Musician Suffering from Tinnitus, Severe Allergies and Fairly Significant Hearing Loss

I just joined because, although I've had mild tinnitus for years, it's never been much of an issue. But this spring it got considerably worse in the spring. I have a lot of pretty severe allergies, both indoor (dust, mold, etc.) and outdoor (all kinds of pollens, etc.) My left ear has a high pitched ringing, It also crackles occasionally. I wonder if it is partially blocked.

I'm trying new hearing aids as well - my latest test showed a fairly significant loss, I don't know if that contributed to the tinnitus, but it seemed rather sudden this spring. I'm trying Oticon and will also try Widex. My goal as a musician is to get the best quality realistic sound playing music with other people. I play piano - and just turn them off. But in an ensemble, I can't hear the other players very well and what they say.

I've never tried the tinnitus blocking function in my hearing aids. I wonder how it can help. I can't imagine another sound in my ear when I want to hear everything else, including bird song. (I'm also a bird photographer.)

I look forward to meeting some of you and discussing options. This looks like a great forum.

 

Hi there, these are my two cents:

- My father got hearing aids due to conductive hearing loss, and using hearing aids gave him tinnitus. He was using hearing aids only briefly, and now he seldom uses them, only very rarely to watch TV. So hearing aids are tricky; these devices may help some patients but not all of them...

- To be able to distinguish sound in noise or a certain sound or voice when there are competing and overlapping sounds, it is key to hear well in the medium and high frequencies. These frequencies are important to understand speech in noise and to tell some sounds from other sounds. I am not sure if a hearing aid can really help with this; it probably depends on the kind of hearing loss (conductive or sensorineural), and your specific audiogram.

 

Thank you for your reply. I know programming hearing aids for music is tricky - they are not meant to handle that kind of sound. But technology is improving. It's worth a try.

I've never heard of hearing aids CAUSING tinnitus! That's a scary idea. Does it go away for your father when he isn't wearing them?

 

I think it gets better, and that's why he stopped using hearing aids.