Tinnitus is not necessarily caused by one specific thing - for instance, it can be from:
- Hearing loss and/or age
- Blood pressure
- TMJ (jaw/dental issues)
- Posture issues
There's a company in Ireland (Neuromod, I think) that has a product like this that seems to be able to work for some tinnitus sufferers, but not all - possibly owing to the differing types. FX322 is a hearing-loss drug that works via stem cells and has shown promising results in treating the hearing loss angle.
If yours is TMJ or blood pressure, though... you need an entirely different plan of attack.
Posting this comment mostly because I really get tired of reading threads where this isn't acknowledged; no one cure fits all. I've had it since I was a child and while habituation does factor in slightly, I think wider understanding of this all needs to be out there.
I went to an audiologist and an MD for my spontaneously developed tinnitus in my 30s. They did a hearing test, asked a couple of questions that didn't apply to me and they both said "I dunno why you have it" and were fairly useless.
The only hint was a dip in a hearing chart, which wasn't big enough to be considered hearing loss or otherwise. This list alone is a better list of potential causes than those useless doctors.
As an aside, I am noticing a correlation to using my noise-cancelling headphones and ringing in my ears at the end of the day. Not even using them for that long - perhaps just 2 or 3 hours total spread out across the working day at "normal" volume levels for meetings (not even music)
Cut out wearing QC35s for a day or two and the ringing goes away at night.
Do noise-cancelling headphones from the likes of Bose et all "collapse" the sound waves via interference so that the sound waves that do reach my ear are physically lesser, or is it just merely masking noise with anti-noise, and so now I get twice the noise energy pumped into my ears even if I cannot actually hear it as much?
My guess would be not that the tinnitus gets worse from wearing noise canceling headphones, but that your ears adapt to the lower average sound levels, making them better at ‘detecting’ the tinnitus sound (the dynamic range of your ears adapts to average sound volume https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2774902/, but whether that affects the perceived volume of tinnitus isn’t clear to me)
I have the same. The interference should mean that there's less acoustic energy, but since the anti-sound wave won't always be a perfect match with the wave being cancelled I suspect the result is that there will be soft beats[0] of very high and/or low frequency that may still stimulate the ear in a way to trigger tinnitus. The first time I put on my noise-cancelling headphones it made me dizzy - that is also likely caused by low-frequency beats.
Anyway, I just lowered the volume, that seemed to help quite a bit. I don't need the higher volume anyway now that the surrounding noises are cancelled.
I don't know what is happening, but you could try a few experiments:
- Use them with NC on, but no meetings/music. That would show if your problem is not the 'normal' volume.
- Use them with NC off. No ringing would point directly to the NC.
- Use them full off. Maybe somehow its the pressure on your head.
I’ve noticed exactly the same thing. I also use QC35s but I assume the brand and model is just a coincidence - that the noise cancelling tech itself is the culprit. I don’t have any evidence one way or another for this but very interested to read that others out there are having a similar experience.
Ideally the peaks of the natural sound and the "injected anti-sound" are opposite in their relative pressure to the environment, so that they cancel out.
Maybe some almost inaudible frequency spectra, and in a lesser degree also audible frequencies, sometimes aren't phase-matched by the injected anti-sound, so that their peaks add up, creating an unnatural loud sound, which for some reason isn't perceived as harmful.
These short out-of-sync peaks could be causing the tinnitus?
I got myself Airpods Pro last autumn and used the transparent mode. After a few weeks my tinnitus had become way worse. After 3-4 months it had died down a bit (but not to what it used to be before the pods.)
I then used them again for a couple of days. And it became even worse. Haven't used them for 6 months and unfortunately it is still as bad.
I don't dare using them or my Bose headphones anymore. Your comment is the first I've seen relating noise cancelling with tinnitus.
The way I understand the physics, it doesn't add to the amplitude ("energy level") of the waves, the whole point is to send out sound waves that works against the sound that's there already, making the total amount of kinetic energy that comes into your ear less.
Maybe it's an issue with lack of "natural" sound causing you to turn up the volume more, or something like that?
Same problem with QC15 here, to the point that I can’t use them anymore. I had to use them in our open office to get anything done but the ringing in my ears got pretty bad. Working from home and not listening to music has helped a bit.
First time when I put the noise cancelling headphones and turned on the cancellation, I could immediately feel a pressure of sort on my ears even though it is reducing noise.
anecdotal, but me too. purchased bose qc35s 3 months ago and started having tinnitus most nights for about a month now. never suffered from tinnitus before.
My tinnitus was caused by my blood pressure. Had a heart attack a couple of years ago, they inserted a stent and I drastically modified my bad habits (diet, exercise, all that), and the constant ringing in my ears vanished.
BP now hovers around 100 / 60, resting heart rate in the 70's, and I rarely experience tinnitus any more.
