Air Conditioner? Drives My Tinnitus Wild

Our air conditioner always makes my tinnitus louder. Like the window kind.

I don't want to google noise induced tinnitus it will probably freak me out.

Does this happen with anyone else?

 

Louder for a day or louder while the AC unit is running?

 

If you have some high frequency hearing loss and resulting T - any unnatural increase in low frequency noise - AC, fans, etc.. can trick the brain into thinking that there is more high frequency loss than there actually is.

I noticed that as well

The solution is to play some very high frequncy sound out of your smartphone - the myNoise app is good for that plenty of high quality HF sounds available

 

Yes I have the same thing and it's very annoying. I am not sure if playing more high frequency sound is the solution though, if you already have high frequency hearing loss.

 

Noise-induced T is the T you get after years of exposing your ears to noise like the noise at a club. Acoustic trauma is a one time loud noise that causes T. I am sure that you can't get noise-induced T after a night of sleeping near an air conditioner. It might happen after decades of being exposed to noise that is not really loud.

 

my T came from an ear infection.

 

just while it is running

 

A definite yes! Always. And it's not loud at all. My tinnitus just starts slowly ramping up.

 

Now that we have T, our ears have been compromised. I believe exposure to loud noises (that would be tolerated by people with healthy ears) could cause a permanent spike, even for someone with a different original T cause.

 

Mine does similarly spike temporarily louder to a lot of noises -- everything from water to if I raise my voice to call for my kids. It's annoying but I try to ignore it.

 

So how do you escape this madness? My T always gets louder with external sound making it impossible to mask at night. Dont know what to do.