Everyone Has Tinnitus

Yes it's true but most of them exert themselves to hear the phantom sound in quiet rooms, in contrast to sufferers who try to get away from quiet places. Also %80 of T persons have some degree of hearing loss..

 

this is actually true and an interesting analogy.
Our immune system DAILY disposes of cancerous cells but is sometimes fatally and pathologically overwhelmed.
It is the degree to which we have cancer that kills us.
Ditto tinnitus.

Naturally-occurring neural noise, whether you can tune into it or not, has precious little to do with pathological tinnitus and all its etiologies.

Natural tinnitus has NOTHING to do with the over-active auditory neurons being targetted for correction by Autifony for example.

Furthermore, no two pathological tinnitus expressions are created equal. Joe may hardly notice his whilst Mike may be loading his revolver. Having gone from years of manageable tinnitus to something quite different, I speak from experience.

And it's not just about silence vs volume. For many of us, it's also about quality of sound,
the aversive edgy feel of it, whether deep buzz or piercing high frequencies, because we are human.
Go watch a horror movie with the sound switched off and its not even half as atmospheric or scary.
Freddy Kruger's nails would have flopped in the silent movie era.

However well-intentioned, it's unhelpful nonsense to say everyone has tinnitus.
It's like walking into a cancer ward and telling the patients to chill because we all have cancerous cells.

And let's not dismiss the impact of this condition. Tinnitus at its worst has been a terminal condition.
It has also been terminal in terms of divorces, financial loss and severely affecting quality of life.
We talk about getting our lives back for that reason.

So, not everybody has tinnitus. Not everybody has catastrophic tinnitus. And not everybody gets it.

However, I am here to get hope that hope is out there. I like what scott kuz (mr.happy) wrote because getting better is all that matters to me. If someone says there's a way home then you've got my full attention.

 

Doctors say the darndest things.

 

It would be quite easy to test this BS scientifically and in a proper scientific manner, then all these doctors that say T is a normal psychological state can STFU! and stop mocking us

 

Everyone has tinnitus but it only becomes audible or recognisable when some thing or combination of things trigger it.

 

Your opinion or is there peer reviewed study's that suggest your statement?

 

My intuition Rich.

Its very difficult to say because having tinnitis may be defined by the frequency being below a certain level.

Everyone could have some degree of tinnitus but its frequency is so high that you cant' detect it even with the best equipment.

I'm no expert but that's what I'm guessing.

 

Sweet as, just needed to clarify that.
I strongly disagree that everyone has T to begin with but if everyone did then your statement here.... Everyone could have some degree of tinnitus but its frequency is so high that you cant' detect it even with the best equipment. is something that I would agree with!
Because lets face it, T wouldn't be an issue if we had it but it's frequency was so high that we weren't aware of it, It would cease to become a problem!

Rich

 

@Stina re my post above. My point was that their imagination most likely took over when asked to hear sounds that were not really there, as if in a hearing test. And the same study concludes that they heard the same sounds as tinnitus. But tinnitus covers the whole gamut of sounds. This study is flimsy at best. Until a better study comes along ... Everyone simply does not have tinnitus.

 

Ditto!

 

Doesnt the claim that tinnitis is caused by over active nuerons throw the theory that everyone has T out the window?..or are the nuerons just more active with supposed T sufferers than people that have T as a normal physiological condition?

 

That's the thing, there is no evidence at all that T is a normal physiological condition and the fact that most audiologists and medical doctors repeat this BS to T sufferers is irresponsible and darn right disrespectful, and is only rattled out by these so called experts because they haven't got much answers themselves!
Quite frankly if Autifony are successful in T treatment then that will bury this BS argument for good!

Rich

 

Rich,

I'm guessing it would be impossible to prove either way, unless of course they can scan your brain and see your nueron activity.

The nuerons must be active in non-tinnitus people as well. I think that's point they're trying to make and given that each person has varying degrees of nueron activity, at what point is someone classified as having tinnitus? Their conclusion, its a normal physiological condition.

That doesnt mean they should be complacent in finding a cure. This should be at the very top of the priority list.

 

I have heard that they are starting to see evidence of neural hyperactivity in t patients compared to non t patients on fmri. Do not have details about this yet.

 

Yes the nuerons would be active but not when in a resting state, thats the science behind what Autifony are doing.
If I may explain in layman's terms.
People with normal hearing, or no inner ear damage, have got the same nueron activity as T sufferers but the difference is there nueron activity in that part of the brain only fires when stimulated by sounds and when no outside sounds are present these nuerons are in a rested state, (no random firing),which is a healthy or proper way for them to behave!.
In T sufferers some nuerons that fire from outside sound are firing randomly all the time there is no resting state, hence Tinnitus!

Someone knows when they have Tinnitus, I knew as I remember being able to enjoy silence before this started!

Rich

 

In my opinion definitely not everyone has tinnitus because I remember myself hearing nothing at all before T onset. But recently I did a small investigation in my social circle and asked people if they hear something in a quiet room when every sound is switched off. It turned out that not only my wife has tinnitus, but also my sister, my mother, my father in law, mother in law, my friend, couple of friends of my wife they all say they never hear pure silence, they always hear some sound. Obviously majority of people I mentioned here have it mild and they don't really care about it but the fact is that indeed many people do have mild tinnitus, but they don't consider themselves sufferers. For me instead even though my T is mild it is an issue, especially because I remember pure silence and I miss it, I have problems with concentration, having fun and with well being. Other people with mild T who always had it and never experienced pure silence don't suffer since they don't percieve it as a loss.

It's like a loss of family member: for someone who never had a child he/she does not really suffer from not having it, while for someone who had a child and lost it this may become an unbearable suffering. Condition in both cases is the same - no kids. But the fact of loss may cause years if not lifetime of suffering.

 

Yes. Same experience. Before my NIHL I did not have tinnitus at all.
I remember complete silence in a quit room using earplugs in this quit room. Eerily quit it was.

 

When I go to an extremely quiet room, I can perceive a humming sound that is distinct from the other tinnitus. I do not hear this humming in other environments. The other tinnitus sounds (plural) are there also, but I can tell them apart from this "anechoic chamber" sound.

I consider my own tinnitus to be mild also, but I would agree that it is not simply the Heller & Bergman effect acting in normal environments, or the mind simply forgetting how to ignore something that is "always there".

 

So are you suggesting that the 1953 study and others like it are separate from tinnitus caused by hearing loss?

SNHL and being in a silent chamber both deprive the AN of input which can cause higher brain functions to compensate.