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Tinnitus

I have it too. What helps for me the most is not thinking about it. Not read about it, not talk about it, ignore it. I did a "dry january" twice. Although it might be a placebo effect I got the impression it helped to make the beep less intense after a couple of weeks. As a sport I cycle, it helps a bit. After the workout it's less intense. MDMA helps too (seriously, google it), but that's not really a good advice :D. It's never completely gone but some things seem to work for me, even if it's a placebo.

To not make it worse, I always take my custom ear plugs with me. Wherever I go. You might end up in a bar where music is played (too) loud. I playback at speech volume, I just got used to that level and it's perfectly fine for me. I almost never use headphones.
 
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A little bit of common sense goes a long way.

Headphones at loud volumes = 110-115 db
Jet Plane Taking Off = 120 db

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/generation-deaf-doctors-warn-dangers-ear-buds-n360041

I use the same rule I use with studio monitors and speakers. I shoot for about 87 db max.

Hearing test


When working/attending live events wear hearing protection. Even $2 ear plugs can protect your hearing.

Very interested to hear why some are advising not to use headphones - could you provide some more information on that?

I use headphones a lot, but in a quiet location and most of the time at very low volumes - like sometimes I can barely even hear the music (I'm not kidding). Is this ok?
 
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I've been playing loud metal music since the beginning of the 90's and toured actively until the mid- 2000's. I don't think there hasn't been a single instance of me not wearing earplugs at rehearsals or on stage, which I am really grateful at myself. My father was a professional drummer and some of his friends suffered from tinnitus already back in the 80's so I have pretty much always been very informed about the dangers of hear loss.

Once when we were teenagers, my uncle (who had tinnitus) had a tone generator and he showed us exactly the frequency that was yelling inside his ears and also a vague idea of the volume of it's ringing. Needless to say, that was rather eye- opening horror story experience for a young mind.

The best earplugs for me are still the good old €1 yellow EAR- foams. I usually never squeeze them unless in a REALLY loud enviroment but just push them as far as they go without morphing them. The high frequencies are what really kill your ears, and the more you can damp those the better.
 
Good to see this being discussed. I have heavy tinnitus and hearing loss in the right ear and some tinnitus in the left - just developed over a few years with no obvious cause. The three biggest difficulties for me when composing are a lack of stereo field, not being able to properly hear the air in reverbs and any dense layers of sound just seeming like a wall of noise - as a result I’ve been driven towards very sparse open composition.

I have a hearing aid for my right ear but it is next to useless, certainly for listening/mixing - all it does is add a harsh noise. As a musician I’ve found audiologists are almost competely focussed on spoken word - there seems to be nothing out there aimed at improving the quality of sound. It’s fairly scary how little seems to be known about both tinnitus and hearing loss, other than “sorry, it’s irreversable”

The biggest challenge however is conveying to others how devastating it is when one of the core things in your life is progressivley taken away, let alone getting prospective employers to work with you...

Andy
 
Has anyone taken Lyrica for their tinnitus? My Dr. Prescribed it. Took it today for the first time and felt a bit dizzy. Its a known side effect but I wondered if anyone here has taken it and had the side effects diminish over time.
 
I have a double whammy when it comes to tinnitus: tinnitus and hearing loss left over from playing in loud hard rock bands through much of the 1980's, followed by my having developed bilateral Meniere's disease (probably more correct to describe it as AIED, or auto-immune inner ear disease) about a dozen years later. Even at the best of times I have very high-frequency tinnitus in both ears (which I've had for so long that I hardly notice it anymore, even though it is always audible). But when the Meniere's acts up, the tinnitus can turn into louder, lower, multiple pitches, or even a roaring, white noise sound in one ear at the worst (not to mention the continuous dizziness that accompanies such episodes, which doesn't directly affect my hearing but sure makes it difficult to function as a musician or much of anything else).

