There are many calls for personal responsibility here. But I think the average person is not making a choice to sustain permanent hearing damage – most people don't know the risks.
I used to own a decible meter. I brought it to a movie theater (large chain) and found sustained volume of 100+ decibels. It was physically painful. I was the only customer who complained to the theater. I asked what sound level they intended to set the movie to. They told me it's up to the projectionist, who sets the volume knob in the booth based on no measurement or preset.
There's a lot of real harm being done, and I would like to see at the very least some basic informative disclosure. And operators should be held responsible for creating dangerous conditions that are not disclosed or agreed to by customers. If people want to sustain hearing damage for a night of enjoyment, they should do so only willingly (and therefore knowingly).
I'm very keen to protect my own hearing, so I carry musician's earplugs (reduces volume without sounding muffled) and wear them often – not just at obviously loud places like concerts, but in common situations like loud restaurants.
I've been an audio/visual engineer and freelance projectionist for many years, and would like to touch on a couple things. The level of volume should be equalised to 80-83 decibels from each audio channel at a level of '7' on the sound processor. So, in theory, it should not be 'up to the projectionist'.
There are, however, a couple problems. Most movie theatres do not have projectionists anymore. The movies you are watching on screen are being played by a manager on the other side of the building, that never once checks on it. At all. Frankly, it's irresponsible to not ever check inside of the theatre to make sure the picture and sound are ok. In fact, I've worked in many theatres where the manager doesn't even know where the projection booth is, or how to get there. If there's a problem, they only know about it when there's a complaint, and even then it's easier to just give out comp tickets to the people who complained, while they continue making money off the people who don't. Usually, they'll even continue running shows in that room before calling someone in to fix the problem.
The other issue, is that studios, in an attempt to keep up with the audio level of pre-show advertisements, continue mixing their films even louder, disregarding a standard that is supposed to be set, to keep people's hearing safe. Which in turn has the theatre chain turn the volume up on their ads even further.
Most of this is from neglect from theatre managers and higher ups, not projectionists who randomly decide to blow people's hearing.
It's been my experience that most places can reduce volume levels (music, theaters etc) about 10-15% without loss of experience or fidelity and I have taken to actually asking managers to turn down volume because my ears actually hurt. It's loud for the sake of loud. I can't understand why the music in a restaurant needs to be so loud that I have to scream at the people at my table to be heard.
Obviously we're screaming over other tables, too, who are also screaming over us. It's a big scream fest, and I have observed that alot of it starts with high music volume levels. Turn down the damn music, come on.
Oh and get off my lawn.
(I'm not that old really hah but I sound that way when I make an issue of this...)
I've gone to two rock concerts that the volume was so loud that is was distorting the music. Of course my ears hurt, so I took to covering them a bit. My friend often goes to concerts and wasn't phased at all. I imagine the people in charge of sound have already lost some hearing, and they don't care if it sounds great or not.
I've had this exact problem attending most concerts (only classical music seems mostly fine). The music sounds very distorted (like a damaged speaker or an audio recording with heavy clipping) and after a while it gets physically painful to listen. Movies are sometimes uncomfortable, but the volume level is less constant which helps a lot. I've asked around and nobody seems to share this experience. I didn't use to go to live events often and it actually took me years to realize that my hearing's at fault.
A similar data point: I carry earplugs everywhere, and usually wear them when I'm at the movie theater (which is kind of rare) and at parties where there's loud music or talking; I do this because sooner or later I notice my ears hurting from the noise. The earplugs I have are flesh-colored ("Hearos"), and I don't think most people notice them unless I point them out.
I'm not sure whether I'm an outlier in terms of hearing sensitivity, or if it's just that I somehow wired myself to interpret certain stimuli as pain, or what. I also find bright sunlight and spicy food painful, and when I've gotten massages, usually I prefer a much lighter touch than what appears to be normal. I guess smell is the remaining sense; I guess I have evidence that (some) smells bother me more than they bother others.
Same. I've had this happen to me twice. Once I was sitting in the back and farthest away from the sound source, but it was still so bad I had to leave. Now I don't go to any concerts without a pair of ear plugs.
I'd always assumed (maybe wrongly) that restaurants and bars played music loudly so that patrons couldn't hold a proper conversation, and thus, drank more instead.
The movie theater one is actually kind of interesting. There is a certain maximum audio power that a room can sustain before loosing fidelity. I think _all_ sound engineers know about this, but a projectionist with a volume knob probably does not.
Next time you're in a place where the audio is too loud for you to hear, try to listen carefully for a few seconds. You might discover that despite being too loud, it actually sounds bad, and reducing the volume would actually _improve_ the audio fidelity.
I haven't attended a movie theater for the last five years for this very reason. I don't think the average person has a clue as to the damage being inflicted on their ears when they go to the movies and I believe the number of tinnitus cases in the U.S. will skyrocket in the years ahead, not only from going to the movies but from all the other "noise pollution" we're subject to on a daily basis.
I once ran a large stump grinder without hearing protection. A huge mistake. I now have spotty hearing, especially in crowded rooms, and it is a huge disadvantage.
Protect your hearing! Easy to do, so worth the effort.
Do you know how these musician's earplugs work? I imagine instead of just blocking vibrating air like regular earplugs, it must be trying to dissipate the sound waves a bit. Is that even possible across the whole range of sound?
Materials absorb different parts of the frequency spectrum with varying efficiency. Regular earplugs are made to simply stop as much sound as possible and hence there's a lot of muffle at the top of the spectrum (that's easiest to achieve - cover your ears!). Concert earplugs are more carefully designed to absorb the entire spectrum as uniformly as possible.
I served in the Air Force and did a 9 month tour in Afghanistan preceded by 3 months of combat skills training. We were issued ear plugs and used them religiously. Turns out they were defective and now I have permanent hearing loss in my right ear and tinnitus in both ears.
I've been in situations several times where the sound was awfully loud for no reasons. Obvious concert and clubs but also less suspicious theaters, outside movie events, and indeed restaurants.
Now when in loud environments, my left ear is buzzing and perceived the sounds as distorted. When it's not. Similar to a cranked up bad speaker like other commenters pointed in it out. It's very hard to describe to people as it's not very common.
Finding a cure or treatment for tinnitus would be awesome. I have a very mild case from a few too many loud concerts.
What I find amazing is how we don't attack the source of the problem much that I can see. Concerts, clubs, fireworks, even movies blast away above any reasonable level, causing damage to large parts of the population. We all just get progressively damaged hearing bit by bit. And yet there's very little policing of this that I have seen. It's just another form of pollution that's being imposed on people, often in public places where they haven't even had a choice (e.g., the fireworks case) or have a very poor choice (e.g., not going out with friends over this because they want to go to a rock concert).
I'm sorry you hurt your hearing. I know quite a few with tinnitus, and some of them are borderline suicidal with how horrible it is for them.
I doubt legislation with help. As a drummer from my early teens till mid 30s (some of that time in a partially successful band), and attender of thousands of shows, I KNEW concerts were too loud, and ALWAYS took earplugs (except once to a Weird Al show). I think I still suffer from hearing loss, especially with the amount of times I say, "huh" to my kids and wife.
So, from a position of possible mild hearing loss, I think personal responsibility is the only thing here. From wearing protection at shows, while using power tools, and I sometimes do it on the subway commuting. No one will look out for your hearing, but you.
Again, I'm sorry about your ears. I can't imagine how terrible it is, but having seen all the ways venues work, I doubt legislation will do shit.
If you need ear protection, and so does everyone else, then maybe the volume is too high, no?
Also, why not hand out ear protection? Whenever you go into a datacenter there should be a dispenser of ear plugs, so why not too at concerts?
What does a teenager or young adult know about this anyways? Nothing, really, and they aren't even conscious of the damage being done until it is too late.
Personal responsibility for tinnitus? Please. No. Responsibility for tinnitus is diffuse. There's a lack of awareness, lack of education, lack of regulation, lack of enforcement. I don't doubt that legislation could help: just make it a requirement that concert venues hand out ear plugs. It's harder to deal with bars, naturally, but even there, there could be a requirement for a maximum decibels for music at 15ft from speakers, and requirement that there be a sound power sensor. Gun ranges, for example, have to provide you with ear protection, and they do -- what works for gun ranges can work for other public accommodations.
At least where I am legislation already exists. What I'm puzzled by is why it doesn't seem to be policed at all, and why nobody seems to care. When rivers, soil or the air are being visibly produced we at least get some public reactions. For some reason for sound we don't perceive it the same way.
> I KNEW concerts were too loud, and ALWAYS took earplugs (except once to a Weird Al show). I think I still suffer from hearing loss, especially with the amount of times I say, "huh" to my kids and wife.
Why are they like this? Do people actually enjoy it?
I find it awful, but it's consistent at every small concert I go to.
> What I find amazing is how we don't attack the source of the problem much that I can see.
I always wear ear plugs at the very few concerts I go to. I otherwise avoid loud noises except for airplanes flights, where I've been on a few where I didn't have hearing protection.
I only have problems at night. Had a hearing test, no hearing loss. Over 30 and I can hear up to 17,500hz. (Which also appears to be around the frequency my tinnitus is at.)
