dream yoga practices, to cultivate it so that you actually watch yourself fall asleep and enter the dream state completely lucidly. I've only ever been able to "catch" the dream and become lucid when already in the dream. Maybe you're way ahead of the rest of us! [1][2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_body

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_yoga

I was able to do it once with the simple exercise of barely typing my name on an invisible keyboard while keeping the rest of my body completely still, only moving the tips of my fingers maybe a centimeter or two. Something about that repeated motion allowed me to keep some subset conscious as the whole transitioned into sleep. It was a very spooky transition! I descended until I felt a cold hand on my shoulder and whispers all around me, crescendoing to me opening my eyes to the lake in the neighborhood i grew up in. The fidelity of the simulation was very high as well, certainly beat my ability to distinguish! Eventually, as i was flying down the street a giant sand worm emerged from a darkness and closed in on me until i woke up. I could control some things but it felt like the dream telling me it'd had enough.

That's awesome, thanks for sharing that. I've gotten to the point of hearing dream sounds like you described while falling through the sleep stages, but it startled me enough to wake me up! I'll give the slight movement thing a try -- which actually reminded me of how Tesla claimed to curl his toes 100 times per foot before going to sleep [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla#Work_and_dining_h...

> I don't have tinnitus, but I do have this thing where when I'm falling asleep, my eyes (despite being closed and in a dark room) will start to feel like they are looking at a brighter and brighter light. This is very irritating for me.

Me too, just started happening recently too. Brains are weird.

You may be experiencing this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia

I have read a few anecdotal experiences of people allowing these kinds of hallucinations to continue and they have reported that they can become quite vivid and even interactive. Maybe try waving your arms around when this happens to see if it goes away? That should indicate if it's sleep-related or not.

Sure, why not, though I fail to see much difference between that and dreaming

I do the same thing though I have a different mental analogy, but it works!

Could you share the visualization that you use?

Interesting, I've done something similar for headaches. I imagine the pain as a sort of toy in a claw machine and then try to extract the pain with the claw. Like you said it doesn't always work but surprised it has ever worked.

From this perspective, techniques such as Reiki are not that surprising, they may be methods of more effectively exploiting this mind-body connection: all of these techniques usually have in common some sort of visualization, and learning to associate certain colors/signs/symbols with desired effects. (Although the fact that it seems to have effects even when the practitioner differs from the recipient means there's probably more to it than just that.)

I let myself focus on pain as just a sensory signal, like pressure or a focused sense of touch.

By completely welcoming the pain signal as information I can often quiet the discomfort component.

I assume that since pain functions by being a signal to avoid, completely reversing the avoidance interferes with its normal function - in a good way. Would love to know how that was actually playing out in my circuits

I've done something similar to this to control my hay fever since I was a kid.

I ended decades of hayfever crises by breathing in deeply and repeating a mantra that I accept the cosmos. Used to get annual steroid shots since childhood, then tried antihistamines tablets for a few more years, but both had nasty side effects.

Ladies and gentlemen, it works

Crazy right? Even if it’s just suggestion, I’ll add that it worked for me the first time I tried it seconds after reading the post.

In a way, this is similar to many meditative techniques.

My tinnitus seems to be worse when my blood pressure is less controlled.

If that isn't just a figment of my imagination, a possible mechanism for your technique is that you are relaxing (or so).

On a similar note, sometimes I feel my tinnitus as much as hearing it - it does feel like a pressure in my ears/head. It doesn't feel like real air pressure so much as the sound is pressing on the insides of my ears. Maybe a blood pressure thing like yours?

Neat. I "see" a 3D twisting oscillating when actively listening to music and I'm also musically inclined.

That's cool if it works for you. You mention a tinnitus "flare".

I was born with "glue ear" (diagnosed at age ~six I think). That's a lot of rubbish medical nonsense I gather. Anyway, regardless of what is the current "Medifacts" I have tinnitus and it was probably exacerbated by all the instruments that were stuffed in my ears.

I had two lots of "gromits" - tiny tubes stuffed into my eustacean tubes under general ana ... oh for fucks sake, why can't medics and doctors n that speak English. Law courts have dispensed with Latin and Greek, why can't medics?

Tinnitus is generally consistent in my experience - the surrounding environment within my body allows it to flow in and out of my conscious experience depending on what I'm up to.

For me the intrusiveness is generally related to my blood pressure and a few other things.

I have had several audiologists begin their speech of “as you may know tinnitus is from damage to the ear due to loud … “, well mine is from Covid.

I read about a study a few years ago that focused on shocking the tongue and its nice someone followed up on it. They described one year of relief post treatment.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201015173126.h...