Like a few others in this thread, over the last several years I too have had episodes where I hear the wrong pitches in the affected ear ... where the beep of the microwave is like a minor 3rd different in one ear vs. the other. Usually during those episodes, hearing music or sound in general is too uncomfortable, and I try to remain in silence as much as possible. It is always deeply disturbing and discouraging, but at the same time it has always resolved itself after 4 to 6 days or thereabouts, so I just do my best to remain patient and wait it out when it happens. And I try to avoid the foods that seem to trigger these outbreaks (food allergies/sensitivities are almost always to blame for my Meniere's/AIED episodes, and my diet has become extremely restricted in an effort to control it).

I have to rely more upon visual aids for balancing the frequency spectrum of my mixes than I would if my hearing was more reliable, but I also keep trying to train myself as to what a good mix sounds like to my damaged hearing. It is a constant battle, and one I regard as my biggest hurdle whenever I'm trying to produce results that are expected to please an audience with better hearing than my own.
 
I would recommend everyone to try acupuncture. Tinnitus is a nervous system disorder and acupuncture is excellent to bring the nervous system back to the parasympathetic mode.
 
I got tinnitus as a kid from a complication of the measles. Yes - I am so old there wasn’t even a vaccine yet. Mostly I have learned to ignore it although there have been times when it has driven me to panic. Wearing headphones does seem to exacerbate it or make it more noticeable. I think we may suffer more than most with this because we are so acutely aware of what we are hearing

I know of nothing to make it better but drugs like Aleve, aspirin and ibuprofen can definitely make it worse!
 
I have something for all of you. It's something that most people do not think about.

Clean your phones regularly. Your landlines AND your cellphones. Studies have shown that many phones test positive for potential disease-causing microbes and fecal matter. Not all tinnitus is caused by bacteria and viruses, but it can be. Plus, an already present case of tinnitus can be made worse by bacteria and viruses.

CLEAN YOUR PHONES
 
I'm always stunned by how loud live concerts are, I immensely dislike them honestly and usually avoid them for that reason. My sister got me some tickets for air at the opera house for a gift a few months back and within 15 seconds of the first song I could feel my ears reacting to deal with the sound pressure so I was hunting around in my jacket for spare earplugs (motorcyclist) almost immediately.

They were -30dB foamies and it was still incredibly loud, I don't get the point.
 
I have something for all of you. It's something that most people do not think about.

Clean your phones regularly. Your landlines AND your cellphones. Studies have shown that many phones test positive for potential disease-causing microbes and fecal matter. Not all tinnitus is caused by bacteria and viruses, but it can be. Plus, an already present case of tinnitus can be made worse by bacteria and viruses.

CLEAN YOUR PHONES

I knew it! All those dirty phone calls.
 
I always take my custom ear plugs with me. Wherever I go. You might end up in a bar where music is played (too) loud.

I do this too! It's saved my ass so many times...at the movie theater, randomly getting invited to a show, even just walking down the street in LA. I usually wear them at least once a day.
 
I've had high-pitched tinnitus for many years - listened to my Walkman too loud as a teen. Just in the last few weeks it seems to have gotten louder, plus a bit of pressure in my ears. I'm hoping it's just allergies but made an appointment with an ENT & Audiologist just to be sure. I know it's never going to go away but I'd sure like it to drop down to its previous level. Before the recent volume increase it really didn't bother me - the price I pay for the audio sins of my youth. But now that it's louder I find it troubles me when I'm trying to sleep - both the sound itself plus my worry about my hearing.

I'll also throw in that I've got TMJ which causes pain in my left ear when I (try to) sleep on my left side. It SUCKS.

It got me thinking about what I can/should do should I start to lose my hearing (I should note I did an informal test and can still hear up to 13700hz which I think is pretty good for a 48-year old former hair metal lover, and I can still hear small, tiny sounds and distant sounds). I've been working in video game audio for about 10 years now and am considering shifting my focus to game audio implementation as a way to prepare for the future.

I bought custom fitted earplugs when I was 27 and I wear them all the time. I have foamies stashed in my car and in various bags for emergencies (bars, etc).
 
