A Constant

I am new to this site. Been reading some of the posts. Nothing I see matches what I'm dealin with, or maybe I just don't understand some of the verbage. I have had tinnitus since 1997. My hearing is continually getting worse. I tried hearing aids (got tested and they let me take them for a stroll). The hearing aids did make a difference in my ability to hear, but 1. They're expensive as heck and 2. Well, they're expensive as heck.

I know that there is no cure, but is there anything out there that can maybe help dial the noise back.

For the first time in my life, after all this time of being able to deal with it, I find myself having difficulty sleeping, actually hearing what people are saying to me over the noise. Any thoughts?

 

In your "Cause of Tinnitus", you list "Continued effects of HF communication, white noise. Military" - is that self diagnosed? Because as far as I know there is no credible information proving causality between HF communication and tinnitus (by HF you mean high frequency right?). Similarly White Noise in itself doesn't cause tinnitus, but if you listen to it loudly and/or for a long time, it is plausible it could act like an acoustic trauma, and then you say Military, but does that mean acoustic trauma?
Do you have an audiogram? Did you do any tests? (Rinne/fork/etc)

 

I was a Naval Communicator for 20 years. One tour, the one where my tinnitus began, I was responsible for an HF voice circuit called Safety of Flight. It was exactly as it sounds. The planes checkled in with us regularly, on the HF circuit. Sometimes the atmospherics affected the circuit badly enough that the pilots would have to literally scream over the circuit. I would have the handset to my ear, regardless of the noise to hear them. This was required. You say there is no direct connection between HF and hearing loss/tinnitus. I'm here to tell you there is. I am living proof.

 

I don't think what @GregCA is saying is that your high frequency exposure caused your tinnitus, rather the loudness of what you were listening to caused your tinnitus. You can listen to high frequency at 50db all day and not have any issues, but if you need to turn it up to 90+db to hear the pilots, you've only got a solid 4 (or less) hours until it could start causing damage.

 

The thing is it's not likely to be the HF nature of the circuit that caused your tinnitus. It's that the sound you listened through it was loud (for all the reasons you mention). In other words, do you think you would have had tinnitus through the HF circuit, if all the sounds you heard through them were "talking voice" loud, i.e. the same as what a person having a conversation with you next to you would have? I doubt it.
I suspect there is correlation but no causation.

That being said, it doesn't matter too much to the extent that you seem to be suffering from a strained and damaged hearing apparatus (much like after an acoustic trauma, even if yours may have built up during a longer period of time).

Do you have an audiogram?

Exactly. Thanks for clarifying.