Bimodal neuromodulation combining sound and tongue stimulation reduces tinnitus symptoms in a large randomized clinical study. Science Translational Medicine, 2020; 12 (564): eabb2830 DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.abb2830

Mine is constant and loud. If people speak and pause it gets difficult to orient where we’re at with the fire alarm sound going on in the middle of speech. Soft spoken people I have to fill in the conversation with guesses to what they said.

Hearing aids help but you’re not supposed to sleep with them in. So when you manage to fall asleep then wake up, it can be hard to fall asleep again or impossible.

I had it already, Covid made it much worse.

NHS tinnitus awareness course had a bit about accepting it as background noise (vs just concentrating on it and being annoyed), I rubbished that at first but it helped quite a bit in the end.

That was before Covid after that it's got much louder, it comes back whenever I think about it, so seeing the article brought it back, hopefully I can make it go again.

Mine started after Covid too. The audiologist did some tests and found I have one ear having a section of frequencies with poor response.

His hypothesis is vascular damage due to Covid restricted blood supply to the hairs in that one part of the ear canal. The brain fills in the discontinuity from the resulting "notch filter" audio response (in Electrical Engineering terminology), and that hallucinated sound is the tinnitus.

Hearing damage is the most common cause, but it's far from the only one. It can also be caused by other sorts of physical damage (TMJ, blood pressure, etc.), certain drugs, and some diseases.

> diabetes, thyroid problems, migraines, anemia, and autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus have all been associated with tinnitus

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/tinnitus/symp...

I don't find it the least bit surprising that Covid could also cause it.

Many causes listed here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8235102/

"...medicines used to treat other diseases, as well as foods and other ingested materials, can result in unwanted tinnitus. These include alcohol, antineoplastic chemotherapeutic agents and heavy metals, antimetabolites, antitumor agents, antibiotics, caffeine, cocaine, marijuana, nonnarcotic analgesics and antipyretics, ototoxic antibiotics and diuretics, oral contraceptives, quinine and chloroquine, and salicylates. This review, therefore, describes the medications currently used to treat tinnitus, including their mechanisms of action, therapeutic effects, dosages, and side-effects. In addition, this review describes the medications, foods, and other ingested agents that can induce unwanted tinnitus, as well as their mechanisms of action."

Aspirin (and NSAIDs in general) might be one of the most common drugs that can cause it (see section 2.12.7 in the paper). Table 15 lists the drugs that can cause tinnitus. The paper seems like a thorough, recent (2021) review.

anecdote for anyone else reading about Covid related tinnitus - I've had hearing damage related tinnitus for a decade. Got Covid in April '22 which caused my existing tinnitus to 2-3x in severity, lasting a couple months before it either reverted to baseline or I got used to the new normal. Very scary experience. The CEO of Texas Roadhouse famously committed suicide due in part to severe post-Covid tinnitus.

For anyone struggling to cope with Tinnitus out there, one thing that has helped me immensely is Zen meditation. Doesn't make it go away, but builds up a control over attention with which you can cope much better.

I also had it before but the 3rd vaccine shot amplified it maybe 3-5x for a few months, it was like a siren when trying to sleep, thank god it back to its normal level which I forget about most of the time.

I developed tinnitus two days after my third shot. Never had it before, and it hasn’t gone away since that day.

There are a lot of people who have had this side effect but its difficult to search for info without running into full blown conspiracy theories or people treating you like an anti-vaxer.

Absolutely. I’m about as far away from an antivaxxer as it gets, but I studiously avoid mentioning my personal side effects to the shot. You get suspicious looks from the left, and people on the right want to hold you up as proof that their antipathy for the vax is justified.

I got mine from a diving (snorkeling/free diving) accident. Barotrauma damaged my cochlea. I think Covid played a factor too. I was severely congested recovering from Covid at the time.

I got tinnitus after my second Pfizer shot (booster)

Anyone else speculating whether the shots somehow lowered our overall immune systems?

I have tinnitus only when I think about it. The rest of the time my brain just ignores it.

I feel the same way - I forget I have it until I read about it, then i can hear it again (unless I've had too much salt or caffeine or something)

same - I noticed it again as I was reading this article

We need an adblock filter for tinnitus

I think we're fine, this little exposure is probably a part of acceptance.

What I was told: salt, caffeine, alcohol, and stress.

(I check sodium on the Nutrition Facts of packaged food (it's usually high), don't touch even decaf, don't touch alcohol, and try to minimize the bad kind of stress that has no constructive solutions.)

Well I’m 3 out of 4 pretty consistently. I’ve lived with tinnitus since early childhood. I guess I’ll continue to live with it.

