[excel2flow]

My tinnitus started with local anesthesia given by dentist. It caused spasm in jaw muscle which I had for almost a month - and as a side effect there was a tinnitus in left ear. The spasm eventually disappeared, but tinnitus never did. It's been 2 years now and by now I've realized that I'll probably never ever enjoy silence again. So let it be a warning what banal anesthesia can cause…

[chrishof]

I had a similar experience. I was put to sleep with general anesthetic for a minor operation. When I woke up I immediately thought that the surgeon must have used loud equipment during the procedure, because my ears were ringing. Turns out it was the anesthetic. I haven't heard true silence for 2 years now.

[Retric]

That really sucks. I occupationally get tinnitus. Only thing I found that helps is focusing on relaxing the jaw / facial mussels / something in that area that's hard to describe. It fells like popping your ears, but not quite as much. Which is probably as helpful as telling someone to roll their tongue, but I thought I would put that out there.

[excel2flow]

I have it 24/7, nothing seems to help. It can be only masked by external noise. Alcohol doesn't help me to get temporal relief - it's even worse, louder.

But by far the worst consequence of tinnitus and the real problem (at least for me) is disturbance of sleep. At first I couldn't fall asleep - because of the noise which manifests itself most strongly in silent environment. So I was lying in bed for a few hours before falling asleep (now I got accustomed so I can fall asleep faster). But even worse is that the noise wakes me up after like 4-5 hours. That means I'm completely exhausted all day, because I need 7-8 hours of sleep to feel refreshed. I tried Zolpidem, which can get me 6 hours of sleep, but its effect wears off rapidly if taken for a few consecutive nights. Now I take Mirtazapine, which works better. Also it helped me to take Magnesium supplements.

[keketi]

I was in a similar situation a while ago. You should check out this app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hearing-help/id503936600?mt=...

I went to a tinnitus clinic and they did a profile of the tinnitus I hear. Then they configured this app to amplify sounds of those frequencies to mask my tinnitus. When I'm hearing a low buzz the app can almost completely remove it, but it doesn't work quite as well with a high frequencies.

You'll need rubber ear buds that form a tight fit with your ear canal.

Since the app only amplifies sounds it doesn't really do anything in a totally quiet environment. You might want to play pink noise to give your hearing something to work with. I've experimented with different kinds of noise, but this type seems to work the best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXtimhT-ff4

[excel2flow]

Thanks for tip - I'll ask my doctor about it.

Btw, I've already tried some noise generators for Android and I've observed strange effect - I have ringing only in the left ear so I used only one ear bud with the generator. Then when I turned it off, it induced noise in the other ear. It was like the brain was generating signal to compensate for the external noise in the left ear and when the noise generator was turned off, the spurious signal in the right ear became hearable. Fortunately this effect was only temporal.

[excalibur]

Mine has actually helped me sleep better. I can't hear anything in my left ear (save for the constant ringing and some static accompanying particularly loud noises), so I am able to successfully drown out annoying background noises (like my wife's ridiculously loud alarms that never wake her up) by burying my right ear in my pillow.

[pizza]

https://www.vice.com/video/the-ambien-effect - ambien let one man (a former voice actor, no less) regain the ability to control his jaw/face after an unfortunate dental anesthesia incident