I have developed tinnitus, a constant 'beep' in my head, always at the same high frequency. The volume of the beep varies during the day, depending on the volume and type of sounds I'm in and how tired I am. Noisy environments and fatigue makes the beep louder. In my case fan noise like an air conditioning ('white noise') and loud conversations between multiple people makes the beep very loud. When it's loud I have trouble understanding people - it's that loud. I think it is a form of hearing loss ('damaged ears') caused by myself unfortunately: playing in loud bands for years and going to race tracks without proper hearing protection. This symptom of 'ringing' seems to be more and more widely spread because people listen to too loud music on their headphones or at concerts. Protect your ears!!
Do you have tinnitus? Do you have tips what to do or how to deal with it?
 
I developed it about 5 years ago in one ear only...they checked me for tumor but found nothing. I have same high pitch all the time no fluctuations. Gets worse every year. Believed to be caused by years of Ciproflaxin use (which I still have to take sometimes unfortunately). I also have some dizziness, anxiety and balance issues all related possibly. At this point my left ear is not very useful. I would rather be deaf in that ear completely than deal with the tinnitus.
How to deal with it? Dont focus on it. You cam try hearing aids with white noise but my family could hear my white noise at the dinner table from the hearing aid so it was a no go. Good luck.
Oh, try not to take drugs that can cause long term nerve damage to ears
 
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I don't have tinnitus but I sometimes get a little darkening on one of my ears when I'm stressed out and we're exposed to loud environments.
I've bought bose qc 35 II noise canceling headphones and maybe you should test one of these too to calm down your ears from time to time.
When I'm listening to calm music on them for 10 minutes plus and then take them off, everything is damn loud for my impression.
They really calm down my ears :)

At the moment Sony and bose have the best noise canceling. Sony cancels more but bose has less "white noise".
Just a stupid thought I'm throwing in here but maybe you're stumbling upon one of them and then test them because of my input and like it :)

Anyway, good luck with your tinnitus. Hope it won't get worse for you. My dad got hearing impaired from 50 years old ongoing and while it's okay, it's not much fun :inlove:
 
I've tinnitus since November 2015. Only right side. After the first shock of dealing with it I grew accostumed to it and the normal day noise was pretty much cancelling it out.
In September 2016 it became much worse all of a sudden and now it was on both ears. Don't know the exact numbers but it was around 2-3 Khz and I think 60db. Since I could not deal with it I had to quit my job at the time because I couldn't concentrate on anything. I went to several specialists to determine the cause but none was ever found. By all accounts I am as healthy as one can be. So it was determined it was psychological reasons which I bought in at the time because I was also dealing with depressions on and off. I later learned there is no thing as a psychological tinnitus. I treid those white noise aids but those made me agressive.
Last year I was visiting a special Tinnitus Retraining Therapy where the aim is to give you advise on how to deal with it. You learn relaxing techniques and stuff. It's a group session so you also learn about others with the same illness. Well in my case it didn't help much but I learned some things about it.
Regarding your thought it might be hearing loud music, visiting rock concerts and stuff I can say that the professor who moderated the therapy, himself a specialist with many years of research in the field, made it clear that nothing you did years ago causes tinnitus. I had the same line of thinking, I played music (guitar) myself and that was always loud as hell. A cause has to be within a 1-3 month timeframe to have anything to do with it.
In my case I am now convinced the reason is in the spine and neck area where I do have problems for many years. The tinnitus was re-measured earlier this year and it either became worse or my perception of it did. How do I deal with the illness? In many ways I don't. There are bad days and better days. Not really good ones. I still haven't worked a day and the noise is there every weaking second. I have problems sleeping at times, I can't concentrate on anything for long periods of time, I forget things because of that, too. One of the problems I have faced often is, you don't look ill. Everyone has pity with someone in a wheelchair or missing a limb. You can't see tinnitus and I know people who look at me and think I am just to lazy to work.
You probably won't find two similar cases of tinnitus anywhere as it is, from my experience in talking with others, very different how people deal with it.
 
The brain is trained and I guess we are driven by the concept of neuroplasticity. The brain takes an input, decides what to do with it and can produce outputs. In tinnitus the cause is believed to be the damage or loss of certain fine hair structures in the inner ear (loud noises can cause that) which produce a constant faulty signal to the brain, but the brain could also potentially be intrepreting a reasonable signal incorrectly and perceiving tinnitus, which is why it can be a tricky thing to diagnose. You should always have an MRI for the ear just incase there is an infection or something else seriously wrong, you need to rule that out.