Yep, I've become excellent at ignoring it, only about 2% of the time does it get bad enough to be bothersome or noticeable. I always comment on these "this will make your tinnitus go away" posts with be careful, you may find it makes the times you can't use the device or product even worse because now you have a taste of real silence!

Yeah, similar here. The brain seems to do a pretty good job of 'tuning it out' most of the time after a while. But as soon as you start thinking about it, it's there and louder than ever.

The #1 cause of me remembering I have tinnitus is seeing articles about tinnitus.

And now, you are manually breathing.

Between laughing, then forgetting how to breath, then laughing at that, I nearly passed out. Thanks!

manual blinking

you can't stay in one place for long without moving to a different pose

something on your body itches (your nose?)

manual swallowing

Now your feet feel trapped and uncomfortable inside their shoes.

I didn't know I had tinnitus until I read about it.

I mostly notice it only when I meditate. I also notice that my nose hurts.

I have it only if the room is too quiet. Any reasonable level of background white noise makes it go away.

Does everyone not have ringing in their ears when they really pay attention? Or like when they are trying to go to sleep? I always thought everyone had it because I had it since childhood. Still have to this day, same intensity. During the day it does not bother me, nor do I notice it. But if I pay attention, it feels pretty loud.

Apparently 60-80 percent of people can hear a sound like a faint buzzing or hissing when inside a perfectly anechoic chamber but Tinnitus is more noticeable in regularly quiet environments.

I’ve always wondered this. This sound which when reading about these low sound rooms, turns out to be blood flowing through the ears. Your brain is not getting any stimulation so amplifies your hearing - is this what tinnitus is but just significantly louder and all the time?

That’s pulsatile Tinnitus but what most people hear is more a buzzing or high pitched continuous tone.

Ah. Thank you, good to know

> I always thought everyone had it because I had it since childhood.

I can remember being about five or six years old and hearing the Simon and Garfunkel song, "The Sound of Silence" and I thought my tinnitus was what they were talking about, and that everybody had it. I cannot remember a time when I didn't have it. Since it has always been with me, it doesn't really bother me. I feel bad for people who get it later in life and for whom it is a very large annoyance.

I've always wondered that too. In very quiet rooms I hear quite intense ringing. I have distinct memories as a young child of wanting a fan turned on in my bedroom at night because of the sound of silence was ringing. It seems like what people describe as tinnitus, but... I don't seem to have any of the hearing loss that is always described as causing tinnitus. I can quite clearly high pitched noises such as CRT monitors and ultrasonic mosquito repellent. I don't have a history of working with loud equipment or going to concerts, and in any case that doesn't explain why I would hear it in childhood. It all doesn't quite correspond with with a lot of the causes and symptoms I hear described.

This comment is as useful as posting to a thread on clinical depression that when you feel down you sing a little song.

There's absolutely nothing you can do about tinnitus except adjust to it. You really do just have to relax and accept it, and it essentially fades into the background. That's literally the best treatment available.

The entire reason this comment chain exists is that someone has built a better treatment than just adjusting to it.

It's really one of the most true things about tinnitus. It takes a while to put your mind in order to accept it, but once you're done, the problem goes away (but tinnitus never does).

Same for me, I think I probably had it since a young age (lots of middle ear infections) but it seemed normal to me so I didn’t realize it was unusual until much later in life. I freaked out about it for a few years but realized it was and will always be there and didn’t bother me before, so I pretty much went back to it not bothering me anymore.

I had a mental health crisis when I first realized I had it (triggered by a really bad audio mix at a concert and some rando chastising "you're gonna fuck up your hearing" when I didn't have earplugs). A few months followed of "oh shit, is my life experience permanently broken now?" and all the bad feelings that connotes. I was in a really bad place.

I've always been someone who can hear electronics - when CRTs are popular, I'd know if one was in the upcoming room while I was still in the hallway. At some point, I realized that I heard all sorts of minor sounds just by existing in my apartment, and that tinnitus isn't much different than that. Helped me chill out about the whole scenario.

My mom taught me "lean into the good, and you'll feel more of the good; lean into the bad, and you'll feel more of the bad." That's certainly been my experience with tinnitus. Letting yourself panic and gloom about it is the worst part of having it. If you don't assign valence to it (don't let it be good or bad, just a thing you experience), it loses its power to drive you mad.

Am I the only one that hear tinnitus only when sleeping and if I yawn a LOT I can finally remove it?

Probably jaw related, you should have it checked. Can be a posture problem.

Thanks for the advice!! it could be totally be that!

that’s great for you, i have to sleep with sound - the silence is not deafening, but the hum/etc is when it is silent

Same most of the time. But the first two weeks were hard man...