I'm still trying to find the why (doctors are generally unhelpful here, "well it can just happen when you get older"...) I think that using noise cancelling headphones makes it worse, and last time I was on vacation it wasn't present.
Keep in mind that noise-induced hearing loss doesn't go from the high frequencies down -- that's presbycusis (hearing loss caused by aging). Noise-induced hearing loss creates a "noise notch" at around 4 KHz due to the anatomy of the ear.
I know this now. The fact that this is needed just further illustrates my point. We first blast music above safe levels and then expect people to compensate for that with hearing protection. That's just insane.
No, it isn't. There are three related reasons why.
First, we don't exclusively experience a concert through our ears. The reason people use words like "thumping" to describe bass is because it's felt as much as heard. That experience is important to many forms of music, and it isn't possible to get it at low volume.
The second is that the relative volume of different instruments is usually more important to the sound of a song than the absolute volume at the listener. Given that modern instruments have a huge range of loudness (drums are irreducibly loud, electric guitars very quiet), it's clear that you are going to have to amplify up to around the loudest noise to get the mix correct.
Third, sometimes it's just about range. Large concert halls, amphitheaters, etc need to get the mix right across hundreds of yards. Just as you would have to bellow to hold a conversation with someone on the other end of a football field, so a band has to be made loud to do the same.
So, sorry if you have to wear earplugs to cuddle the speakers-- but this really is done to a purpose.
Sure, you shouldn't expect to cuddle the speakers - but I go to live shows in small venues where I'm trying to dig myself into the wall at the furthest point from the speakers because it's too loud. They just need to turn it down.
You should probably try larger venues, where reason #3 is on your side.
The problem with small venues is that often you really need a lot of volume on guitars, vocals, etc to get the mix right with the drums, and then there isn't any space to soak up that energy. Instead it winds up reflecting off the walls and causing havoc, in addition to just being loud as hell.
Of course, that's not to say that there aren't bands that would play a full stack in a closet, but most of the time they're just struggling to get the mix right and give people the experience they want.
Have you heard how loud an unamplified acoustic drum kit is in a small venue? It would be loud enough to damage your ears alone. On top of that for many kinds of music, drums have to be amplified to give them a certain sound. Then everything else has to be brought up to that volume.
Yes, and "they just need to turn it down" is certainly oversimplified. Roughly speaking, nobody considers "it's too loud" a significant problem, and so nobody puts in any effort to solve it at any level, including venue design. I was mostly responding to the silly statement that people who think it's loud must be "cuddling speakers".
Note that I didn't say that. I said that there were multiple reasons why it wasn't "insane" that people play live music loudly, and that if you wanted to cuddle the speakers you would need to wear earplugs. I also noted that some bands will play deliberately loudly with no regard for the venue in another post.
In the end, if you want to stay at volumes that are safe for your ears without protection you will need to select your style of music, band, venue, and location in that venue with at least a modicum of care. Personally I prefer to wear the earplugs.
My left ear is perceptibly worse than my right. The only explanation I know is that I play violin, and that's the ear closest to the instrument. Acoustic instruments can be surprisingly loud!
I'd love to go to a concert for audiophiles - no distortion at all, just loud clear music. There's no need for it to be so stupendously loud, especially if the audience is able to shut the fuck up and actually listen.
Most concerts I've been to (not all) have been at eminently listenable volumes. There are definitely acts and venues that know not to crank the volume to 11, even for what could be described as "raucous" music.
I remember being pleasantly surprised when I saw Porcupine Tree (a post-progressive/metal act) in concert about a decade ago. I was near the stage yet the volume was so eminently reasonable I didn't even need the earplugs I brought. (No doubt this is related to Steven Wilson also being an audio engineer.)
In sharp contrast, I saw The Mars Volta – similar genre – around the same time. Unenjoyably loud even with good-quality earplugs.
I saw King Crimson in concert earlier this year at the Cobb Energy Center in Atlanta, it was phenomenal and just as you describe.
There are also small venues that specialize in these kinds of grown-up music shows. Again talking Atlanta here, the one I'm thinking of is Eddie's Attic.
Idea is to pick the venue first, then select which acts you'd like to see there.
I don’t think the volume is necessarily related to the amount of ‘distortion’ or how ‘audiophile’ the sound is. Some nightclubs have pretty incredibly clear sound but still require hearing protection to be safe. An acoustic big band can damage your hearing just fine if you are close enough.
Right, I like the loud music. But I don't go very frequently at all. I've been to a handful of shows, and the loud ones are always better to me. My ears ring afterwards, I know it's bad for my hearing. If I went all the time I'd definitely bring earplugs.
How many times do you have to go to loud concerts before you buy a set of earplugs? They even sell them at damn near every show I've been to, and disclaimers all over the place about the music being loud...
Don't buy the crappy foam ones, especially at the price they sell them for at venues. They make good ones that are intended for exactly this use case (earasers, eargasm, etc etc etc) and do the job really well. You can often find them on sale for around $15.
What makes you think that I'm more sensitive than average, or that I'm not wearing earplugs? Perhaps you're just unfamiliar with this kind of live show in a bar.
As others have said this is well beyond "cuddling speakers". But your points are fine. And if they're really unavoidable then distribute ear plugs at the entrance to your concerts. Because the alternative is a bunch of teenagers going to concerts and only later figuring out they've damaged their hearing. After all, if what you are describing is right, then the problem is even worse. A product is being sold with the knowledge that it causes harm and people are just supposed to figure out on their own to use protection while using it. It's like selling tickets to a viewing of a solar eclipse and then telling the now blind customers they should have figured out to use eye protection.
I mean, this is true of most products. I don't get a suit of chainmail with the purchase of a kitchen knife, after all. Responsibility for not cutting myself-- whether that involves protective equipment or not-- is on me.
Besides, I'm not keen on shuffling more costs over to venues or artists. It's a tough business already, and tacking even $100 worth of earplugs onto a concert might wipe out what a small band will get paid to play.
Better to have the music and have to get the earplugs, than have less music to wear them to imo.
I'm a musician, and I don't buy it. There are too many situations where it's loud without serving any musical purpose.
People listen to music with earbuds at levels that are driving them deaf, and it's not felt at all.
Jazz groups play too loud, fer cripe's sake.
Restaurants are loud. I took a sound pressure meter to an event at a restaurant, and the crowd noise was above the safe threshold before the band even started playing.
Drums are not irreducibly loud, and in any event, that doesn't explain why events with sound reinforcement are too loud. A competent drummer can play with intensity (even visually) at any volume level. Knowing how to play at an appropriate volume is part of knowing how to play.
I think that volume levels are killing live music.
To add: The music needs to be loud enough to drown out every other aural stimulus. You want to hear the music and only the music, not everyone's side conversations, not your clothes rustling around while you're dancing, not the sound of people's hard healed shoes on the dance floor.
A few years ago, after a Ministry concert which was off the scale loud (or maybe I just have become off the scale old for this kind of music), I bought a pair of Earasers (https://www.earasers.store) and the few times I had to wear them, they worked great, protected my ears while being fairly transparent, and did wonders for my enjoyment of the music.
I've been using Hearos. I'm curious how different the Earasers are in terms of flatness. With the Hearos I can push them further into the ear to make things quieter, but the more attenuation, the less flat the sound is. I tend to pull them out a bit so that it's a little louder but flatter. Either way, it's real nice to leave a concert without concert-ear.
I do exactly the same thing with the earasers and some of the other brands, but haven't tried hearos.
Just my two bits, but I don't think the different brands are all that different. Some seem a bit bigger or smaller, some cost more or less. Of course I can't say that for sure about a brand I haven't tried though.
I'm a fan of metal and small venues (something of a double whammy for getting too much volume in one place) and I just can't recommend earasers and similar enough. Literally life-changing. I often wind up going to see live music three or four times a week, and if I didn't wear them I really would be deaf by now.
There needs to be more education around this. I found out through Reddit that medical tents should have free ear plugs if needed.
Many younger people don't know the damage they're doing to their ears. Example, at festival this year overheard couple of girls wondering why bother going if wearing ear plugs when they saw mine. I told them I rather keep my hearing, and they were genuinely shocked at the concept, never crossed their mind being near front stage can cause damage.
Just do a search for something like "music ear defenders/protectors" and you'll see plenty of options.
Don't go for the cheap disposable rubber foam ones because those just block your ears. Look for proper reusable silicone ones. They are specially designed to block harmful frequencies without muffling or distorting the sound.
Yep, been using Etymotic ones for both concerts and riding motorcycle, and I love it. It works just right, and for $15 feels like worth every penny (ER20XS; went with that one over the regular ER20 because of a lower profile shape). They are nearly indestructable and super easy to clean too (relevant if your ears tend to produce a solid amount of earwax). Had to replace them once over the years and only because i lost my original pair.
Really comfy, non-descript, very easy to put in and remove, and only blocks out the annoying stuff while making the necessary stuff more prominent (with music, it would be amplifying guitars/synths as well as speech, while cutting down a bit on drums; with motorcycle, it would be amplifying breaking sounds, sirens/horns, and, again, speech, while cutting down on wind and engine noise). I can wear them for hours, eventually forgetting that I even have anything in, despite usually being really sensitive to earbuds and not being able to wear them for prolonged periods of time.
