Exercise's Effect on Residual Inhibition & Tinnitus?

Hello,

I have a weird kind of residual inhibition and wondering if anyone else has something similar.

I have found that when I go for a walk and listen to a podcast at the same time, my tinnitus will fade into the background and sometimes disappear. My tinnitus is intermittent and tends to be either ON for the day or OFF for the day. But if I am having an ON day and do the above, the tinnitus can stop, at least for the duration of the walk. And sometimes it can stop for the rest of the day. For example yesterday I went on a long walk (about 15km) listening to a podcast for about 2 hours (about half the walk). I started about midday and I had tinnitus until then. But during the walk and then for the rest of the day, I had no tinnitus.

I wonder if this is residual inhibition or something else? According to this article:

"The duration of RI varies considerably among individuals, ranging from several seconds to hours, scaling logarithmically with the duration of the preceding masking sound (Hazell and Wood, 1981; Terry et al., 1983). The majority of patients, however, experience tinnitus suppression for only 5–30 s (Roberts, 2007; Roberts et al., 2008). The magnitude of tinnitus reduction and duration of RI, largely depend on the intensity, duration, and spectrum of the sound used to induce RI."

If I am experiencing residual inhibition, my duration must be off the charts as it can last over 12 hours. If I listen to the TV or the radio for 2 hours I get no such affect, so it seems to be linked to exercise. I also used to get a similar effect from showers, but nowadays this doesn't work so well. I'm not sure if this is because my tinnitus has changed or it's because my shower has changed (now it has a hollow floor, so the sounds are quite a bit different than my earlier shower and lower pitched). The other theory I had was this is a form of bimodal stimulation as when you are walking, your body is experiencing all kinds of electrical stimulation.

Anyway, I would be interested to know if anyone else has a similar experience (especially those that have reported inhibition via showers (e.g. @Golly).

 

I remember @Ed209 posted a video about this producer Rick Beato who has a similar kind of tinnitus. It doesn't follow a pattern, except that he found that the day after he had done some intensive mixing it was usually totally silent.
I'm not sure if that's the intermittent phase before it becomes chronic, but I recall he found his pretty loud when it's active. These things baffle me, as mine is so constant. Maybe it's synapse or brain inflammation vs OHC damage?

As for the exercise, yesterday I went for a run and whilst my tinnitus bothered me during the warm-up, I did two sets of intervals and when I came home I could enjoy an hour of unintrusive tinnitus. It was still there and I could still hear it loud and clear. Just some endorphin thing I guess.

 

Hi All;

It has been some time since I posted here, but I still check in once and a while. My tinnitus is largely unchanged and continues to be cyclical and sleep-related. During a typical week I experience a few bad days, a few mild days, and a few days with no head noise at all. For several years I was often able to eliminate my tinnitus completely in the shower. The trick, I think, was to mask the noise completely with the running water. After about five minutes of this the tinnitus would be gone, often for the rest of the day. I suspect this effect is true residual inhibition. I seldom attempt this procedure anymore, although maybe I should. My tinnitus still bothers me on the bad days, but I don't feel the need to eliminate it the way I used to. If I go five or six days without a break, I take Clonazepam before bed and I always wake up noise free. I am happy to provide more details in this thread or via private message. I wish you all a Happy and Quiet New Year!

-G

 

What was the cause of your tinnitus? I tried to go back on your posts but did not see anything.

 

I suspect the cause was a viral infection. I can't be certain of course, but I had a severe sinus and throat condition around the time the tinnitus set in.