Hmm, seems interesting but it's intended to take the "focus" off of the ringing rather than actually fix the underlying cause.

Personally, having tinnitus for so long I don't even notice it anymore; it would be nice to experience complete "silence" again though.

It doesn’t sound to me like it would help you in that case, if it is just about attention.

I have tinnitus as well and after months of focusing on it trying to “cure” it, I learned to adapt and now it is better and doesn’t keep me up at night or interfere with anything. This sounds like a shortcut to the acceptance that patients need to achieve in order to move on. But maybe it would make a real difference to very high intensity patients.

I don't understand it that way.

My understanding of the underlying cause of tinnitus iirc, is that it's caused by damage to hair cells in your inner ear. Our brains interpret this damage and loss of signal as a signal; thus, we hear a high-pitched tone even when it is silent.

Training your brain to ignore this seems like treating the underlying cause, which is a misinterpretation of auditory signals or the lack thereof.

I have tinnitus but most times I don't notice it. Go to a loud venue for a while and even with earplugs it noticeably comes back for up to a week or two.

Although, there are also people who are deaf as a doornail and never get it. And you can experience it as a symptom of psychotropics.

Are you implying the underlying cause is never a brain malfunction?

I think of it a little like phantom limb pains If you feel pain in a hand or foot that you no longer have, retraining your brain is one way to fix it. Maybe regrowing a foot would be better, but we don't know how to do that.

I'm not doctor or scientist, but I think of it like the nerves in the ear are signaling off constantly. The brain is operating normally by listening to them, but what you really want is for it to adapt and start to ignore the bad signals. The brain can phase them out, but it can never stop receiving the signal, so you still hear it if you consciously focus on it. It sounds like this person is already there but still looking for a real cure, something to stop the signals.

“Silence” really does belong in quotes. I spent some time in an anechoic chamber (a few hours a day over 6 weeks) and could hear the blood flowing through my ears. It was quite strange and convinced me that true silence doesn’t exist unless you’re deaf.

Probably similar to the experience of seeing the blood vessels of your retina when a focused light source moves past your eyes. I think that's something we kinda always "see", but the signal is removed by the brain before reaching consciousness, until lighting quickly changes blood vessels' shadows.

One of the spookiest experiences of my life was activating a pair of noise-canceling headphones in a room that was already quiet and immediately being able to hear my neck vertebrae touching. I snatched them off my head like they were a spider.

I think that’s normal. I also hear that roar that you read about when yawning or twisting ear muscles, and also pushing my head forward with my hard while fighting back with my neck muscles.

Have you tried this trick of overloading your acoustic nerves temporarily? For both ears, close your ears with your index finger and than tap on the index fingers with your middle fingers - to make a loud pounding sound - a few times. As far as I know, these short peaks are not dangerous to the ear, but safely overload hearing sensitivity. You may gain a few (sometimes critical) moments of silent peace this way.

I can make mine go away temporarily (as in a minute or so) by sticking my fingers in my ears and jiggling them around to make a lot of noise for 10 seconds. I suspect it's just the contrast, but it is really nice to have something resembling real silence.

A few years back I got a bad wax buildup in one ear and stopped hearing anything. After they took the wax out, my ear was hypersensitive for a day or so. I heard every little rustle, shifting in my chair, even fabric moving when I moved my arm.

I can also make it go away temporarily (also just a minute or two) with the tapping technique

"Place the palms of your hands over your ears with fingers resting gently on the back of your head. Your middle fingers should point toward one another just above the base of your skull. Place your index fingers on top of your middle fingers and snap them (the index fingers) onto the skull making a loud, drumming noise. Repeat 40-50 times"

A similar device is being developed by Dr. Susan Shore. They are currently working towards FDA approval.

Relevant clinical trial: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

Relevant Q&A with Susan Shore: https://www.tinnitushub.com/dr-susan-shore-auricle-questions...

They're also affiliated with Auricle, a YC company.

I accidentally did something similar, but there’s a significant cost.

Got tinnitus at 15 and over time my brain filtered out the sound. Unfortunately one of the tones was in the upper vocal range so I then developed trouble understanding people with higher-pitched voices as some syllables would be entirely filtered out.

Second is that I stopped paying attention to sounds that aggravated it. This caused me to gather more damage and I ended up getting additional frequencies that my brain wasn’t filtering out.

Have you tried hearing aids? I went to an audiologist a week ago and found that I have mild hearing loss in higher frequencies and as a result certain letter combinations are hard for me to hear. She told me hearing aids might help. I get a 30 day free trial, so the only thing I have to lose is the time to get them and get them dialed in.

The audiologist also gave me a copy of the audiogram. In the health app I used the camera to scan it and it adjusted the frequency output on my ear buds to compensate for some of my hearing loss.