I've had pretty severe tinnitus since my 20s (early 40s now), during my early 30s I got very serious about diet/health due to unrelated health issues. I only drink water or coffee, I eat a clean diet with almost no processed sugars and minimal meat, etc etc.
My tinnitus is still absolutely horrible, almost always there in some fashion, strong nearly every night, and drives me to near-insanity half a dozen times a month.
I got tinnitus due to some health problems caused by bad diet. Got 100% off sugars, alcohol, bread, milk products for 3 months, and most of my health problems went away.
I got to warn you, stopping sugar consumption cold turkey is not easy and not nice. That stuff is like (what I imagine) crack. First two weeks were awful.
I wish more work was happening in this sphere. I know I would easily pay $50k+ for even a 50/50 chance to cure my tinnitus. Its a horrible feeling to never be able to quiet your mind.
I dunno how many years in you are (I'm almost 10) but if it's any consolation, you do get used to it. If your particular tinnitus aetiology is sensorineural hearing loss as it is with most, cutting edge research suggests that stem cell based therapies will eventually be able to fix this problem.
The article mentions that talk therapy is already an accepted treatment. Not guaranteed to help, of course, but probably that means you could get access to it (for a lot less than $50k, I would hope). So, worth looking into if anyone near you has done this for tinnitus.
I'd pay that much if it was guaranteed to cure it forever (minus any new injury that could occur). Been having it since I was 24 with a massive ear infection, it's been hell some days.
I found that mine seems to be mechanical. If I drink out of a water bottle with a straw, it is typically worse the next day. Also, if I drink alcohol, it makes me clench my jaw and my tinnitus is bad the next day.
I remember reading of a way to stop tinnitus where you blocked your ears and thwacked your skull with a finger. It sort of worked (I wonder if it just stunned my ears?)
ok, here is a version of it:
> 1) Place the palms of your hands over your ears so your fingers wrap around the
back of your head.
> 2) Set your middle fingers on the top of your neck right at the base of your skull.
> 3) Put your index fingers on top of your middle fingers and apply pressure.
> 4) Now snap them on the back of your head over and over like you’re drumming.
> 5) Repeat it about 50 times.
> Ideally, when you pull your hands away, you won’t hear any ringing, hissing, or buzzing anymore.
I use this when it's distracting the hell out of me, but usually it's just a minor background noise that I barely notice because it is perpetually there. I've never sought to do anything about it because I'm just used to it and so few things trigger it to get loud that it's generally not annoying. When it does get triggered and loud, it's the same volume as a normal talking voice, but it's pretty rare.
The Neuromodulator[1] on MyNoise definitely helps soothe mine - but if I just need to shock my tongue as well for an hour to get a year's relief ... sign me up.
If your tinnitus changes timbre when you stress your skull, such as clenching your jaw, it means the ringing is actually physical sound being generated by ringing hair cells in your ears: a sensitive microphone could pick up the sound. By my reading of TFA, that kind of tinnitus is not relieved by this method.
I developed constant tinnitus a couple of years ago, probably from a sequence of causes:
I've had sinus problems since childhood. Some exposure to loud music. An upper back spine injury that affects my neck and chest muscles. With this I sometimes had tinnitus, usually worse in the evenings or after spending many hours in front of a screen.
Then I got knocked on the head twice, the second time left a small dent in my nose, and it damaged the right side of my jaw. After this the tinnitus became more permanent.
Almost worse than the tinnitus is that my ears are always popping, as in many times per day. Just sitting at my desk I'll get the same sensation you get on descent when scuba diving, and I have to pinch my nose and blow on it to equalize. Any else have this symptom?
More proof to support "BrainPort"[1] tongue-computer interfaces. It is clearly a cheap and effective way to stimulate neuroplasticity.
If they can give sight to the blind, balance to the unbalanced, and 3D navigation sense to Navy SEALS divers... then imagine what a low-cost tongue electrode peripheral could provide for gaming, sports, and other daily applications.
Imagine a AR/VR headset wit a wire to your mouth that allowed you to sense infrared/UV spectrum without hindering your vision. Or spatial radar sensing when you are driving your car or flying a drone. Or any number of inputs in a game. Maybe providing an extra sense of balance could even help espace the VR nausea problem.
The applications of this simple low-cost tech are astounding, and helping with tinnitus is icing on the cake.
Who is willing to build this? A 16x16 electrode grid peripheral for phones, computers, VR?
I'm curious how one would even do control for this. The whole point of this treatment is to deliver sensations. How would you pretend delivering sensations in a way that can't be easily told from actual sensations?
Not saying this is the same, but often medical practices cannot be tested this way. Would it be ethical to perform surgeries on a bunch of people, but not actually do the surgery on a portion of them?