I've used Etymotics for years. Cheap ($20), comfortable, easy to carry, and a wonderfully flat frequency response (at least compared to cheap foam plugs).
Also, Etymotics makes great wired ear buds.
I just got the new eargasm, yea that's the name of the company, that can switch between -15db and -22db. Pretty good and better deal and sound quality than using regular foam earplugs. They are pricey around $45-$50, but if I don't lose them, worth the price for protecting my ears and better experience. There are ones cheaper, search high fidelity, HiFi, earplugs. Lots around the $20-$30 range.
I suspect noise pollution and dangerous levels of noise will be a future regulatory consideration.
Industrial progress has so far required loud noises, freeways, construction zones etc with little regard to their impact on peace, wellness and hearing.
In the latter case, I know quite a few people who bring earplugs with them to concerts, and I don't know of anyone judging 'em for that. Quite a few musicians wear 'em when performing, too, specifically out of recognition that their ears are pretty darn critical to music (not all of us are Beethoven, after all!).
I keep a bunch of earplugs in my car specifically for when I'm out shooting with friends, specifically so that if someone forgets one's hearing protection there's extras available. Ear and eye protection is one of those things that's both frequently overlooked and absolutely essential.
At the first concert I ever attended (Trans Siberian Orchestra), the check-in staff handed out earplugs to anyone who wanted. My hearing was already gone by that point for other reasons but I appreciated having those plugs given that the seat was right by the stage.
Not all tinnitus is due to hearing damage, I think some is neurological. I had it in the past (after an apparent infection, but no true diagnostic on the root cause), and my hearing slowly recovered. I took all known treatments though (steroids during the crisis, Ginkgo Biloba extract for a while and Magnesium supplementation since then). The ringing comes back if I drink alcohol or too much coffee though, but maybe it's the usual side-effect for those substances, and now I'm just more perceptive to it.
Another cause of tinnitus is otosclerosis, where bone continues growing around the stapes bone (the stirrup) until it moves so little that you have hearing loss, often accompanied by tinnitus.
After stapes mobilization surgery the associated tinnitus goes away.
So if you have hearing issues, and especially tinnitus, visit to an otolaryngologist. There might be solutions.
Wow, now that's interesting. I've noticed my tinnitus completely stops sometimes but not figured out why. I take Ginkgo Biloba and sometimes it seems to work, and others not at all.
I also take magnesium supplements on occasion, but usually only when I have leg cramps. I'm going take both right now to see if that makes a difference. And I'll also take just the magnesium when it returns to see how that affects it.
You shouldn't take Magnesium only when you have the symptoms though, it doesn't work like that. You should take the recommended dosage for supplementation all the way thru (I take 120x400mg capsules, that lasts 4 months), because your body first creates a reserve of Mg in the bones, then uses it later as necessary for other issue. If you get constant cramps, that means you've already depleted these reserves.
Prefer some form of chelated Magnesium instead of the more common Magnesium Chloride too, it's better absorbed and doesn't affect the bowel.
It's still hit of miss for me so far on the ringing in the ears. Some days are much better than others but I haven't been able to mail down why.
My wife got some potassium and I've been taking it with "Natural Calm" magnesium for the leg cramps. That's been working great to stop and prevent them. I haven't taken it everyday though. Only when I feel them coming on.
I think the Ginkgo I'm taking may be hit or miss. I'm pretty sure it's a cheap Wal-Mart brand and probably not a very high quality product.
I'm not sure what type magnesium the Natural Calm uses. I'll look into that too.
Not all tinnitus is caused by loud noise. While certainly worth reducing the incidence of 'self inflicted' and work related tinnitus, lots of people just get it from illness or age related hearing loss.
I would urge anyone that suffers from tinnitus to get their hearing checked if they haven't already.
Getting hearing aids has given me significant relief from tinnitus and if my hearing aid battery dies the tinnitus comes back fairly quickly. It's as if my ear is trying to compensate for the lack of sound.
Of course, there are multiple reasons for tinnitus to occur so your mileage may very, but it's absolutely worth checking out.
> It's as if my ear is trying to compensate for the lack of sound.
Holy crap. You just blew my mind. "Silence is deafening" makes more than just figurative sense.
From a young age, I've always noticed a light ringing while in extremely quiet places. Not enough to bother me, but enough to notice my ears straining to hear sound.
What's the typical onset? (Since I remember <10 years old, I heard some noise and just accepted it as amplifier-like-no-signal-noise, even though regular hearing tests measured above average hearing. Though they don't cover the whole audible spectrum usually :/)
Same for me. Remember the noise since I was a small child. Always thought it was normal. Hearing tests consistently come back perfect.
But yeah, hearing tests cover a very tiny portion of the spectrum. Audiology, in this regards, seems to be completely divorced from the frequencies people hear in real life. In reality, the vast majority of hearing tests barely cover the frequency range of human voice - let alone frequency ranges for music or even tinnitus.
I asked my audiologist if it might be possible to cover a wider range of frequencies and she seemed flabbergasted that someone would even request such a thing.
So, yeah. If you have tinnitus, or music isn't sounding as nice to you anymore, or for some reason bass frequencies sound off - well, you won't find out with a traditional hearing test.
I'm not exactly sure which tests you've gotten. It may be the case that the audiologist will only test a few frequencies for someone who is likely to have good hearing. But if you are fitted for hearing aids they will test a range of frequencies from 100 Hz to 8000 Hz.
Almost all cases of hearing loss have hearing loss at high frequencies, so they may be able to screen you by just checking at higher frequencies. As far as I know, losing bass frequencies first only comes from specific conditions like Meniere's disease.
8K seems too low. Sure at 20K you wouldn't hear anything, but there's still a lot of potential to hear a low level hum at let's say 13K which drives you mad.
Were you ever in a school band? I was in every band class the school offered from grade 6 thru 12 and I attribute my tinnitus to constant loud instruments every day in those enclosed spaces. Four of those years I sat directly in front of the percussion section in a tiered seating layout, where my ears were exposed to snare drum and cymbals from mere feet away. I have constant ringing in both ears... fortunately it isn’t debilitating for me. I hope awareness around ear protection continues to grow.
I’m not sure how old you are, but can 42 year old me give you some advice? Go get a hearing test. If I would have known about my tinnitus at 22, I would have a noticeably higher quality of life at 42...
This is exactly my problem as well. How would I actually be able to differentiate high pitches (which I hear constantly) from noisy electronics and power supplies? The times where I'm out in deep nature with utter quiet (e.g. no airplane flying overhead at 30,000 feet) is so rare that I couldn't say I'd achieved homeostasis with silence. So really I spend 99% of my life in near proximity (within 30') of some cheap electronics that could very well be the source of this constant high pitch background noise. Or it's me.
Ear plugs. If you can drop the surrounding noise by 35+db, you'll notice what's tinnitus and what's ambient noise.
Funny story related to this question, one day in a conference room I thought my tinnitus was just particularly bad, until someone went and turned off some unused AV equipment. The pitch of the electronic noise was identical to my personal tinnitus (and different than someone else's - they commented that it wasn't the right pitch for them).
I have tinnitus and haven’t talked about this with other sufferers so this may just be me. But if I slowly plug and unplug my ears, the difference between tinnitus and all the background shit is obvious. The only way I can describe it is that the sound comes from a different place and when you change how your ear works, you can hear the differences between the sources. My hearing is awful so I really pray this anecdata is of no use to you.
Same.. this made it very difficult for me to get to sleep as a child. It only happens in extremely quiet places, no anomalies on a hearing test. Oddly enough, active noise cancelling doesn't cause it.
>It's as if my ear is trying to compensate for the lack of sound.
As I understand it, this is exactly what tinnitus is. Your ear becomes insensitive to a certain frequency, so your brain "equalizes" it, if you will, and over compensates to the point that you're hearing something that's not there.
The brain can also confuse input from nearby muscles for missing sounds in some cases. My own tinnitus can get a lot worse if my upper back and shoulder muscles are tense.
I have a google alert on "fx-322" from Frequency Therapeutics, which appears to be a drug injection that helps with hearing.
It had a fast track designation from the FDA, and just initiated Phase 2a clinical studies. Somewhere I read that apparently they will also test its impact in Tinnitus.
I have permanent though currently modest hearing damage and persistent tinnitis of several different sounds at the same time.
it's clear I'm going to have a hearing aid in the coming years as my dad does also, even though unlike me, and he was not a drummer that stood next to speakers in clubs, but he doesn't have the tinnitus.
> never knew telling your experiences gets you downvotes
I think this case is more specific than that: expressing personal experience as something that must therefore be true for everyone often gets you downvotes, at least here, unless you experience agrees directly and completely with local group-think (and even then some who disagree with the local group consensus will downvote without explanation).
Frame personal experience as personal experience that might inform others usefully, rather than framing personal experience as solid undisputable globally applicable fact. You'll likely still get some downvotes of course, no matter what you say or how you frame it.
