“What Is Silence?”

I learned today that some people are baffled by the concept of silence and think there is no such thing.

I had a strange conversation with my partner today, who has had tinnitus for over 20 years, since he was 18, as a result of listening loud music through headphones. Or at least that’s what he always told me. I’ve had it for a year and a bit.

I was describing the experience of the lady- @Clare B - who has kindly come to the board to tell us of her experience with the Neuromod device - she says that she has silence again. My partner said - well she can’t have silence, what is silence? There is no such thing as actual silence, everyone is going to hear at least some noise in their head when it’s quiet. And I had to explain that in the 36 years before I got tinnitus I could hear absolutely no noise in a quiet room. Turns out that even before he “got tinnitus” he could always hear some noise in quiet surroundings, for as long as he can remember… Which I would describe as having tinnitus since childhood.

Makes me wonder if everyone has a different definition of silence and if more people have very mild tinnitus than we think, because they don’t realise they have it because they think it’s normal because they’ve always had it.

I’m aware of some study that says that a high proportion of people can hear something in an absolutely soundproof room, but I always imagined that to be a very artificial situation and the sound people hear to be extremely faint.

 

Silence is silence. No noise. I used to have this sleeping in silicone plugs in the dead of night. Now I have screeching non stop and I’m acutely aware it’s not normal and I still absolutely remember silence. Your partner is fortunate in that you cannot miss what you never had. But he’s not normal. None of this is. It’s all fucked.

 

@Bam Both my ears were just as silent as the grave before I got this. The title of the thread is a quotation of what my partner said that made me curious.

 

Let me get this straight... a trial patient from Neuromod has posted here and has had good results?????

 

@Clare B was the person cured, she posted here: https://www.tinnitustalk.com/posts/399243/
(She responds to questions from that point forward in the following posts and pages)

 

Excellent. I emailed them last week enquiring when it will be available... got a response saying they are working as hard as they can and suggested to sign up for their newsletter.

 

Yes, she has been good enough to answer many questions.

 

I hope they report that bigger trial they did and it has a placebo control. I don't think there is a requirement to report a significant clinical trial before a device is released onto the market in the EU however.

 

In summary... All good feedback?

 

Yes, have a look at the thread - @annV posted a link. Lady seems to have had tinnitus for about 1.5 years then it went away during the course of her treatment with the device.

 

I think the parents of the people who say things like that had likely taken them to loud concerts as children (or had damaged their ears in other ways). As a result, they grew up with mild tinnitus, and don't know that it is normal to not hear anything in a quiet room.

 

Yeah. I get a day here and there when I seem well and it really builds your confidence back. But my sleep cycle seems to bring back low pitched static usually. I try hearing aids and various pills but nothing works very long. I used to have high pitched and screeching like you so I know how bad that can be. Frustrating to say the least.

 

Neuromod - when will it be available in America? Maybe a long time, especially if it does work.

 

I am hoping that we might be able to buy it online, or travel to Ireland and buy it...

 

No, my partner was not taken to loud concerts, nor did he have any ear infections as a child. That's why I started wondering if some people really were just born with it. He had some surgery as a toddler, who knows, I guess it could be anything. But I might start asking normal people who don't think they have tinnitus if they hear any noise in silence.

 

He might have been allowed to play with fireworks (or was around an older child who got to do that). Someone might have discharged a firearm when he was close by. All sorts of incidents might seem minor at the time, but might also result in an injury that lasts a lifetime.

 

I also always had tinnitus. In fact I didn't realize until my early twenties that not everyone is hearing this noise. I distinctly remember sitting in my childhood room as a middle schooler, reading, listening to the usual hammering hum, and enjoying the silence - for me, silence WAS the sound of tinnitus.

To the best of my (and my parents') knowledge, I wasn't exposed to any concert, explosion, accident etc that could have caused this. My only guess is that I was given a dose of erythromycin as a baby and apparently had an allergic reaction to it (so to this day, it is stated in all my medical forms that I can't take *mycins), and maybe that caused some damage. But my hearing is OK (except for a 25dB loss at 4kHz, everything is fine + I can hear up to 16.5kHz which is perfectly normal for a 30-year-old), and I don't have hidden hearing loss either (did all the online tests I could get my hands on), so the damage couldn't have been bad.

Probably some people are just born with it in some quirk of brain development. People can be born blind or deaf, why not with builtin tinnitus?

 

Excellent. For once in my life Ireland is on my doorstep.

Normally everything I need is thousands of effing miles away.