I got tinnitus in left ear 2 years ago due to sudden high frequency hearing loss, its hell like experience.
I am hoping for some cure for both hearing loss and tinnitus from current running trials. Current trials whose updates I am following are fx322,pipe505 and regain project.
Since this seems to be a personal anecdote thread:
I have constant tinnitus, ever since I was a child. I grew up thinking everyone heard that high pitched buzzing.
A recent hearing check showed I have better than average hearing for my age. I have TMJ disorder, but I didn't (I don't think) as a child.
I currently subscribe to the theory that mine may be caused by like, a blood vessel by chance too close to the eardrum or whatever, and that there is nothing I can do about it.
Regardless, the possible causes seem to span a wide range of things totally unrelated so everyone who didn't get it from exposure to loud sounds is on a highly personal journey.
This efficacy of this treatment just seems wildly improbable to me. You zap a person’s tongue and then play a bunch of random frequencies in their ears and it cures tinnitus? Why? What’s the mechanism? Can someone who understands neurology explain how this works?
I mean some of the reasoning in the article is so hand-wavy. Like, saying that stimulating the tongue stimulates the brain. No shit, stimulating any nerve stimulates the part of the brain that feels touch in that nerve. I don’t buy it.
I have had tinnitus since as long as I can remember. About a year ago, it got significantly worse during a period of time which happened to align with extreme stress in my personal life. I also developed muscle fasciculations at the same time, which led to a anxiety spiral of ALS fears (turned out to be benign like most fasciculations).
Anyway, I'm luckily one of the people who's able to sort of tune the tinnitus out.
I pretty much forget I have it until I see an article about it...
Can the author of the article answer this? I have a tens-7000 with the ear clips. They would probably work fine on the tongue. What would I need to set the Width, Rate and Mode to in order to replicate this therapy?
[+] [-] Klonoar|5 years ago|reply
- Hearing loss and/or age
- Blood pressure
- TMJ (jaw/dental issues)
- Posture issues
There's a company in Ireland (Neuromod, I think) that has a product like this that seems to be able to work for some tinnitus sufferers, but not all - possibly owing to the differing types. FX322 is a hearing-loss drug that works via stem cells and has shown promising results in treating the hearing loss angle.
If yours is TMJ or blood pressure, though... you need an entirely different plan of attack.
Posting this comment mostly because I really get tired of reading threads where this isn't acknowledged; no one cure fits all. I've had it since I was a child and while habituation does factor in slightly, I think wider understanding of this all needs to be out there.
[+] [-] novok|5 years ago|reply
The only hint was a dip in a hearing chart, which wasn't big enough to be considered hearing loss or otherwise. This list alone is a better list of potential causes than those useless doctors.
[+] [-] mattlondon|5 years ago|reply
Cut out wearing QC35s for a day or two and the ringing goes away at night.
Do noise-cancelling headphones from the likes of Bose et all "collapse" the sound waves via interference so that the sound waves that do reach my ear are physically lesser, or is it just merely masking noise with anti-noise, and so now I get twice the noise energy pumped into my ears even if I cannot actually hear it as much?
[+] [-] Someone|5 years ago|reply
My guess would be not that the tinnitus gets worse from wearing noise canceling headphones, but that your ears adapt to the lower average sound levels, making them better at ‘detecting’ the tinnitus sound (the dynamic range of your ears adapts to average sound volume https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2774902/, but whether that affects the perceived volume of tinnitus isn’t clear to me)
[+] [-] vanderZwan|5 years ago|reply
Anyway, I just lowered the volume, that seemed to help quite a bit. I don't need the higher volume anyway now that the surrounding noises are cancelled.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_(acoustics)
[+] [-] gabrielhidasy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darkteflon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qwertox|5 years ago|reply
Maybe some almost inaudible frequency spectra, and in a lesser degree also audible frequencies, sometimes aren't phase-matched by the injected anti-sound, so that their peaks add up, creating an unnatural loud sound, which for some reason isn't perceived as harmful.
These short out-of-sync peaks could be causing the tinnitus?
[+] [-] JoachimS|5 years ago|reply
I got myself Airpods Pro last autumn and used the transparent mode. After a few weeks my tinnitus had become way worse. After 3-4 months it had died down a bit (but not to what it used to be before the pods.)
I then used them again for a couple of days. And it became even worse. Haven't used them for 6 months and unfortunately it is still as bad.
I don't dare using them or my Bose headphones anymore. Your comment is the first I've seen relating noise cancelling with tinnitus.
[+] [-] augustl|5 years ago|reply
Maybe it's an issue with lack of "natural" sound causing you to turn up the volume more, or something like that?
[+] [-] oe|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smusamashah|5 years ago|reply
They definitely cancel noise by 'anti-noise'.