The answer is much simpler. Before the comment was edited, it said "Trust me, it never worked", which does not describe a personal experience but dismisses everyone else's.
It seems like the technique described would be unreliable and dependent on the nature of the damage causing your tinnitus. Also, at best it offers only momentary relief, though when tinnitus is bad that seems like that's worth a little effort in itself.
I have bad tinnitus in both ears and doing the trick works for me, for about 60 seconds. I don't do it often because it makes me sad how much better that 60 seconds feels.
It works for about a minute, then the tinnitus gradually creeps back. The brief experience of being tinnitus-free is refreshing, but it's not a quality of life improvement for which I would constantly perform this exercise or wear a vibrating headband
Had never heard of it, thanks for the link. Just tried it. I think it muted the tinnitus to about 20%! Pretty good. Though, it only lasted about a minute. Back to normal now.
From my experience, seasickness can be countered by:
Getting on the upper deck for fresh air
Having a full stomach
If all else fails, sleep
Seeing the horizon vs focusing on a fixed point on the ship helps some people and harms others - experiment to see what works for you.
The other thing I've found is if you let it get bad you'll be in trouble until you get ashore. Take measures to fix it before it gets bad. This might include drugs - I'd always take dramamine if sailing into bad weather.
Also, everybody gets seasick eventually. Anyone who claims they don't simply hasn't been in a rough enough sea for long enough yet. There's no shame in taking care of yourself.
One last trick - ships have a metacentre that they rotate about. Ask a deck officer where on the ship you can get closest to it - it's the point where the movement of the ship will be minimised.
I followed up on the research article this is based on, which is from 2013. In short: it has been reasonably well cited and followed up on with additional studies, and there is statistically significant improvements in tinnitus in experiments---but as of yet, still not enough data to recommend clinical usage. The technique is based on trying to desychronize maladaptively synchronized neurons in the auditory center which create the perception of the tinnitus sound (obviously then, this will only be relevant for those with who do not have tinnitus due to a physical issue). However, the proposed pathophysiological mechanism this treatment technique is trying to address is still somewhat speculative:
My overall impression: this is cool. There is some valid science going on here, and I would be happy to use it as a placebo effect at the very least. It would be nice to update the sounds provided by the github repo according to recent findings.
I coincidentally had a 13khz whistle while reading your comment in a quiet room. Tried the protocol, and now I can hear how quiet it is here - the whistle is gone. So that’s a sample of two now. Thank you so much for posting it!
Hello ay. Glad to spread this if it can help anyone.
Could you elaborate a bit more on your experience? The 13khz whistle how long have you been hearing that? How much did you use the tool? Is the whistle permanently gone?
Mine seems to be 9880 or thereabouts - up that high it seems to be difficult to differentiate slightly higher or lower tones.
Been living with that high a tone for decades now and it's always been extremely noticeable.
I always coped with it by convincing myself "that's just my brain's CPU frequency" - sounds a bit nutty but that's a coping mechanism which worked for me.
Tried seeing my doctor about it a couple of years ago (UK, NHS GP) but at the time he dismissed it saying "nothing can be done" :/
This tone therapy - I'll try this and see how it goes.
I remember when I used it the ringing totally stopped in between the calibration sounds.
Does it do that to you as well?
The sounds were pretty annoying but at least I could control their intensity and while going to sleep I could gradually make it lower and lower until I slept.
Update: I tried it twice. Both times it failed. There were times between the beeps were I swore it was gone, but when I took off the headset (or muted the volume), it was indeed still there. Perhaps you have to continuously do it?
Hi. In original post I wrote I had ringing for a weekend. It was in fact a week. I used it 1-3 times a day. Mostly while getting to sleep or walking, I could lower the volume more and more until I slept.
The ringing was totally gone in between the tones but as you know it's really a short span.
You say you're used it twice and it failed, I don't think you can conclude that. You can read section 2.5 in the paper. Here it mentions treatment of 4-6 hours a day not split into sections shorter than an hour and over ~12 weeks.
If you fall asleep with some earphone in maybe that also counts the time?
Then it's easier to get such a high number therapy. E.g. one walk session a day for 1 hour. And then 3 hours at night until you wake up groggily and take of the earpieces and continue sleeping.
Is it possible that tinnitus is actually just a person's inability to ignore natural noise in the hearing systems? More of a physchological issue like chewing fingernails or having OCD, but which can be amplified by legitimate physical hearing damage?
I ask this because for all the life I can remember, I've always been able to perceive a high-pitched tone, even in completely quiet environments. If I actually focus on it, it's quite loud and annoying.
It's just that my "default state" is to not think or notice this tone, and instead focus on "actual" sounds.
I'm really skeptical of this. I've been dumb enough to fire a decent amount of ammunition without hearing protection, and I've had my (undiagnosed) tinnitus get worse over time in a way that seemed related to this. I'm also very aware of background noises (like 60 cycle hums), and get annoyed by them frequently. The tinnitus sounds very different than those, and I can concentrate on other tasks way easier with my tinnitus acting up than I can sitting close to flourescent lights and other appliances that emit noticable 60 cycle hums. Sometimes it actually helps, by masking out other background noises.
Edit: I'm not saying that personal annoyance doesn't factor into who notices that they have tinnitus, I just suspect that there is actual hearing loss (and subsequent over-amplication to correct for this) involved.
Part of this is a problem of trying to figure out what we're actually talking about. Tinnitus is a symptom that probably has at least several causes. It's generally believed to be a result of some form of damage to they hearing system. It includes:
1. The ear organ, which largely exists to protect the sensory tissue, and make things work smoothly.
2. The sensory tissue which is composed of hairs and mechanoreceptors (this is technically part of the ear).
3. The neurons that connect these mechanoreceptors to the brain.
4. The aural (audio) parts of the brain.
I think the theory is that the damage from tinnitus happens in 2, 3, or 4. If it is a problem in the brain, it's often impossible to tell if it's "psycological" or not, and that may be a false dichotomy. I think that some degree of tinnitus is normal in the healthy population, so maybe it's just a natural state that sometimes goes off the rails and gets bad enough to be labelled "disease".
Most tinnitus sufferers learn to ignore their noises to some degree. You're like me, where you have figured out how to turn it out. We're lucky sufferers, our noise is fairly constant. Some folks perceive more patterns in their noise, and that makes it much harder to ignore.
I definitely learned to forget it. It was hugely annoying when I first noticed it, but after a time I forgot its there. And even when its quiet and I know its there, I still end up forgetting it.
Yeah, I suddenly woke up with tinnitus a few months ago and while I can ignore it most of the time there are days where it's louder with a constantly changing pitch and it drives me insane
There are many possible causes for tinnitus. One potential cause is muscle tension in the neck, in which case the tinnitus should go away when the tension is relieved (through massage or some other means). I'd recommend just looking into various potential causes until you find the one (and hope it's something you can do something about).
Interesting, I damaged my right ear with loud earphones while DJ-ing. And in the beginning (about 20 years ago) I could hear it all the time. But with time it kind of went away there are times where I don't hear it for a year or so. The only times I hear it so it really bothers me is when I think about it. For example now that I read the headline it started immediately and it almost hurts. Therefor I'll concentrate on some other article so it stops.
Yea, I second this. I had my hearing tested and the results came out "very good."
I talked with the doctor and she basically said that what is most likely happening with me is that I have "better" hearing than most and this is what is making it difficult to hear. She said what is probably happening is that I hear a lot of ranges outside the test window and/or I just hear the lower background noises better than I hear human vocal range.
She talked about how she would like to do an experiment that allowed testing to be expanded but didn't have the resources or time to try it.
This sounds like me; I seem to have great hearing (I can still hear those "mosquito" devices used to annoy teenagers even though I'm over 40), but I have a hard time understanding human speech when there's a lot of ambient noise. Noisy restaurants are very unpleasant for me, and I'm constantly asking people to repeat themselves.
I had that experience after attending an overly loud concert a couple months ago - had a much easier time hearing the cacophony of noise in the cafe than I did the person I was supposed to be having lunch with. Got a hearing test and learned I have better than average hearing for a person in his 30s, but there's no baseline since I hadn't been tested as an adult before.
Still haven't figured out if the concert gave me tinnitus, or if the fright of it has made me hyperaware of aural sensations and less tolerant of what I considered "normal" before.
I remember reading that many years ago radical surgery was performed for a few particularly severe tinnitus cases in which the auditory nerve was completely severed, yet even that didn't fix the tinnitus. So yes, I think there is something in your interpretation.
(I suffered tinnitus for a few years, the 'pulsatile' form which is definitely not psychological and is basically when the blood flow in your head is too close to your inner ear. Fortunately for me it cleared up.)
Experiencing tinnitus while having no discernible hearing loss on a standard audiogram could possibly be due to hidden hearing loss [1].
That said, I have read (anecdotally) that many people claim to hear a slight high-pitched tone in a quiet environment, so it could be quite a bit more common than one would imagine.
It might be similar to (albiet the oposite of) how putting on a pair of decent active noise cancelling headphones "sound different" (even if you were in an otherwise quiet room) and/or many people report a "head pressure" feeling.
Their brain is used to filtering out the background noise, so removing it causes strange sensations.