That's the real problem with hearing loss: if you compensate by raising volume across the entire spectrum of sound to compensate for a few frequencies, you slowly make yourself more and more deaf.

And I suffer from a notch in my hearing where speech is generally found, so I hear clinking glasses and shuffling chairs far easier than people. It's aggravating for everyone involved. If you're lucky enough to afford hearing aids, you'll soon discover hearing aid companies know the best fidelity comes from high discretion and narrow band amplification. And they're pricing hearing aids accordingly: the more and narrower the bands, the higher the price. Also aggravating.

My case is classic: hearing damage at one particular frequency (from one stupid event). Apparently, the neurons got bored, and decided to create their own input at that frequency.

As others gave said, you get used to it and rarely notice it. I suppose that is more difficult if it's not just constant noise.

Ah, how we'd all benefit from a life rewind button...

I would like to offer a more comical tinnitus anecdote as someone with a moderate hereditary hearing impairment. I have always had tinnitus for as long as I remember. Usually it's a constant ringing that gets more intense until it stops. When I was very young I described it to the school district audiologist as "hearing trains", or at least that's what I remember of trying to describe the sensation as a five year old.

It never really bothered me to be honest. I was always a little baffled when I read stories about it ruining someone's life. Then two years ago I had just moved into a new house. After returning from a roadtrip I started hearing what I was convinced was a smoke detector beeping due to low battery in mostly my left ear. I looked everywhere for the source of the beep. In the attic, in the crawlspace, in the garage, everywhere. I started to wonder if maybe it was in my head, but from time to time I would hear the beep and once again scour the house for the source of the mystery beep.

Finally, I went on another trip and lo and behold, I heard the beep in the dead of night in my hotel room. After that, I knew it was a new tinnitus symptom. My theory is that possibly having the windows down while I was driving on such a long trip caused new hearing loss and produced new tinnitus symptoms. Luckily, I feel that being able to recognize that it is no different than the tinnitus I have always had, and that it is something outside of my control seems to allow me to remain unbothered once again.

So glad for news in this field! It's fairly underfunded, as the symptom is just like "tummy ache". No clearly visible suffering with a million possible causes.

During High School and Uni, I played violin in various restaurants a bunch. Close spaces, full volume to match a singing crowd. A year later of no active playing, suddenly I got 1 day of hearing loss on the left ear, followed by tinnitus after hearing restored on the side where the violin is played. E-String'ish tinnitus pitch. Loudly and constantly present, can't understand speech levels strong on the left ear.

That was beyond horrible and sacred the hell out of me. Straight up torture. I think of myself as mentally strong, but that put everything into perspective of how fragile my psyche is, if pushed just at the right spot.

ENTs got me on multiple rounds of steroid injections through the ear drum. Luckily it subsided within 2-3 months, though fully unclear if the steroids helped or not. Only then I found out, you are supposed to use ear protection when playing violin, specialized musician's plugs that attenuate the volume a bit.

> It includes a plastic mouthpiece with stainless steel electrodes that electrically stimulate the tongue.

All I can picture is the device John Lithgow uses in Buckaroo Banzai.

I might need to try this soon. I've had tinnitus for about 6 months after a cold. Last week, the doctor said my hearing is perfect and to just wait it out. It's frustrating.

I've had tinnitus for decades, and my hearing always checked out fine. Idk what the cause was, maybe too much loud band music.

I figure if it's not bad enough to affect my hearing on an audiologist's test, it's fine.

IMO there's not research into it as a brain issue. Especially in medicine where we pretend there's a clean biological separation between provider specialties.

It seems more likely to be a gut microbiome issue, which would make sense considering it can be caused by antibiotics and people tend to get it as they age which your microbiome health tends to decline as we age too.

No, it's definitely insufficient faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Which totally makes sense since sometimes sinners get it, and we're all sinners, aren't we?!

Job did not have faith in Jesus (Job 9:33), but tinnitus is not among Job's listed afflictions. I'm pretty sure tinnitus is caused by reading too many books: since your theory is wrong, by process of elimination, mine must be right.

It’s frustrating, I’ve been through that - hearing is fine, but tinnitus persists.

There’s no single recommended treatment studied by medicine so far. I’m not a doctor but I visited multiple doctors and tried many things, and I’m doing better now.

The obvious stuff:

- Stress management.

- Cut caffeine and alcohol. These substances affect blood flow of the inner ear.

- Do you have neck pain? Pain in the neck region affects the inner ear. Seek physiotherapy.

- Do you grind teeth or snore while sleeping? Seek TMJ disorder treatment.