[+] [-] ecoled_ame|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpxw|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bil7|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ldarby|5 years ago|reply
How on earth do they know if guinea pigs have tinnitus and if this method shut it off in them?
[+] [-] jerhewet|5 years ago|reply
BP now hovers around 100 / 60, resting heart rate in the 70's, and I rarely experience tinnitus any more.
[+] [-] ObsoleteNerd|5 years ago|reply
My tinnitus is still absolutely horrible, almost always there in some fashion, strong nearly every night, and drives me to near-insanity half a dozen times a month.
Just for another perspective.
[+] [-] bufferoverflow|5 years ago|reply
I got to warn you, stopping sugar consumption cold turkey is not easy and not nice. That stuff is like (what I imagine) crack. First two weeks were awful.
[+] [-] _fs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lr4444lr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rossdavidh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ddlutz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] conception|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kuiper0x2|5 years ago|reply
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6950042/
You can send me that $50k now
[+] [-] wtvanhest|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kuzuman|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] m463|5 years ago|reply
ok, here is a version of it:
> 1) Place the palms of your hands over your ears so your fingers wrap around the back of your head.
> 2) Set your middle fingers on the top of your neck right at the base of your skull.
> 3) Put your index fingers on top of your middle fingers and apply pressure.
> 4) Now snap them on the back of your head over and over like you’re drumming.
> 5) Repeat it about 50 times.
> Ideally, when you pull your hands away, you won’t hear any ringing, hissing, or buzzing anymore.
https://lifehacker.com/this-weird-trick-might-give-you-brief...
[+] [-] monoideism|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DigitallyFidget|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zimpenfish|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/neuromodulationTonesGenera...
[+] [-] xtracto|5 years ago|reply
There is some research that playing sounds "near" the frequency of your tinnitus stimulates the ear system and helps reduce the tinnitus.
That app produces pulsating sounds around your tinnitus frequencies.
It's the only thing that had helped mine.
[+] [-] ncmncm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kuiper0x2|5 years ago|reply
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6950042/
I started taking lots of antioxidants to improve immune function in an attempt to improve my chances with COVID and my tinnitus improved a lot!
[+] [-] mozey|5 years ago|reply
I've had sinus problems since childhood. Some exposure to loud music. An upper back spine injury that affects my neck and chest muscles. With this I sometimes had tinnitus, usually worse in the evenings or after spending many hours in front of a screen.
Then I got knocked on the head twice, the second time left a small dent in my nose, and it damaged the right side of my jaw. After this the tinnitus became more permanent.
Almost worse than the tinnitus is that my ears are always popping, as in many times per day. Just sitting at my desk I'll get the same sensation you get on descent when scuba diving, and I have to pinch my nose and blow on it to equalize. Any else have this symptom?
[+] [-] fudged71|5 years ago|reply
If they can give sight to the blind, balance to the unbalanced, and 3D navigation sense to Navy SEALS divers... then imagine what a low-cost tongue electrode peripheral could provide for gaming, sports, and other daily applications.
Imagine a AR/VR headset wit a wire to your mouth that allowed you to sense infrared/UV spectrum without hindering your vision. Or spatial radar sensing when you are driving your car or flying a drone. Or any number of inputs in a game. Maybe providing an extra sense of balance could even help espace the VR nausea problem.
The applications of this simple low-cost tech are astounding, and helping with tinnitus is icing on the cake.
Who is willing to build this? A 16x16 electrode grid peripheral for phones, computers, VR?
[1] https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/can-you-see-with-your-...
[+] [-] Reedx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] viraptor|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] derekp7|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomohawk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dawnerd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jitendrac|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattmanser|5 years ago|reply
It used to really bug me. It's going full tilt this morning, the loudest it gets, and doesn't bother me at all.
[+] [-] brandonmenc|5 years ago|reply
I have constant tinnitus, ever since I was a child. I grew up thinking everyone heard that high pitched buzzing.
A recent hearing check showed I have better than average hearing for my age. I have TMJ disorder, but I didn't (I don't think) as a child.
I currently subscribe to the theory that mine may be caused by like, a blood vessel by chance too close to the eardrum or whatever, and that there is nothing I can do about it.
Regardless, the possible causes seem to span a wide range of things totally unrelated so everyone who didn't get it from exposure to loud sounds is on a highly personal journey.
[+] [-] fallingfrog|5 years ago|reply
I mean some of the reasoning in the article is so hand-wavy. Like, saying that stimulating the tongue stimulates the brain. No shit, stimulating any nerve stimulates the part of the brain that feels touch in that nerve. I don’t buy it.
[+] [-] Unklejoe|5 years ago|reply
Anyway, I'm luckily one of the people who's able to sort of tune the tinnitus out.
I pretty much forget I have it until I see an article about it...
[+] [-] LinuxBender|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] analog31|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hoppersoft|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rawoke083600|5 years ago|reply