I don’t think the head pressure feeling is something the brain automatically adds to silence. I get that feeling from noise-canceling headphones but I don’t get it from a sensory deprivation tank.
Absolutely, check out this paper about using neurofeedback https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5717031/. This technique is purely for psychological disorders. My wife has chronic tinnitus, and my theory is that initial onset of tinnitus is related to physical damage, then it turns chronic because the brain develops a fear response to the noise, which makes it amplify the noise over and over
I have the same thing. When I'm aware of it, it's really loud and annoying. Probably 90%+ of the time I'm not aware of it though. Was never sure if this qualified as tinnitus.
I think there is absolutely something to this. I have mild tinnitus and my hearing is fairly poor after too many years of loud headphone use. However, I rarely notice a bothersome perception of noise unless I focus on it.
Other similar phenomenon exist. For example, some people are strongly bothered by floaters in the eyes while others seem to take it more easily in stride, as the brain will naturally compensate the vision. It wouldn't surprise me at all if individual tolerance varies wildly to these issues.
Well, having both tinnitus and floaters in both eyes is certainly not a great experience.
Sometimes I just hope my nose won’t start smelling bacon all the time.
I have a mild tinnitus, so I can sometimes tune it out. But when I'm tired it's much louder. It was much worse when it started and I couldn't tune it out. In my case my daughter's scream brought my this and I had trouble with balance at first and hearing in one ear. Balance was out like I was flowing through water.
My experience as a moderate tinnitus sufferer the high-pitched tone you hear is basically the same thing but at a lower level - I think most people have it to some extent. But in sufferers the tone is much louder, normally after some damage to the ear from excessively loud sounds or similar.
I thought the 'ringing' frequency could actually be detected in the auditory nerve in tinnitus sufferers. It may still be possible to train away attention to this tone somewhat, but its a real thing!
I wrote this relatively recently in another comment. I think it applies here:
I have tinnitus. I got it from going out too much. I wasn't the biggest party-hardy individual, but there were moments where I went out quite a bit. During that time I lived in Amsterdam and loved parties for: music, social experimentation and doing whatever. I wasn't too much into the drugs/alcohol thing. I think during my 'going out phase' I was above average in terms of how many times I went out to clubs. This period lasted for 4 years.
It was 6 months of agony, then I started to ignore it. It wasn't a conscious decision, the ignoring happened automatically. I only have the high pitched ringing in my ears when it's quiet. It literally feels like a curse though, I can't hear silence.
5 years later, I found out something remarkable (and I hope there's a researcher willing to test this with me and other tinnitus people). It was an accident to figure this out.
When I do the Wim Hof Method, for just a brief moment it's silent. I can kind of have an idea why, since it's silent during an oxygen starvation moment (breathing all your oxygen out and then not breathing for another 2 to 3 minutes).
But for me it was a life saver. Why? Because if I really want to experience true quietness again, I can do the Wim Hof Method and experience about 10 to 20 seconds of quietness per 5 minutes.
My curse is lifted. It's not perfect, but good enough for me.
If you have tinnitus and want to learn the Wim Hof Method from me, feel free to reach out [1], my email is in my profile.
[1] My time is limited, I can teach up a total of 6 people for free who also have tinnitus. If you send an email, I'll put you in an online session with 1 to 2 other people (who also responded to this, so they're all from HN). After 6 people, I need to charge for my time. And please, leave the spots open for people who actually have tinnitus. Don't fake it, there are probably (hopefully) videos online on how to do the Wim Hof Method.
Final note: learning the WHM to alleviate yourself from tinnitus is an experiment. It worked for me. It may not work for you. Also, learning the WHM you need someone to be physically there to be a 100% sure about your physical safety (normally that would be me). And you need to be in an otherwise healthy condition.
I'm not a doctor, and this invitation is for entertainment purposes only.
I also have tinnitus from chronic ear infections when I was a child. I find that the WHM doesn't get rid of the high pitched hum but temporarily adds a white-noise-like sound on top of it.
Edit: if you are going to do this by yourself, please do let us know in this thread how it went for you! I hate to be an anecdotal n = 1 'experiment'.
Note: this technique has some risks. Especially when you practice by yourself. The biggest one is that scientifically speaking, experts are a bit unfamiliar with it. I can only offer anecdotal experience. There are some articles written about it [1], but I wonder if they go into the risks of the technique (I don't think so, I was one of the people in the experiment).
Yea, it's exactly as described there. The tinnitus will be temporarily gone in step 3 (when you hold your breath). Or at least, that is the case with me. It'll come back after you took your breath in step 4. So it's a temporary relieve, unfortunately.
In any case, there are a couple of checks you can do to see whether step 3 is working as intended.
1) You are capable of holding your breath for more than 1 minute and 30 seconds. Note: if you go over 2 minutes, you might want to have someone by your side who can shake you a bit. I sometimes faint around 2 minutes and 10 seconds, I wake up without assistance as well though, but better close of small risks. Shaking works quite well (there was one case where I saw it almost fail, the person was unconscious for 3 minutes and then got to consciousness after 3 minutes of being shaked, normally it takes about 10 to 20 seconds, except for this one case).
This is a hard requirement.
2) You feel a tingling sensation in your hands, feet or body. This is not only my experience, it's almost everyone's experience who did this. So this is a semi-hard requirement.
3) After doing this for 2 rounds, it is my experience that my body naturally understands how this type of breathing works. I naturally get into a flow of things. In a sense, I can only describe it is "my body is breathing like my life is depending on it". It's a very rare sensation, and definitely not similar to swimming under water and almost running out of air.
> Note: this technique has some risks. Especially when you practice by yourself. The biggest one is that scientifically speaking, experts are a bit unfamiliar with it. I can only offer anecdotal experience.
I will also offer an anecdotal experience. I went to a "breathwork" seminar once that involved doing a form of hyperventilation (but without the breath holding part which is what Wim Hof also incorporates I believe?). I've always been a severe skeptic about this sort of spirituality woo woo, but of 10 people in the room, a significant number experienced what could only be described as full on psychedelic experiences, and my experience was similar enough that I don't doubt for a second that what they were saying was true, it was an eye opening experience to say the least.
That said, after the session was over, the instructor quietly mentioned that during the process, I had gone into some sort of a mini-seizure, and for over a month after that I had pretty severe and constant migraine headaches, as well as significantly elevated blood pressure.
I never bothered to research it afterwords, and I certainly will not be engaging in that practice again (as much as I would like to), but has anyone else ever heard of such a possibility for some minority of people?
Note this is not the “excess of oxygen” that you feel the effects of - but the lack of CO2.
Human body keeps the Ph of the blood in a really tight band - and if it swings outside of it one or the other direction - “bad” things happen. (The opposite condition is called acidosis)
Note that this exact thing also happens during the panic attacks; so my running theory is that the “gurus” create a positive feedback loop in the weaker people that are in need of support.
Maybe there is some self-impact by the placebo effect; but most usually these “sessions” are just a brilliantly evil way to earn money by getting people high on thin air! (There is no legislation that prohibits deep breathing while with drugs of course there is).
Again, the feedback from a person who actually finished a uni to become a doctor: do not do this. If you are looking for spirituality, try meditation instead.
Okay, so this tinnitus thing is an informal experiment that I'm organizing for people who are interested. Which is a thing that is perhaps worthy of discussion.
But I feel you're mixing too much new age stuff with hard science. Let's get some facts here and see where we agree and perhaps diverge.
Fact 1: the WHM gets you high on adrenaline [1]. It's actually higher than peak adrenaline during bungee jumping. In [1] it is also stated how the WHM is different than hyperventilation (neurobiologically at least).
Fact 2: The alkalosis thing is correct [2]. The doctors that I talked to (Radboud Nijmegen, The Netherlands) said that it was seemingly fine since every other indicator was fine. According to my conversation with them alkalosis happens when a person is dead, for example, but if it's the only thing that's negative, then it's probably fine. These doctors were also the authors of [1] as I was one of the research subjects.
I can see the medical community disagreeing about something like this (and again, I'm not a doctor, so if one wants to be on the safe side, assume it's bad, safety first).
> If you are looking for spirituality, try meditation instead.
I agree. The WHM is not something to be done on a whim.
[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/111/20/7379 -- quote: Epinephrine levels in trained individuals were even higher than those reported in a recent study in which acute stress elicited by a bungee jump was found to suppress cytokine production by leukocytes ex vivo stimulated with LPS (13).
[2] same paper -- quote: and an increase in pH (reaching up to 7.75 in individual subjects; Fig. 2 and Movie S2), indicating acute respiratory alkalosis, which normalized quickly after cessation of the breathing techniques.
Ah, my comment was only my experience/opinion about the “spirituality by a half an hour long hyperventilation”, not WHM. Sorry for not making the context clearer.
As for WHM itself, and experimenting with it - why not, if going into it carefully and with clear conscience...
On the experimentation topic - I am curious - did you also try the link posted elsewhere in this discussion - https://github.com/generalfuzz/acrn ?
Thank you for the link to the paper, very interesting!