Once you are at the stage wherre you have tinnitus and there is no physical issue obviously causing it then you are into the retraining of the brain part of treatment. The more you focus on the tinnitus the more you will train the brain to hear it and thus make it louder and worse. The more you can ignore it the quieter it will get and the more it will disappear. You need to get your brain off that noise for long periods of time. You need to distract it with other stimulus. You need to find a mechanism that relieves the focus on the tinnitus and use it to retrain the brain over the next few months. When the mechanism you found no longer works find another, you will have to keep switching as the brain gets "bored" like that and you have to constantly adjust the stimulus novelty to keep it focussed on something else. Try pink noise, white noise, try different genres of music, sounds of nature and waves etc. Anything that gets you hearing stuff that isn't the tinnitus and makes it less bad.

You can fix this, the signal might always be faulty, something is broke in your ear more than likely and you may never hear that individual grouping of frequencies again and you honestly wont want to as they may exacebate your symptoms. But what you can do is get that signal in your brain to the point where you don't care and it never bothers you. Our brain is plastic and can be completely retrained how to intrepret an input and that is something you can do. You can supercharge the idea if you have a look z health, they neural retraining exercises for a variety of sports injuries and such but they have a video up today about test/retest that may help you find good stimulus that is performance, neutral or rehabilitative. You can use that mechanism to test how much your brain felt the stimulus helped or hurt.

Good luck, I rid myself of mine (it is still there just quiet and I don't care) 10 years ago so I know you can do this.
 
I read this on Wikipedia:
Tinnitus suppression is different than but related to tinnitus masking. It is an acoustic or neurological effect that results in temporary suppression of tinnitus by listening to an appropriately tailored sound for a short period. After the sound is withdrawn, tinnitus may be fully (complete silence) or partially suppressed. Most (70–90%) of persons can experience the effect. There is usually a period of complete silence followed by a gradual return of tinnitus to its original level. (...)

Does anyone have experience with this?
 
@ BrightCandle
Everthing you've written is correct and I am very happy for you that you managed to find a way to deal with it. I have days where I manage to forget, or do not notice, the noise for a while without trying to. However when I try to concentrate on not hearing it, or actively distracting myself, I fail. Then there are fluctuations when the noise level rises. Those last from a couple of seconds up to half a minute. When this happens I freeze completely. It's the fear that the noise will stay at this level. I know people who live a normal life with tinnitus myself and it shows me it can be done. So far I am not there.

@ Insert Coin
Can't say I have. I know of some form of music therapy where you can take any song and than adapt it to your tinnutus. They take out the frequencies from the song that corolate to your noise. You are supposed to listen to this 60-90 min a day. But it costs a fee you have to pay monthly for this service. With a little bit of knowledge you can gather from the net and the right software you can do this yourself.
This is something else I discovered. Since there isn't really a treatment there are many offers promising relief that seem to only want to take your money. I personally know people who spent more than 1000 € for things like oxygen therapy and acupuncture and nothing really helped. In a way I am lucky that I could never afford this so I was never tempted.
 
I saw a remedy on the net, at first I thought it was a joke until I tried it.

1st up grab your earlobe and pull on it in a downwards motion 10 times, do this for both ears.
Then, using your thumbs place them over your ear canal entrance and gently push in and out, like your pumping air into your ear canal, do this 10 times as well. Repeat both exercises 3 times.

Not sure how or why it works but my tinnitus has improved since I started the exercises a few weeks ago. I will try to locate the video and post a link.
 
That thing with "air pumping" - I did this from time to time in the past but more out of frustration. I was under the impression it brought a short relief. I never tried it on a permanent basis, though.

Thanks for the tip.
 
I was a pro-musician and had to stop play because of tinnitus. I don't go to pubs, concerts or anywhere that play even sightly loud music anymore. I went to two different doctors and no improvement at all.

Some days are worst but I am getting used to it. Listen music with earphones at low to medium volume helps a little, but I can't just do it most of time. I learned to avoid loud kids and pets. But most of the time I'm just fine. At night, before sleep or when wake at night it's the worst.

I saw a remedy on the net, at first I thought it was a joke until I tried it.

1st up grab your earlobe and pull on it in a downwards motion 10 times, do this for both ears.
Then, using your thumbs place them over your ear canal entrance and gently push in and out, like your pumping air into your ear canal, do this 10 times as well. Repeat both exercises 3 times.

Not sure how or why it works but my tinnitus has improved since I started the exercises a few weeks ago. I will try to locate the video and post a link.
Please, do!:)
 
I saw a remedy on the net, at first I thought it was a joke until I tried it.

1st up grab your earlobe and pull on it in a downwards motion 10 times, do this for both ears.
Then, using your thumbs place them over your ear canal entrance and gently push in and out, like your pumping air into your ear canal, do this 10 times as well. Repeat both exercises 3 times.

Not sure how or why it works but my tinnitus has improved since I started the exercises a few weeks ago. I will try to locate the video and post a link.
What's the frequency of doing this? Once daily?
How long did it take before you noticed an improvement?
 
After a gig one night, I went to bed with a ringing in my ears, woke up the next morning and it was still there. That was in 1993...

I keep the volume in R3E pretty low, a shame really, as nice as the sound is.
 

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