EternalRinging

Hey Andrew, unfortunately I felt like I didn’t had escape when reactive tinnitus was constant. Going to a quieter place or exposing myself to non reactive frequencies was my solution.

However, I feel that exposing myself to too much silence might be a factor that can actually contribute to exacerbating the reactivity when I introduce myself again to those harsh frequencies, so finding a balance is important

hi, sorry for bothering you. I have catastrophic reactive tinnitus.. And over the last 8 months there has been a constant worsening.. I sit at home, I don’t go out because street noises raise the loud sound of tinnitus in my head. Everything became much worse after the work of a cranial sarcal therapist, the ringing went from the ears to the head. How are you feeling?

I get the want to do it, and also the concern.
If I felt the absolute need to get it done now I would do two things - first use ear drops for at least a week to really soften the wax.
Second, as @DimLeb says, ask for manual ear wax removal.
The machines are loud and dangerous to anyone with sensitive ears or auditory systems

I read it being told on here time and time again that headphones should not be used even on a low volume - if thats the case I can't understand why a loud microsuction gun inside the ear canal is considered safe!

Thanks for the advice @DeanD!

If they offer me microsuction, I will avoid it at all costs. Not worth the risk.

I can tolerate over the ear headphones, but no way that headphones can be compared with a loud microsuction gun inside the ears.

It took me about 16 months to get in the place where I’m currently at, with multiple setbacks along the road, but the latest few months have being more consistent.

If by distortions you mean beeping, humming or any other similar sounds then yeah, I also used to heard those over the fan. It either alternated between a reactive “eeee”, Morse code beeping and even a light saber at some point.

YEAH!!

Damn that's loud for a bar!! - I have been to a couple, even a nightclub (prob a bad idea) but nothing went past 90db!

Yeah man, they had a huge speaker on a relatively small space blasting at full volume, super unnecessary. It felt loud even with hearing protection, but we left to another bar after 15 minutes.

Not worth the risk, there’s a world of difference with 90 dB vs 105 dB

@ErikaS I don’t take anything since I generally sleep okay, but if I want to make sure to aim between 7-8 hours of sleep, I take about 15 mg of melatonin. It doesn’t help in the sense that makes the ringing perception lower, but being better rested implies lower reactivity and lower baseline as well.

@WCJohn yes, but generally when that happens, I wake up feeling tired and by consequence, the majority of the times it feels louder.

But if by toxic nap, you mean a nap where you got a short nightmare, then you might wake up feeling more stress, which makes things worser.

@WCJohn
If I do it briefly dose off my ear will start hissing. It is the craziest thing. I haven't taken a nap in years because of this.

Good luck!

I hope that you get your certification soon!

Thanks! I will be letting you know

And it indeed sucks a lot, and for persons that have OCD like me, I don’t really have the physiological strength to endure this shitty condition too much

Turns out the manager told me that he developed another condition that caused him partial vision loss at the beginning of his career, so he was very understanding with tinnitus.

At least I get a sense of relief that I may not be biased

Dang.

I see, if that is the case, then you can have higher hopes with that Susan Shore device. Mine doesn’t change with any of that so I lost faith on that device lol

Oh sorry to hear about your hearing loss! If the hearing loss is recent, definitely try steroid ASAP, since the steroid treatment is really helpful with early stages.

Thanks - every story I read is a bad one regarding steroids and Tinnitus. My hearing comes and goes. At night I can barley hear anything out my right ear.

Loud as fuck.

Whoo hoo!

Much love to all of you, and I’m sure you will all get the silence you all deserve some day. While I don’t consider myself a complete success story yet because my condition still fluctuates, I promise to keep you updated. Holding onto a glimmer of hope is what keeps us moving forward.

Way to go! Thank you so much for the encouragement!!

That’s good to hear then. Keep us posted.

Cheers, man.

Yea I'm 20 and I don't want to have to live like this. It's completely screwing me over too because I need to go for an internship by next summer and Idk how I'm supposed to function at an interview like this.

I'm hoping my ENT can provide some answers but I'm kinda doubting it. It feels better now (somehow after 2 flights) but I can still hear it during the day.

The thing that drives me crazy is that it doesn't increase significantly in volume with background noise, it just seems to increase in step with background noise to maintain the same volume, which in a way is actually more irritating than reactivity because it doesn't feel like reactivity.

The reason why I'm kicking myself is cause I knew about tinnitus, I've had some very mild tinnitus for a while now, ever since my ear problems started kicking in around Middle School. It's just that this recent irrigation has thrown it totally out of wack. I'm hoping this is just an extended spike and it will taper down.

@Mo8409 Yup, there’s extended hearing tests. However, almost nobody perform those kinds of tests because there’s not too much benefit over it apart from knowing you have some damage.

@EternalRinging Yeah, I just sent a message to my audiologist for one and she says I'm not a candidate since I passed the 1st one with flying colors and I typically have it in 1 ear....which some days it seems to be both. She says I don't have the symptoms for any toxicity of the ear. Hope she's right.

@Mo8409 I just looked up ototoxicity symptoms and tinnitus is one of them.

I miss being social like that too.......... :(

@Strawberryblonde as Joshua mentioned, perhaps maybe one day :(

I refuse to believe that such intrusive beast may last forever.

There needs to be an improvement at some point which should allow us to live a more normal life.

My father and brother have had it for 30 plus years and I never knew until I got it. They go to concerts and live a regular life. So I wanted to let you guys know it's possible.

Dang.

It’s very easy to be caught up in things we can’t or shouldn’t do now. But in the grand scheme of things, not being able to use AirPods isn’t a big deal. At the moment I’m struggling with the fact I can’t go and watch Guardians of the galaxy 3. I’m hoping this settles in the near future

I saw some of your posts and noticed that when you first got tinnitus, it eventually got quieter.

So that’s a good sign, meaning it can get quieter again. I’ll be hoping for the best for you!

I had mine for 11 months, with some days better than others and I was getting fleeting silence until I got the flu about a month ago. Learned my lesson on not to consume ototoxic drugs since that spikes it for me tremendously.

In my office I notice the T minor than in my flat too

That’s good, at least we’re able to get partial distraction in office :)

I wish I could have known sooner that the office wasn’t as bad as I thought lol

What happened, that it didn't work?

My reactive tinnitus used to be only unilateral at the beginning, so I tried plugging my bad ear but it always sounded worser when exposed to sounds that trigger the reactivity, despite being plugged.

My tinnitus may react up to a certain level of noise (lets say up to ~75 db, but it depends on the frequency and if I’m having a good or bad day) and then sounds louder than that may mask it.

Probably a sound generator with a certain non reactive frequency might be a better solution for me, if I notice that my reactivity dominates me in office. Downside is that I found out that insurance doesn’t cover it, so may have to spend $4K.

might be something that happens till it goes away completely. Congestion can stay even when the flu has cleared

Makes sense, when I got COVID a while back my tinnitus stayed flared up for a few weeks even after COVID “went away” till it returned to baseline. I hope this time it’s no different and my reactivity/volume can calm down.

If it went away before it'll go away again. Chin up

I have this too. Crowd noise draws out the reactivity most of time.

Yeah it’s non sense. I wouldn’t even be here if I had non-reactive single tone tinnitus under 30 db. I think it might be likely that the reactivity issue gets activated with a range of specific frequencies such as crowd noises.

Yeah I think you’re on to something. I feel the same way