[tommaho]

20+ year tinnitus sufferer here, and recent owner of AirPods Pro. I can deal with the condition well enough, mostly by distraction, but just last week stumbled upon a supposed audio treatment on Spotify.

I gave it a listen and sure enough it seemed to diminish the tinnitus while playing. For the three or so days afterward, though, I experienced the worst and most piercing spell of ringing I can recall. Never again.

Im now curious about research in therapeutic use of headphones and related manipulative technologies. They’re clearly capable of doing something.

Any connection here would be interesting.

[monopoledance]

Have you tried this "finger tapping trick"?

IIRC you press your ears shut with one or two fingers on each hand, and then tap with another finger on top of the pressing one. This should make an almost uncomfortable, punching, loud noise. Or maybe shut your ears with the heel of your hand and then use your fingers to tap on the back of your head. Forgotten how long you supposed to do it. Maybe a minute? The idea is to safely "overload" the hearing apparatus, pushing it into "self-protection mode", but allowing it to relax in the off-beat phase. For many people this seems to enable them to easily achieve a temporary period of peace from symptoms.

Loud white noise seems to do something similar.

I assume this breaks the perceptual feedback and offers the brain a chance to expect something else, before it rediscovers the chronic noise again.

[akvadrako]

This certainly works for me and lots of people, but the fix only lasts a few minutes.

[monopoledance]

I think it's valuable, because it may prevent people going all-in van Gogh style. Sometimes it's enough to know there is another experience to your case possible, even if it's only ever a moment of different.

[tommaho]

No luck with that method for me. Wtf anecdata: I’ve had about 24 hours of peace from this my adult life and the only thing I could ever attribute that silence to was that it followed some random supermarket probiotics I started taking, for no good reason than it was a new fad and I wanted to see if anything would happen. That was apparently a one time deal, no repeats.

I can usually ignore or distract it away. Until I’m reminded of it by articles like these and it tries to consume me.

[monopoledance]

Sorry, you stuck with this so far. I think for most people, it fades away over the years. Luckily my episode of noise faded and was probably triggered by some lifestyle change at the beginning of the pandemic. However, I also have visual snow and think my brain just isn't very good at hiding its inner workings from me, may be just a matter of attention, rather than some "somatic" defect. I think the fact, you had a period of absence is promising and worth exploring and playing around.

[pestatije]

Tried that. Guess it could work. But are you really _safely_ overloading the hearing apparatus? To me it's just another way of activating the eardrum, doesn't make it safer per se.

[monopoledance]

I am no authority to answer that question. IIRC ears can handle quite a bit of loud noise and protect themselves some way. The problem arises with long duration noise stress. Please look up this method for more info, to be confident and safe. I am sure your concerns have been addressed before.

[zimpenfish]

The "Neural Symphony" on myNoise[1] helps me sometimes, especially if I combine it with other masking sounds (white noise, rain, etc.)

I'd like to try the notching technique[2] but I have yet to be able to identify the frequency of my tinnitus.

[1] https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/neuromodulationTonesGenera... [2] https://www.pnas.org/content/107/3/1207

[pkaye]

Yes tinnitus can come and go. Generally it is worse when things are quiet. Some amount of background noise can reduce it. I have hearing loss induced tinnitus and just wearing hearing aids seems to suppress much of the tinnitus due to the increased background noise.

Another thing to be careful about is some medications can aggravate tinnitus. My me it was my BP medicine. Switch to a different one made an immediate improvement.