That's actually funny, because "what is actually going on here" was the very first question I had, but it seemed to me like this thought didn't even cross the mind of the other 10 in attendance - I even asked the instructor and he had no idea, or curiosity. It's interesting how differently we all think about the world.
> Note that this exact thing also happens during the panic attacks; so my running theory is that the “gurus” create a positive feedback loop in the weaker people that are in need of support.
I saw absolutely no sign of this being true in my session. Everyone enjoyed themselves immensely and there was a strong sense of bonding and peace....anxiety was the exact opposite of what I saw going down. Although, I can agree that some people using these sorts of things, and only these sorts of things, as temporary crutches rather than getting at the underlying issue is an actual problem.
> Maybe there is some self-impact by the placebo effect; but most usually these “sessions” are just a brilliantly evil way to earn money by getting people high on thin air!
Did you get any results out of your session? Characterizing this as a scam or a placebo effect makes me think it didn't work for you?
> Again, the feedback from a person who actually finished a uni to become a doctor: do not do this. If you are looking for spirituality, try meditation instead.
I don't see how being a GP would equip someone in any way for having superior insight on such topics, unless they are speaking only to the qualitative medical risk aspect? And even so, any such judgement should also take into consideration the relative efficacy of the different practices.
> It's interesting how differently we all think about the world.
Absolutely. I am convinced that difference in the approach also affects the view of spirituality as well.
> I saw absolutely no sign of this being true in my session. Everyone enjoyed themselves immensely and there was a strong sense of bonding and peace...
The group I was in was a mix - probably 40% of people who definitely were going through a tricky time in their life (if wearing a T-shirt with “nobody loves me” may be any indication of that). And most of the remaining ones were the happy looking bunch.
The debrief felt okay and fine, but one of the participants explained he needed help during the exercise and he wasn’t given it, and the “teacher” had a kinda uncomfortable interaction with that person at that point.
> Did you get any results out of your session? Characterizing this as a scam or a placebo effect makes me think it didn't work for you?
With my “effects” of the hyperventilation being the cramps, and the “funny” moment during the debrief, I didn’t get any enlightenment :-)
I won’t really call it a scam - since most if not all of our perception of the world is defined by the brain chemistry, much like with drugs, I can see how this may have some effects - especially with some preconditioning. If it helps someone - why not. Placebo is a powerful mechanism.
> I don't see how being a GP would equip someone in any way for having superior insight on such topics, unless they are speaking only to the qualitative medical risk aspect?
Yeah, precisely. The feedback was basically “there is no conclusive research that this is good for you. Meditation does have such research”.
As for spirituality: In my view no one is qualified to tell another person about it in an assertive fashion. Any representation of a higher order system within a lower order system will be necessarily slightly different - that’s why it is everyone’s personal journey. :-)
> The group I was in was a mix - probably 40% of people who definitely were going through a tricky time in their life (if wearing a T-shirt with “nobody loves me” may be any indication of that). And most of the remaining ones were the happy looking bunch.
My session felt similar, the older people in the group seeming to be dealing with ongoing issues from past experiences, whereas the younger people while very sincere about the whole thing seeming to be mostly there more for spirituality as a lifestyle reasons. They all seemed happy and extremely supportive of each other.
> With my “effects” of the hyperventilation being the cramps, and the “funny” moment during the debrief, I didn’t get any enlightenment :-) I won’t really call it a scam - since most if not all of our perception of the world is defined by the brain chemistry, much like with drugs, I can see how this may have some effects - especially with some preconditioning. If it helps someone - why not. Placebo is a powerful mechanism.
I'm very curious, have you ever taken a significant amount of psychedelic drugs followed by sitting in a quiet dark room for several hours? My intuition suggests not.
The worst I have seen is that one person was unconscious for 3 minutes. We were doing it with medical staff and they started to get the oxygen masks. Just before the mask was on he gained consciousness. As far as we all could tell, he didn't have a single issue. This guy could go crazy long without oxygen though, more than 3 minutes and 30 seconds. He was out for almost 7 minutes.
I asked the doctors how it could be that he didn't sustain damage. They offered the following conjecture: since we're not in water, you still get some oxygen. So your oxygen count is very low, but not zero.
I also have to note that, everyone has been fine with the breathing part of the technique. I have trained 4 people myself, and have seen about 10 others being trained (with doctor supervision). The part where it gets a bit exciting is only during the holding your breath part.
I think there's a huge difference in sort of/kinda 'hyperventilating' for 30 breaths (it is slightly different [1]) and then stop breathing at all versus 'hyperventilating' for 20 minutes straight.
[1] The bulk of the WHM breathing technique looks like hyperventilating. There is one huge difference though: you breath out as you normally do. In hyperventilation you breath out as fast as possible to breath in again as fast as possible. So the WHM breathing technique, while fast on the in-breath, is on average not super fast because of a normal speed out-breath.
Unconscious, and not breathing?? That would be scary.
For the stuff we were doing, it was very deep, steady, and moderately faster than usual breathing, nonstop - the instructor thought afterwards that I may have been doing it "too fast", including the breathing out part, rather than letting it flow out naturally, but he'd never encountered someone having a seizure before. Regardless, I'm not going to personally experiment with it anymore, but I suspect I'm a fairly extreme outlier.
> I have tinnitus. It was 6 months of agony, then I started to ignore it. It wasn't a conscious decision, the ignoring happened automatically. I only have the high pitched ringing in my ears when it's quiet. It literally feels like a curse though, I can't hear silence.
My tinnitus generally doesn't bother me on a psychological level, so I feel fairly lucky in that regard. I just wish I didn't have it all the time and I end up drowning it out with music. I'd kill to be able to experience actual silence again when I'm trying to sleep or just want to sit around and relax.
My tinnitus is high pitched but not loud enough to ruin my life, It took almost 6 months to overcome the mental trauma.
Making some hard-ruled habit worked, I meditate every day morning and have a good walk of an hour in evening. I almost never skipped walk unless it is raining. I have same desire for experiencing silence, silence is golden.
FWIIW I've always had tinnitus, and the Wim Hof Method does absolutely nothing for me regarding tinnitus (pretty cool trick for athletics though). Glad for you you've found some relief, but the other side of the coin is if you eventually get used to it.
Place the palms of your hands over your ears so your fingers wrap around the back of your head.
Set your middle fingers on the top of your neck right at the base of your skull.
Put your index fingers on top of your middle fingers and apply pressure.
Now snap them on the back of your head over and over like you’re drumming.
Repeat it about 30-50 times.
Ideally, when you pull your hands away, you won’t hear any ringing, hissing, or buzzing anymore. When I tried it, there was definitely a huge difference and bizarre inner calm that came over me. I wouldn’t say it’s a miracle trick or anything, but to experience what true quiet is even for a few minutes is amazing.
I've tried this and while it really does seem effective for a minute or so for me, I'm still not convinced that it's not just an auditory illusion, like the tinnitus is somehow pushed aside by the sensation of the sudden (comparative) silence that starts the instant that you stop drumming on the back of your head.
I get the sense that tinnitus is so different for so many people there will never be a single solution. I think it can only be stopped at its source in the hearing centers of the brain itself, but good luck getting that accomplished.
I can only describe mine as the sound of a dump truck full of chandeliers going by the house. There are low-pitched rumbles, high-pitched wails and everything else in between if I really concentrate on it. I'm not sure exactly why I'm not despondent about it, but for whatever reason, I simply choose to ignore it and it doesn't impact my life in any way. I'd pay big money to make it go away, but I don't hold out any real hope.
> I'm not sure exactly why I'm not despondent about it, but for whatever reason, I simply choose to ignore it and it doesn't impact my life in any way
Actually, I've read that the best way to cope with tinnitus is to... just not worry so much about it. I suppose it's possible to catastrophize if you have it, but if you go about your day and don't mind it it won't bother you nearly as much.
I actually have fairly soft tinnitus myself, but I only notice it every so often.
Tinnitus is weird. It can change from being fairly soft and presenting no issue at all to really very distracting by just thinking about it (in my case).
I've found that thinking about it more than usual in, say, the morning, can result in your mind focusing on the specific frequencies the tinnitus manifests in, with these conscious-subconscious feedback loops resulting in it sounding far louder than usual for the rest of the day. Then, the next day, it's back to normal.
I'd be interested in finding out more about this conscious-subconscious connection with tinnitus, because it's quite amazing how it can be forgotten about for a seemingly arbitrarily long period of time until the thought comes up.
edit: or perhaps I shouldn't, for exactly this reason ;)
I have minor tinnitus as well, a high pitched sound like a CRT makes, and I just don't pay attention to it.
But I don't know if this is "it doesn't bother you if you don't pay attention" vs "mine is very minor" vs "something about it makes it not bother me, and also not pay attention" or what.
I'm leaning towards the former option. I'd describe mine as very similar to yours (mentioned in another comment), and it doesn't present an issue unless you really think about it, where your mind consciously/subconsciously focuses on the frequencies the tinnitus manifests in.
Getting to a place where it's just not something that you think about/bothers you is, all things considered, a pretty good place to be in.
Edit: I don't mean to trivialize this issue, as it definitely does have a greater effect on some people more than others. So, your 3rd possible explanation is quite intriguing here too.
