Faucet Test

Can you hear your tinnitus over a running faucet? (like a modern kitchen faucet)
(If yes, please explain in more detail how you hear it, on what strength of stream and if it's constant or periodic phenomenon), thanks.

 

I can't usually, but if I really concentrate and when my T is playing up, I can just distinguish it over the tap, just my left ear, which is the ear where the T goes up and down all over the show!
Then it depends how hard I have got the tap on.
This example is with the cold tap turned on with just one three quarter turn.

 

Moderate running water from the faucet usually blocks my tinnitus--unless it's being extremely central and dog-whistle like. Of note, real water usually blocks my tinnitus, but water sounds generally blend in with my tinnitus. It's probably because not all the sounds are captured when they put them in audio files.

 

Depends on my T level. Typically in the mornings I can't, but later in the evening sometimes I can. However, I certainly don't try to listen to it!

 

In the mornings, mostly not. In the evenings i can hear it above the faucet

 

Now, a faucet drowns mine out. Shower, kitchen faucet or bathroom faucet... At onset, only the tub faucet would and I had to put my ear right next to it.

 

Nope i can hear mine over a tap, shower, drill, washing machine, motorbike, everything. No matter what time of the day. It's constant, loud, high pitch and mostly in my left ear.

 

Ok thanks, so how do you manage or cope with something like this?

 

It masks mine quite well. I would say a faucet a few feet away is 70db. On the other hand i can easily hear my T in a jet plane around 80db. Mine is reactive and i got this high pitched overtone to a lot of everyday sounds.

 

Natural water, shower and things are pretty much all that mask mine. As Jazz said above a recording of them doesn't seem to work quite as well. I can be out and sit by a river and be masked but an audio recording I make of it doesn't do the job so well back at home, though I'm not a good sound recordist so probably down to my equipment.

 

Dan
For the first year the only thing that could mask my T were my hearing aids with white noise generators (set at full blast); I could hear my T over everything all the time. However, the shower came closest to some kind of relief.

Mark

 

At first i thought i wouldn't. But after being at the lowest point in my life for around a month, i picked myself and decided it wouldn't beat me.
That was about six months ago. Since then i get longer and longer periods of time where i don't think about it. Which is habituation. Positive thinking, pillow speaker, time and ups and downs is how i've coped. I am having periods of 5/6 hours at a time where i'm not thinking about tinnitus. Which is great.

 

Ouch that even hurts from here

 

A faucet masks fairly well unless it's half on or less. Very comforting to turn one on in a bathroom or kitchen during days after T spiked upward a year ago.

Speaking of masking, I'm now recalling sitting by an open window last summer evenings as crickets provided the perfect sound for many hours. The perfect sound for my high-pitched 10 kHz hisssssss.

 

faucets and the shower will usually block mine but not all the time. If it's a screamer day, nothing in the natural world will block it short of an explosion! At night, I use a sound machine located on my bed, set to a rain setting, which works for me. I sleep OK.

 

Thought I would pop this in here , helps a bit ..sometimes.
http://rain.simplynoise.com/

 

Mine is generally masked by a faucet, even on pretty low. It's the right frequency, so covers it right up. When I aggravate my tinnitus, I get an additional higher pitched tone that oscillates a bit and can cut through just about everything; but if that sound is quiet, the faucet can usually do the trick.

I note the one poster above that noted that an airplane - though louder - doesn't mask as well. I think this makes sense, unless your tinnitus happened to be in the really low frequency range.

 

As I have written, my tinnitus is highly variable but I would say I am right in there with the rest. Depends on the intensity of my tinnitus but also how focused I am on it. For example I can take a shower and many times forget about my tinnitus...or if more focused on it, the shower head may not completely block it out. I will say, the hiss in my head isn't too far away from the sound signature of a shower head. Not too different.

Different things can block out my tinnitus. A shower, running tap water, riding my bike fast with wind rushing by my ears.
I many times forget about my tinnitus when heavily immersed in a project. My mind focus shifts away from it.

I spoke to a brain surgeon recently about my tinnitus. I made an appointment with him through my general doctor. I wanted to talk to the smartest guy in the room basically. Asian man. Brilliant of course. We talked for a long time. He seemed to believe that tinnitus for some is due to the way the brain is organized. In other words, certain type of people...the development of the brain tends to promote tinnitus versus not for the same hearing loss in some people. I tend to subscribe to this. I am a hyper focused guy...or can be. I can do math easily and do well at science...am fairly left brained, analytical, trend toward perfectionism, a hint of OCD maybe. Anxiety runs in my family.

If you listen to people on this forum, you may see some similarities in temperament and cognitive function. This is likely as big of reason why we suffer so with tinnitus compared to others that don't. The brain surgeon who has made a career studying the brain seems to think so. He told me based upon how his particular brain is organized, he doesn't handle adversity very well. He said many like him and he lumped me in, people like us, we may struggle more than lets say the guy at the back of line that was a C student who didn't really give a shit. That was his opinion and I believe there maybe some veracity to what he believes...somewhat supported by reading accounts on this forum. Doesn't give us much recourse other than to try to kick back a bit more, which isn't something that comes naturally.

 

I agree with everything you have said, what you just wrote is super clear and concise and I have had those same thoughts, the logic makes sense, it all adds up. However I think there are some other factors at play that maybe we and the doctors do not completely understand.

 

Well, I'm pretty similar to you (or was at least at the time I got T and then VS). Now I'm a lot more chill , since I managed to answer some decades-old life questions for myself.