I'll also throw in that I've got TMJ which causes pain in my left ear when I (try to) sleep on my left side. It SUCKS.
Sorry to hear that! I had my TMJ realigned by a Bowen therapist. If you're interested, you can find one in your country from this website:

https://www.bowtech.com/WebsiteProj/Pages/About/Welcome.aspx
 
Really interesting to read how many people have it. And also not surprising given how stupidly loud live music is.

I started playing on bands as a teenager and was gigging seriously by the age of 17. My ears rang after gigs and I just thought it was normal. It always left. Then one day a couple of months before my 19th birthday I was brushing my teeth one night and could hear this noise. After searching around to hear where it was coming from, I realised it was my ears. It never left.

I got ear plugs and carried on, but it got worse and worse and my hearing became overly sensitive. And then there were a couple of horrible feedback moments on stage that finished me off. At just 20 years old I had to quit gigging for good. The other band members still gig to this day without issues.

Ironically, via some other tangents, it lead me to pursue a career as a composer and I've been a full time musician for over a decade now. But I can't gig, or really go to gigs (even with custom 26db ear plugs) and I have to keep volumes low in the studio and be very careful with headphones whilst tracking.

I work around it, but it's bad. Several pitches of hissing and humming in both ears and there's a reasonable chance I'll have hearing aids at an earlier stage than most.

Lessons - always, always, always, always wear earplugs. Don't play stupidly loud, it doesn't sound better and it wrecks your hearing forever!

One trick I use at night (when most people find it's most intrusive) is to have a mundane mental task. I personally list all of Lewis Hamilton's F1 wins from 2007 to the present day. I usually get to about 2011 - 12 and I'm asleep. Anything like that will do the trick - listing the controls on your favourite synth or all of the modes of the major scale or whatever.

But anyway, interesting to read others stories and advice. Thanks for posting.
 
As far as the ENTs have told me, there is no cure or treatment for tinnitus at present.
+1
but life is too short if we always think about it.


......Tinnitus is a nervous system disorder .....
+1


I know about Tinnitus, it caused by:
external caused : big damage volume level.
internal caused: not sleeping, stress, unbalance life etc., blood pressure, high collesterol,
people like us using DAW everyday who always sit and sit everyday working (without sport activity)

Becareful man.

Solution from me:
do not think about it! You will get stress or crazy. Enjoy live with it, first sleeping you can play your favourite calm music until you sleep.

I can handle it from 2006 until now ;)
 
EDIT: Just catching up on other helpful posts in this thread now. Sorry for the comments/questions that seem to have already been covered.

On a side note, has anyone else noticed that their tinnitus intensity or pitch can fluctuate when yawning or when chewing some hard piece of food? As if the jaw joint is having some effect on the sound? I've read tinnitus can be related to improper jaw/bite alignment.

Absolutely. I can reliably change the the intensity of the ringing by simply extending my jaw. It must be deforming something in the inner ear, or affecting nerves. Makes you wonder if that isn't a clue to some avenue of treatment?
 
Hmmmm …… No change whatsoever here as hi-freg ( >4Khz) remains steady no matter what jaw is doing.
Meditator (TM) for 40 yrs + later awareness /mindfulness practices. Good stuff, just questionable effect on Tinnitus. Long periods when completely unaware.

Efforts have long been tinny …… :blush:
 
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I'm just wondering if any of you also have tinnitus, and if you have any tips or advice for how you deal with it.
I've had it for a couple of decades now, but other than get used to it, I have no tips unfortunately. Some days it's worse than others. I've tried some of the solutions on Youtube, but they are temporary fixes at best. Fortunately, most of the time I forget I have it.
 
On a side note, has anyone else noticed that their tinnitus intensity or pitch can fluctuate when yawning or when chewing some hard piece of food? As if the jaw joint is having some effect on the sound? I've read tinnitus can be related to improper jaw/bite alignment.

Yep, movement of my jaw changes the pitch and intensity quite a bit. I also find that if I hold my breath and focus on the ringing then I can make it sound quieter but only briefly.
 
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