The first hit started in 2010, a neurological "gift" from the swine flu.
The second hit happened in 2013 while mounting a new tubeless mountain bike tire. The tire blew off the rim and caused permanent hearing damage in my right ear.
I have to sleep with a fan or white noise machine now -- the "sound" I hear in a silent room is enough to keep me awake.
If you have slight tinnitus, you can use a white noise generator. What I've found that works really well at work to both keep loud colleagues from interfering and to reduce any high pitched noises I hear is this https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/whiteNoiseGenerator.php?l=... , you can also try their datacenter one. In another life when I used to have to go to the DC and work directly on servers I found it actually quite relaxing.
I have tinnitus because of beta blockers. One I switched treatment and it disappeared, that was a huge relief.
Unfortunately, without beta blockers my pulse hovers at 100BPM when sitting, 120BPM when standing and 220BPM after climbing 10 stair-steps. So I have not much choice but live with tinnitus...
Yup. With beta blockers I have a perfectly healthy heart rate and blood pressure. Other products work well for the blood pressure in my case, but not the heart rate.
> It is hoped that this information generates further research by others within the field of hearing / vestibular dysfunction. I have finished the research for my PhD, this however I feel should be continued with active tinnitus researchers (over to you).
I, in contrast, think this is perfectly reasonable. The title promises nothing, the article describes the methodology in detail, and they give it over to others to study since they can't.
Sure, but that seems a little harsh in this case as the OP is essentially 'open sourcing' the observation because he's moving on from his Phd. There's no product on offer or apparent benefit to the author.
I believe he said he found several people with tinnitus and let them try, all with similar results. So I Would guess the sample size is probably more like three or four.
A bit of a random comment here - it just happened that I recently injured my sternocleidomastoid muscle and has caused some hearing trouble on the right ear (not tinnitus). I saw that this also caused tinnitus in some individuals. I’m not a doctor or anything but if you suffer from this and didn’t find any relief, I’d suggest looking up for trigger point massage for this muscle. It’s safe and free, and it helped some people at least.
Amazing! I'm holding my vibrating iPhone to my head in a certain spot which gets the skull resonating, and it's cutting the tinnitus down by about 70%.
This is definitely doing something beyond masking the sound because when the vibration stops there is a few seconds delay before the tinnitus comes back.
Pretty exciting stuff! I really hope this leads to a reasonable cure. I'm not sure having a thing vibrating on my head would be any less distracting!
>The device we asked them to wear has four vibration levels. Half the volunteers (the control group) had the device set to the lowest vibration (level one), and half had it set to level three (the experimental group). Level 3 is the effective vibration level for motion sickness reduction.
Shouldn't the control group be wearing the device but have no vibrations active?
I have something related to tinitus: I sometimes get a ringing in my ear(s) when I'm deep in thought. It's not always both ears.
The article suggests to me that tilting your head sideways could be a way to cure tinitus - e.g. try various tilting movements (different speeds, angles, repetitions) to tune in and out of the parts of your inner ear that cause the tinnitus, taking note of any phenomenon that arise during various movement patterns. And don't forget the tension/relaxation variable! E.g. large, fast movements increase base tension, while slow, small movements decrease it.
I've quite a bit of experience loosening and tightening my joints from martial art; I imagine a similar process can be applied to nerve connections.
(In fact I've been trying to apply it to muscle growth via nerve stimulation because my room is on the small side for doing exercise. Burnt out a lot of nerve cells trying, now focussing on nutrition before I continue.)
I too suffer from this, and I think it must be related to my ADD, because I think most people can filter these noises out. To the point that they won’t become enraged by something their brain ignores as noise. Who wouldn’t become enraged if their brain was hijacked by the most bullshit, meaningless sounds?
People eating/chewing, mainly. Basically any sound that comes from the mouth, even when not eating. Tooth picking, brushing teeth, etc.
Unless I'm on a noisy environment (like a crowded restaurant), I simply can't eat with others. I just ended a 2-year relationship because of it -- and I have no idea how I'm supposed to live with someone else while having this disease.
Ironically, I'm indifferent to sounds that most people have aversion to, like metal screeching or fingernails on a chalkboard.
Interesting, but the article doesn't give enough information for third parties to duplicate it. The referenced paper "Less sickness with more motion and/or mental distraction" uses a completely different device.
Nor does the article indicate how long the relief persists after removal of the device. The article is also vague about how many people have reported relief.
There's also the question of controls. Assuming the effect is general and real (a stretch at this point), there could be something about the device besides its vibration that leads to relief of symptoms. Nothing along these lines is reported.
I get that this is a blog post and that the author is probably in the process of commercialization, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The article does little to convince.
Re commercialisation he's "Spencer Salter, wellness technology researcher at Jaguar Land Rover" so I guess they'd have first dibs.
That said I'm guessing is must be something like a phone vibrate unit in box strapped behind your ear - probably not so hard to give it a shot at making one. Googling vibrators gives a lot of them for sale though mostly designs what would be embarrassing to strap to your head ;)
This looks like something you could make into an app. Put phone on vibrate and apply to back of head.
It's also very similar to the remedy suggested in a reddit comment. The comment said to drum your fingers on the back of your head. Many people said it did work to reduce their tinnitus.
I love accidentally discovered cures for issues. This might be like penicillin for ears and hopefully it will relieve the suffering of thousands of people.
Let's hope it turns out to be true and can be developed rapidly into a medical device.
You may find some cheap Chinese "body massage" vibrating devices with adjustable speed settings, probably in pink. You may not want to trust them with any intimate parts, but I've found that they're great at vibrating toner or flour down a paper funnel, so wouldn't be surprised if they also worked for this.
Haha, I held my electric toothbrush behind my ear for about 60 seconds and it worked! The effect lasted only a couple of minutes. It seems like the heavy vibrations mixed things up in there, and when they settled back down, the ringing slowly returned.
When I moved to a largely off-grid remote location of dead silence it became clear I had a mild form of tinnitus.
Initially it was quite annoying and I thought it would drive me insane being in otherwise complete silence where it was so hard to ignore. But after a few months of silence it magically went away.
I suspect it was caused by my nearly constant use of headphones in cafes/offices. On my land there's no need for such isolation mechanisms.
We're probably doing more harm to ourselves than expected by wearing headphones every day, it's certainly not natural.
It's not a cure, and the sample sizes are low, but low level laser therapy (LLLT) has been shown to bring significant improvement to some people with tinnitus:
"Over half of the patients (56.9%) had some form of improvement in their tinnitus symptoms. Mild improvement was reported in 33.8% of patients, moderate improvement was reported in 16.9%, and full improvement was reported in 6.15%. Of the patients who reported dizzy spells as a symptom of their tinnitus condition, 27.7% reported mild improvement and 16.9% reported full improvement."
(My own note regarding that study: 5mW at 650nm does not penetrate tissue very deeply; one could e.g. use 100mW at 850nm to penetrate up to 5cm deep. Exposure time would likely have to be reduced by at least an order of magnitude.)
I am a heavy sufferer from motion sickness, working exactly as described here. This device sounds like a godsend, if it works as they say. Even just used for short periods, it would ensure I don't have to suffer mild nausea and headache for hours after each and every flight (landing is hell).
My dream is to find something so effective, that I could travel by boat while awake. But that would have to last for hours.
I believe the original applications for this device were in vertigo and seasickness, also being trialled to reduce nausea in VR
As far as I can work out the bone-conducted vibrations are simply a white-noise distraction - or as the makers put it 'consistent and non-informative stimulus'
I have mild tinnitus so that's what brought me here, but I wonder about something else from the article. They wanted to test for motion sickness while facing backwards. That's my minor pet peeve. I think that we can't realistically think of driving in something in a size of a car facing backwards, because it's just inherently dangerous. In case of an accident anything in your hands will hit you hard in your face, neck or chest. Same with whatever people in front of you would have. So: hot coffee, bottles, books, laptops and phones.
It sounds to me like it's basically a white noise machine. For those who don't know there is a sound therapy called Auditory Integration Training (Berard AIT) - along with a book you can buy on Amazon called "Hearing Equals Behaviour: Updated and Expanded" that can help reduce or eliminate tinnitus; it more or less from my understanding and experience is allowing the brain to un-focus from the sound, from that sensory, allowing the brain and sensory input to equalize - as body is a system designed to constantly find homeostasis.
I don't get the significance of the quotes, and the article doesn't seem to clarify. What, I wonder, is the intended difference between "we 'may' have discovered …" and "we may have discovered …" (except possibly a weird third layer of distancing)?
Do any other long time sufferers experience that it gets louder when tired or stressed? Also, definitely trying this with my electric toothbrush when I get home!
Now to wait 5-8 years for an FDA-approved medical device, which will cost $3000.
I wonder if you could achieve the same effect with a vibrating massager? Sticking a repurposed cellphone vibrator motor in an elastic band, like the North Paw, also sounds like it would have potential. https://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/
Just releasing what frequency they're using would be extremely helpful.
For sea sickness some companies offer a wrist band with a pea sized piece of plastic on them to (supposedly) stimulate a nerve in your wrist. I do not think that they require regulation.