Less obvious stuff:

- Supplement magnesium. Magnesium chelated is best. Most people are lacking it today, it is a muscle relaxant and also had an important effect to regulate blood flow.

- Ginko biloba tea or extract can help on headache and promotes blood flow on the brain as well. Must be consumed in small quantities as it has a strong blood thinner effect, so if you can get standardized capsules is best.

- B6/B12 rich diet or supplementation to help repair damaged nervous cells of the inner ear after infection.

The treatments are a mix of things that help repair the inner ear, promote blood flow and avoid pain signals in the area.

Thanks for the ideas, I’ll check them out.

Could you share the specific brand/dose for the magnesium and ginko that helped you?

The chelated magnesium I asked a local pharmacy to manipulate, but any reputable brand should work. The protocol is 300-400mg daily for 3 months. Toxicity is hard to achieve, the body will store Mg on the bones for when you need and the excess goes in urine, but drink plenty of water.

Gingko look for the standardized extract Egb 761. See this study for dosage: https://arquivosdeorl.org.br/additional/acervo_port.asp?id=1...

Same except for me it was covid. It's likely caused by eustachian disfunction and they've all told me it takes so long to correct itself.

I may be having this now, E-Tube tinnitus due to seasonal allergies and inflammation, likely worsened by prior earwax/infection/COVID factors.

It's been 3 months of pulsatile tinnitus, this week I am finally waking up in silence some days, but it returns by the afternoon.

Can people close to you hear your tinnitus as well?

I don't believe so. Maybe I should buy a stethoscope and check. I've been referred to an ENT but the waitlist is stupidly long, in Canada.

It took me 3 months to get into ENT here, and while they are very kind - it added nothing for me personally (i.e. we don't have a good solution for tinnitus, here are some things to avoid, etc etc). I hope your visit bears more fruit!

That's what I anticipate but mostly I want to rule out any serious causes as my tinnitus is low-pitched, both irregular and regular patterned, pulsatile, is affected by my head position and physical exertion, and fluctuates every other day. It is unlike the continuous high-pitch tinnitus that most articles describe.

I've read if it doesn't go away after a couple weeks it's permanent but I've experienced it before where it took a year maybe one time and another time was 6 months of no improvement and then a couple months of dramatic improvement to where what was left was so much lower that when I heard it it makes me grateful and happy because it reminds me of how lucky I am.

My anecdote:

I assume I have fairly severe tinnitus at this point. It was in part exposure to loud noises over the years (military), but I think chemotherapy really did me in the past year as tinnitus has become more bothersome than ever; caveat I tend to register and take interest in anything physical after cancer.

Its a constant beaming sound - I hear it right now. I can go most of the day distracting away from it, but there is no great aid or distraction when trying to go to sleep.

The closest solution has been trying to cancel it out with mobile apps that allow to you build custom frequencies (white noise generators) but they aren't perfect its not something I really have been able to become accustomed to using.

A tongue vibrator with a pair of headphones is $4,000? And insurance doesn't cover it...

If I knew it would work, that would be the easiest $4k I've ever spent.

I'm in the same boat. If I had any assurances that it would work, I'd spend the $4K in a heartbeat. But, I'm really skeptical it would work, and I'm not ready to part with $4K on a promise and private "studies".

Seems basic enough that this device should be available without the whole "go to a Lenire doctor" consultation, but I guess people gotta get paid.

Where's the superior Chinese knockoff version.

9V battery to the tongue?

I was thinking the other day that there’s a generational gap in this experience.

When I was a kid in the 80’s it seems like lots of stuff ran on 9V batteries, now almost nothing does except for smoke detectors and test equipment.

They meant not the MSS one.

The "clinical test data" was paid for by the company. There seems to be some placebo bias (no control group). Test patients had to meet "specific criteria" which is probably what this consultation is about as well.

Persuade a Lenire doctor to let you attach an oscilloscope to the device. Then DIY a microcontroller and current source that does the same thing, and put it on GitHub.

People don't gotta get paid. Open source must reign.

I still pray for some advancement that can actually repair the cause (damaged hearing) rather than the symptom (tinnitus).

[EDIT]: Ok... The cause in my personal case.

Many with tinnitus see no decline in hearing

I don't think it's a single cause disease.

I had an interesting experience a few months ago. I seem to be incorrectly remembering it as percussive tinnitus - all I can find now is pulsatile tinnitus. Whatever it's called, it was a tapping in my ear at about 120 bps, only noticeable when going to sleep. It was possibly caused by a bike fall, very jarring to the body, no head contact, and disappeared after two or three weeks.

