Fixed My Tinnitus

I’ve suffered from bad hearing at high frequencies for around 10 years now, due to listening to loud music.

Last week however I suddenly developed tinnitus. It seemed to just appear out of nowhere, and has been driving me crazy for over a week now.

I tried several apps on the iPhone, some which play white noise, and some which analyse the tinnitus to finds it’s frequency and then play some music, either with the tinnitus frequency removed, or with the frequencies surrounding the tinnitus frequencies amplified, to try and blend the tinnitus into the music and make it less noticeable.

None of the above worked, but then I tried an app which let’s you choose various sounds to try and mask and relieve the tinnitus.

Eventually I found that a high pitched birds singing track really helped, so I decided to try and listen to it until the tinnitus dissapeared, then stop it, and see how long until the tinnitus came back. After a few tries I noticed that the length of time with no tinnitus started to increase every time I stared and stopped the track (particularly if I started the track again just before, or immediately upon hearing the tinnitus starting to reappear. Also, the harder I listened to the tinnitus the more it started to fade in and out.

It’s practically gone now after only a few hours of doing this!

I’ve also worked out what caused the tinnitus in the first place I think. The day it appeared followed on from me Falling asleep in my computer room for 12 hours. So i’m Guessing the constant drone of the gpu fan must have caused it....maybe because it was missing the high frequencies, which may have made my brain eventually start adding them in itself (as the frequency of my tinnitus did seem to be the same pitch, just at a higher frequency). I knew the brain adds implied bass frequencies to music on bad speakers, but didn’t realise it also added implied treble.

I guess in my case the brain thought it was weird to get a constant noise with no high frequencies for 12 hours, so started boosting or creating high frequencies, and the solution was to artificially boost the same frequency as my tinnitus to get the brain to stop over compensating?

Another possibility is that I recently quit being a heavy vaper. Perhaps my ears had been so blocked up with vegetable glycerin that the high frequencies had struggled to get through, and my brain had been amplifying for that reason. Then once quitting i was more prone to tinnitus whilst my brain adjusted...

 

This is great news! Love hearing other success stories. Which app helped you most?

 

Good news, make sure you learn from this and never forget how delicate your ears are. Teach friends and loved ones about Tinnitus no matter how crazy you sound. One slip up can cost you so dont use headphones ever again and be super cautious of loud sounds.

 

Could it be possible that working in room and sleeping in the same room with an air purifier running continuously could have caused my tinnitus?

Basically in there 16 hours a day with it

 

Do you still suffer from the hearing loss? I am asking this because you said you had no tinnitus but is it possible that you have a foggy feeling when you are in silence? Foggy like the sound of waves in your head or something like that ,that prevents you from hearing frequencies? I have no obvious hearing loss but sometimes my high pitched tone along with cricktes and white noise(I hear a lot of sounds) go away and then suddenly I hear and feel this fogginess in my head that does not let me hear silence..... Does this make any sense to you?

 

Thanks . Oticon Tinnitus sound was the one I used. The bird sounds helped the most.

 

I’ll bet it could have. Try recording it and then subtracting it from white noise to leave the opposite sound. Listen to that and see if it improves.

 

I can't imagine how this could possibly happen.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_fundamental

 

makes sense, but I don’t think I ever had that. I do still have bad hearing in the high frequencies. The hearing of an 80 year old according to one app (i’m 40). That’s only the high frequencies though, midrange and low frequencies are above average.