I can see a situation where these devices could be sold for sea sickness purposes with little to no regulation.
Vibrating motors are a pretty easy device to get ahold of, phones and game controllers both have them; I don't see why you couldn't build one of these devices from a kit for under $25 + battery.
> For sea sickness some companies offer a wrist band with a pea sized piece of plastic on them to (supposedly) stimulate a nerve in your wrist.
They don't really work. Or rather, they never worked for me.
> I can see a situation where these devices could be sold for sea sickness purposes with little to no regulation.
I agree that they might not require much regulation, but I would appreciate some tests to ensure they are safe and establish some thresholds. Tinnitus sufferers in particular, would end up wearing this pretty much all day. Making your skull vibrate for 16 hours a day, even at low frequencies, sounds a bit dangerous.
If they're trying to do (and recruit funding for) novel research on motion sickness, they might be reluctant to describe how to knock-off their own hardware before they have anything to sell.
You watch those DIY guides be region blocked to "everywhere but the USA" because the fines for even publishing the design of an unapproved medical device are massive.
The US specialized in medical quackery for a hundred years, so there are direct restrictions on speech around claiming medical benefits. The free speech laws permit that, as IIRC societal welfare trumps your right to claim that (for example) mercury and cocaine soda will cure all ills.
EDIT: Commenters are right, you have to try to profit to be prosecuted. If you give away poison and call it a cure, as long as you have no benefit whatsoever, you're technically safe. Yippee.
It is perfectly legal to publicly claim that mercury and cocaine soda will cure all ills. You can post a video or shout it on a street corner or whatever. This is 1st Amendment protected free speech as affirmed case law.
What isn't legal is selling a product and making false or unverified claims about medical benefits.
Just disclaim it with "this device/supplement/lifestyle has not been shown and is not intended to treat any medical ailment" like all the homeopathic crap out there does and you should be good to go.
Agreed. And also add, "may have the unintended side effect of alleviating tinnitus symptoms. These statements have not been reviewed by the FDA. Wash device before applying to the skull."
My tinnitus doesn't bother me very often, but when it does, this provides the most amazing instant relief. And the relief lasts for some time even after you stop listening to it.
So I have very mild tinnitus (a bit of ringing when in bed at night, or if I really really try to listen for it).
I've noticed another auditory effect though, since I bought a glockenspiel for my child. After hearing a loud, high note on the glock, immediately after there is a momentary deep, squelchy rumble in my ears. Is this a tinnitus artifact or something else? My google skills have failed me on this one.
I was excited when I heard about these for VR. Haven’t heard much about them yet.
But I do wonder if there won’t be unintended consequences. The brain is pretty good at adapting. I believe these work by overloading the inner ear signal with noise so the brain stops paying attention to it. What if the brain decides to stop paying attention to it after the device is removed? Could it affect balance?
What I have done in the past (which is a temporary solution)
is play a matching frequency from a free phone app and make the volume repeatedly lower and higher for a few minutes..
This cancels out the pitch in my ear for a while.
Sometimes the tinnitus just stops by itself, and this can be for days. I am aware of some triggers for it.
My guess is, the nervous system dampens the signal from the middle ear when it sees obvious noise coming in. IIRC tinnitus also gets diminished in a noisy environment.
(Afaik it's a pretty well-known feature of the nervous system, an example being how the ‘pins and needles’ fade out in a previously-sleeping limb.)
I am super excited about the motion sickness application of this. My wife gets carsick and it is a source of tension in our relationship because it makes her reluctant to travel. I wish they would start selling these already. I heard about it last year but it seems that they are slow to market.
Wow, this could be huge. My tinnitus is mild and generally is only audible in quiet situations with small bouts where it gets really loud. On the opposite end of the spectrum, a former co-worker committed suicide because he could not continue life with such debilitating tinnitus.
I had no idea that there was a connection between motion sickness and tinnitus, and interestingly I suffer from both! (I was unable to complete the "road to Hana" in Maui because I got out of the car to puke several times!)
Anecdotal, but a close friend told me that during a moderately high dose mushroom experience his tinnitus was gone for the duration (~4 hours). I was there with him while he was experiencing this.
Wouldn’t this make things worse when you may need to turn it off at night when you sleep? Also what are the side effects of vibrating for too long? These question are important
I have had it for 20+ years from DJing + performing. They ring 247, you get used to it.
The ringing is caused by damaged nerves in your ears turning audio signal into white noise. It's hearing damage. Any cure that doesn't fix the damaged nerves causing the problem, is bs.
Tinnitus is weird. When I first had it I heard it all the time, it ruined my enjoyment of music, and I felt I was cursed for life. These days I can go for weeks without even realising it's there. I'd literally forgotten about it until I read this.
I've had tinnitus for 40 years, accompanied by deafness in one ear, due to inner ear damage caused by getting Mumps when I was 13. If I focus on it, it's really loud
- I can easily hear it over a loud pub environment, and it's there all the time. But the brain is amazingly adaptive - if I don't focus on it, it doesn't annoy me, and I forget it is there.
Interesting. How very kind of them to mention this to the public for further experimentation.
Has this individual now opened themselves to liability for IP theft, stealing potential billions of treatment money from the company that gets it approved by the FDA?
"A person shall be entitled to a patent unless—the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention"
It seems to me that the "described in a printed publication, or in public use part" here would suffice to protect the inventor no?
Not sure what you mean, but those clauses describe what can remove your entitlement to a patent.
So, if the claimed invention was "described in a printed publication, or in public use" before the filing date, the inventor is no longer entitled to the patent.
Of course, complaining of the lost potential money from IP for a life-improving device is preposterous, but it is true that this article may prevent the company for ever filing a patent application for this idea (unless they have already filed it).
>but it is true that this article may prevent the company for ever filing a patent application for this idea (unless they have already filed it)
No the inventors generally have a year to file after disclosure. There is a 1 year grace period in that your own disclosure doesn't count as prior art if you are the one filing.
It's not that simple, but it's not as bad as the article you posted makes it sound. He's a patent lawyer trying to convince you that you need to file as soon as possible. It's in his interest to convince you that the grace period is worthless.
If you make a public disclosure and someone else tries to file for a patent and the claims are covered by your disclosure (provided the patent examiner is aware of the disclosure), your disclosure will count as prior art and the patent will be denied.
If however you try to file a patent within a year of making a disclosure, your disclosure will not count as prior art.
The problem is that there haven't been many court decisions to clarify the new law and most of these scare articles by patent attorneys are just conjecture. Also note that most of the articles you'll find in a Google search warning about the grace period are more than 5 years old.
Right, a possible dramatic improvement of quality of life for those with tinnitus, but your first thought is IP theft?
I surely hope those kinds of thoughts, and the arcane system that nurtured them, does a swift and painful death as we retake basic human rights and healthcare from the clutches of capitalism’s greasy claws.
Edit: I’m criticizing how a society can create such a connection in the first place.
This is a weird community of startup techies that built their lives around FOSS but yet are extremely hungry for cash and are willing to ignore everything that got them to where they are. You get an odd swath of ideals here, for better or worse.
I think you've got it all backwards. We created capitalism in our image, not the other way around. Capitalism is also what achieved those things which you are suggesting we should retake in the first place. Would it be better to not have capitalism if it meant not having those things?
Capitalism and human rights have nothing to do with each other. There are capitalist nations, such as Denmark or the US, which have pretty decent human rights for their own citizens at least. And there are other capitalist nations, such as China or the USSR, which have very bad track records on human rights.
And no, state capitalism, such as you can find in China or the USSR, is not socialism or communism, any more than North Korea is a people's republic.
There haven't really been non-capitalist functioning societies for a century I think. There have been short-lived experiments that quickly collapsed into either authoritarianism, war, or back to capitalism.
However, if you accept one of these short-lived societies - the very early bolshevik/Soviet regime, immediately after the revolution and before Lenin assumed complete control, was the first nation in the world to recognize the rights of gays to a normal life, and had some other very high-minded rights for its citizens. Of course, that very quickly ended and became one of the most vicious regimes in history...
If you look at older societies, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois confederacy) in North America actually inspired some of the ideas of the US constitution. I also think a place like Athens had relatively strong human rights, if we ignore their practice of slavery and treatment of women.
By the way, when I say non-capitalist society, I am thinking of a society where the majority of the population is not working for a wage, and where most of the land and business is not owned by a small group of people ('the 0.1 percent' in the US, the party leadership in China or USSR).
I used to own a decible meter. I brought it to a movie theater (large chain) and found sustained volume of 100+ decibels. It was physically painful. I was the only customer who complained to the theater. I asked what sound level they intended to set the movie to. They told me it's up to the projectionist, who sets the volume knob in the booth based on no measurement or preset.
There's a lot of real harm being done, and I would like to see at the very least some basic informative disclosure. And operators should be held responsible for creating dangerous conditions that are not disclosed or agreed to by customers. If people want to sustain hearing damage for a night of enjoyment, they should do so only willingly (and therefore knowingly).
I'm very keen to protect my own hearing, so I carry musician's earplugs (reduces volume without sounding muffled) and wear them often – not just at obviously loud places like concerts, but in common situations like loud restaurants.