I had that in one ear for 2-3 years. By pulsatile tinnitus I assume you mean the loud "whooshing" sound that is in sync with your heart beat (hearing the blood flow basically). Doctors were pretty ignorant about the phenomenon, I gave up. It was not constant either, would go away for a few hours, start again for another few hours - repeat. One day, it stopped and never came back. Pretty mysterious.

I'm having unilateral pulsatile tinnitus, and it's been 3 months so far.

My doctor thinks its often just eustachian tube seasonal allergies, and so gets better on its own slowly. The steroid spray I've been using for months just hurts my nose.

It was pretty constant up till this week, now for several mornings I wake up all clear! What relief! But it comes back over the afternoon. I really hope it improves on this trajectory.

I hesitate to recommend this because of how woo woo it sounds, but... I had terrible pulsatile tinnitus (both sides) for over a year and half. I went to doctors, specialists, tried steroids, the works. I had to sleep with headphones to drown it out. Eventually my wife suggested I try craniosacral therapy. After the first session it started to get a lot quieter and even would "stutter" out for short periods of time. After the second session it disappeared and hasn't been back. The practitioner came from https://milneinstitute.com/what-is-vcsw/

Actually that's a good idea... My parents are literally ENT doctors so one thing they told me to try was simple neck massages/movements. Basically cradle the back of neck with your fingers, then slowly tilt head up and down. It improves blood flow, releases muscle tension, etc., and there's a chance this or the CST that you mention can help with some forms of tinnitus. Now that you've reminded me, I'll keep trying it, thanks!

It wasn't whooshing or heart sync'd. I'm not sure it was pulsatile, I'll have to search again. It was like a 120 bpm metronome - tap, tap, tap, tap, ...

If you’re worried you have tinnitus you can also be hearing air conditioner units whine or even the fridge.

I spent some time in the middle of what I’ll call the Mexican outback during the winter - everything is dead. There’s nothing at night, not even bugs. I could hear the blood pump in my ears. Pretty neat. No lights or stars either. The closest to ‘deadening silence’ I’ve ever been.

From my experience the reverse is much more common - that's what people THINK they're hearing when they actually DO have tinnitus. CRT whine was big one in the 90s/early 00s.

I'm old enough that I can no longer hear high frequencies such as CRTs, but my life long tinnitus is still with me. It is also high frequency, and similar to a CRT whine, but I never mistook one for the other.

I have horrible tinnitus that sounds like a goblin screaming in both ears. This is how I keep from blowing my brains out, I hope it helps someone:

Step 1: YouTube-dl this blessed sound: https://youtu.be/8indTo2ykPw (Plz tip the guy) (You should be able to tell just by listening to the sound that it immediately cuts out the tinnitus— if this sound print doesn’t work for you, there may be others that work better. But I have let other tinnitus sufferers wear my headphones and they all say it makes the tinnitus go away completely)

1a: (cut out the dialogue in the beginning with audacity)

Step 2: buy a pair of these waterproof mp3 ONLY (it’s an appliance) bone conduction headphones: https://a.co/d/aqqhPm9

Step 3:put the mp3 you ripped on the headphones and remember what a normal life feels like

I have had some low frequency tinnitus clusters over the years permanently go away after losing 50 pounds

I've been taking magnesium ("Calm" brand), zinc, potassium, and D, at night after dinner and just before I go to bed and that's really helped quiet down the tinnitus for me. For me, it's stress that triggers it and it can get vicious loud.

Do you know what caused your tinnitus?

35 year old male. I developed tinnitus in my left ear only after covid last December. It's been constant since December 21st, 2023.

I have an amazingly huge level of empathy of anyone dealing with this - the first few days were some of the longest of my life. Through it all so far, it's amazing how little we seem to know about tinnitus - TL;DR my doctors have said we don't have any great answers for it.

Thanks for posting the link - I will try any "trick" or treatment for this.

Same. I also ended up getting dry/itchy inner ear and was given a steroid oil to put in my ear and to my surprise it also helps out my tinnitus for a day or 2 after using it.

Would you mind sending me a link to the oil? Or is it prescribed?

It's prescribed...fluocinolone acetonide oil

If steroids do help, maybe you could try to address inflammation?

Do you use cotton swabs to clean your ears?

Same here, was 39 when it happened, 41 now.

It was very troubling at first but you adapt.

I no longer doubt anybody suffering from long-covid. I used to be very skeptical, like “chronic fatigue” and “fibromyalgia”, but when a cold does permanent damage to your hearing you realize how different COVID really was

100%! Thankfully, I am doing better mentally. I have accepted that I may always have it, and that, honestly, has been the best "cure" so far.

I hope you’ve changed your mind about chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia as well. They’re also post-viral diseases.

