Tinnitus & Hearing Loss

I was diagnosed with tinnitus in one ear about 15 years ago. Didn’t wear any ear protection before that. It becomes more intense as soon as you start thinking about the ringing but I have gradually learned to live with it. I know so many people my age that have the same problem. At least kids these days are more aware of the potential for damage and manufacturers have volume control on children’s headphones as well as noise cancelling ones to avoid having them really loud.

So true, I can hear mine now just reading this thread.
Mine got quite bad a while ago. A combination of gigs, clubs, parties, power tools and fireworks(I live in Lewes).
I got some custom moulded earplugs from here ACS - Earplugs | In-Ear Monitors | Hearing Protection
about 10 years ago. They’re so comfortable you can forget you’ve got them in.
I’ve had several MRI scans (another one on Wednesday) but it turned out they were looking at my brain not my ears which was a bit of a worry and a whole other story.
I agree that stress makes it worse. Alcohol too.
There was a news article some time ago about a breakthrough therapy, might have been an implant, that cancelled it out. Worked on rats apparently. Haven’t heard much since…boom boom😂

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Thats same for me.

They sold those headphones to us but noone mentioned side effects of it. I think all type of DJ headphones are the reason of tinnitus and my ignorance that keeps looking for higher decibels and more bass. Plus dj monitors. Once I lost my balance in dj booth although I wasnt drunk or something.

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I’ve got tinnitus in both ears.
Might be interesting to hear that it’s two different frequencies…but not that far apart…like 25 Hz or so.
In my left ear is “real” tinnitus, caused by actual physical nerve damage from brain surgery, in my right ear is the more common type of tinnitus (a completely phantom sound that the brain interprets as noise, but, is in fact non-existent), the latter resulting, ironically from the trauma of brain surgery…before surgery I had tinnitus in my left, when I awoke I had it in both ear…but at least I was minus tumour! :slight_smile:
Both types have no cure. I’ve been a guinea pig in many different medical tests, including for a good friend who just so happens to be a pioneering audiologist who’s published many papers on tinnitus.
He’s also warned me of the numerous ‘snake oils’ out there (including the Tinnitus Clinic).
Having said that, this hasn’t prevented me from exploring various avenues: masking the “sound” with white or brown noise…even trying the crazy things like trying to emulate the sound in headphones and phase inverting it to see if it will cancel out (needless to say, it didn’t…this stuff is no simple sine wave ha ha).
Only way to live with it is to not focus on it, otherwise you’ll always hear it. Distract yourself, focus on other things, work, read, be creative. It’s not too difficult most of the time. Don’t stress yourself as that will “heighten” the noise (it actually doesn’t but stress tends to make your brain hear it “louder”).
As Piers said regarding his girlfriend, it’s moments when the brain isn’t active (like when trying to get to sleep, which is typically in a situation where there are no other sounds happening that will drown out your tinnitus, and that, unfortunately , is one of the more common places where it becomes very apparent.
I used to sleep with quiet ambient music on (it really annoyed my girlfriend) but eventually I grew out of needing it and I’ve been sleeping without noise or music for over a decade now.
Oh and I’ve had tinnitus in left ear since 2001, brain surgery and related tinnitus in right ear was in 2004.
When I produce music I don’t really notice the tinnitus too much. I kind in have to imagine the bits I’m missing and I’ve even mastered music. Likewise, when DJing I’ve always had the headphone volume right down. It’s always amazed me if I’m doing a set and plug my headphones in how LOUD some DJs have their headphones turned up. It’s crazy. I’m not surprised so many of them have tinnitus.
Look after your ears! You only have the one pair and, believe me, hearing aids are NOT the same…they just do not cut it.
GK

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I got hit in the head by a cricket ball, just behind the ear when I was 14 (no helmets back then) and have had tinnitus in the left ear since then. It was unbearable for about six months but then it just got to be like anything you live with, you adapt to a point where you don’t notice it. I definitely have it in my right ear now as well from just being around loud rooms. There is no louder room than a rehearsal room for me, a tiny space full of people playing too loud just to pick themselves out of the noise . I definitely wear plugs now, most people I meet professionally do. I’ve weirdly noticed the tinnitus much more in the lock down, I’ll wake up and notice it which does make you panic . I regret nothing though, remember going to see Sunn 0))) at the scala and they were so loud my eyes were vibrating in their sockets .

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totally agree with you on this.

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Interesting stuff.

Has anyone experienced a kind of ‘fluttering’ sensation in the ear as a sympton of tinitus? Recently I’ve developed a weird kind of (muscle?) spasm in the ear hole area, and wondered / concerned it might be tinitus related

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no tinnitus for me, but i’ve absolutely lost definition in the midrange. any sort of white noise wipes most other frequencies. you have to yell to gain my attention if i’m washing the dishes.

earplugs are key, it’s true.

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I occasionaly suffer from Tinnitus, its comes and goes.
Years spent in clubs, listening to stuff on ear phones whenever I leave the house and working around trains for 20+ years probably has more than a little to do with it.
I got sent by work for a hearing test last week and I was really scared that my hearing had dropped below the acceptable level for the job I do (Im a shunter in a train yard). Luckily I passed but one of my ears had dropped subtantally, but Im still within the legal limits to do my job. I was honestly fearing the worse as I can stuggle to hear friends talking there is background noise like that you would get in a cafe.
As I say my tinnitus comes and goes, if I listen to music (even at home where I play it at a fairly low level) it can bring the tinnitus on, so I play music much much less than I have for most of my life to keep the tinnitus at bay, which saddens me, but it is what it is.

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I find that’s the worst thing for me these days, background chatter in a pub or cafe I literally can’t hear the person I’m sat right next to. It’s so fucking infuriating

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Drive’s my wife mad that I can’t hear her. I try and explain there’s no issue with the volume she’s speaking, it’s all the background noise I can’t separate out. Thought it was just age rather than anything in particular.

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Hearing aids do help in this scenario. But fuck me what a pain to wear them :roll_eyes:

I got quite bad tinnitus from a venue with a super loud system, so i ordered proper earplugs the next day but the buzzing never really went away until a few years later when we went into lockdown. It sorta subsided and only comes back after a super loud gig now, but i pretty much wear earplugs any time i go anywhere loud.

The most annoying part, as was mentioned in the first post, is that you can’t really convince anyone to buy earplugs until it is too late. I try all the time and nobody really seems to take it seriously. Such a shame.

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Well, during the heights of the covid pandemic, when everyone here was wearing masks I realised that my hearing was worse than I’d thought. Having already struggled with the lingo in my adopted home city of Hamburg, it was only getting worse with the perspex screens and face coverings. So I went for some new hearing tests. The result being that I now sport fairly high end hearing aids, every day. Still learning several months in but it’s been a great help and most relevant to this thread, my tinnitus is MUCH less of an issue since wearing them. Doubt I’ll be heading down the club anytime soon though.

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Just reading though this thread and I see a bit of chat about custom earplugs by the likes of ACS etc.

Has anyone who’ve had them made found them worth the cash? Guess you can’t put a price on hearing.

I see there’s a few companies that make them now, and you can get moulds done locally and send them off to these firms for manufacture.

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Links between hearing loss and dementia are a worry …

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Surely worth the price of protection alone