I've always had it somewhat but COVID late last year definitely kicked it up a notch for a while, it did fade back to essentially being unnoticeable after a couple of months though. Hope yours fades too, it's a nuisance for sure.

I never got diagnosed with COVID, but I was almost certainly exposed. Mine developed suddenly during one of the early peaks in 2020. Unfortunately I was also producing music at the time with headphones, which I've considered the likely cause. But who knows -- maybe it was a combo of things. My stress was through the roof, I wasn't sleeping much, I put on a lot of weight, and I was exposing my ears to moderately loud sounds. Suddenly my brain just decided to keep looping a tone indefinitely.

At least treatments are starting to come out. It's nice to know that there is relief if I ever need it.

I find it funny that the article links to the company's site with google ads utm tags: https://www.lenire[.]com /?utm_term=lenire&utm_campaign=Search+-+Lenire+-+Brand+Protection+-+USA&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=4954361913&hsa_cam=20010028552&hsa_grp=146636505325&hsa_ad=655641531324&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=kwd-753733464950&hsa_kw=lenire&hsa_mt=p&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwt-OwBhBnEiwAgwzrUs67MMrR9FXmCYKnqj6gAQLBACKxnFyEvTSAEsNb_pB97_rKTRI0ohoCp5wQAvD_BwE

Fascinating.

There is also a form of tinnitus that is made worse by neck muscles, be it from an injury, TBI, etc. Massage can reduce this kind of tinnitus.

There are also audio files that can help you find the frequency of and reduce the tinnitus you are hearing.

I wonder if you could have similar results from licking a 9v battery

It's the sounds and the noise together.

I wager that, given the details of the patent and any published literature, it's likely it would be possible to replicate the effects cheaply.

I have tinnitus since last january. It came. It does not go away. Learnt to deal with it. It os quite bothersome. I did nothing except going to the doctor. He told me there is no solution and checking my audition in the next 6 months to 2 years.

I did not do anything about it except taking some medication for one month. If anyone has tips and tricks for it I will keep them with me. It always helps. :)

I have tinnitus and count myself as extremely lucky that it doesn't bother me. My hearing is very poor and that does bother me, but there isn't any apparent fix other than a hearing aid. I'm only 49! By the time I am 70, I'll almost certainly be deaf except for the tinnitus.

Occasionally, I put together my own "Asmr audio mix" with this tool;

it helps me reduce my tinnitus and hyperacusis symptoms: https://asmrion.com

Anybody try using a stim machine for tinnitus? I've read that had helped some people. I wonder if it works similar to other areas where it helps promote healing so maybe some of the hair cells recover?

I have one that has ear clips I can try.

Idk if I can fashion a tongue clip but maybe one that attaches above the ears for bone conduction hearing also.

There’s been some studies into magnetics for neuropathy treatment, migraines, etc. They are called PEMF devices but most are quite expensive ~ $5k.

Am I the only one that hear tinnitus only when sleeping and if I yawn a LOT I can finally remove it? I can't understand why it's happening and fortunately it doesn't happen always

My tinnitus is worse when I am congested (because I guess there is more pressure in the internal ear or something). Yawning can help relieving the pressure.

For anyone suffering tinnitis: In alternative remedy circles I once ran in, some people reported relief from improving their magnesium status.

Isn't tinnitus about certain tissues/bone pressed against each other?

cricket sleep music seems to be the common go-to cure.

But an elevated one to check out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke2BopotSIU

There's no common go-to cure sadly. That's the problem.

> cricket sleep music seems to be the common go-to cure.

I'll check it out but the video card announces 4.5khz virtues. I'm at 11.5khz.

I've been using a streaming rain channel after I realized that a running tub quiets it down more than anything else.

For a cause, my best theory is 6 years of road road/engine noise from the current car. Most of us have a theory; some of us might even be right.

Distraction, not cure

I use pink noise (it's less harsh than the cricket white noise) notched to my tinnitus frequency. There are some studies asserting that notching the noise may reduce your brain's sensitivity to your tinnitus frequency.

https://treblehealth.com/notch-therapy-tinnitus/

https://audionotch.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@tinnitusreliever610/videos

Seems like a current source, microcontroller, and audio player.

Reverse engineering time!

Maybe try to drink less stimulants... like coffee-tea. When I overdrink these the tinnitus comes.

I'll get to enjoy real sound of the coming Cicada-pocalypse, instead of these fake crickets.

That's actually really helpful to think of it as a cicada sound. Turning an annoying pitch into a nice nostalgic reminder of a summer evening.

> Banks paid about $4,000 for the Lenire device

Hahaha, yeah alright...

Four thousand dollars for a device with a bill of materials that's probably less than $20. Disgusting. Open source version when?

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