Tinnitus After Watching TV on Headphones

Hey everyone,

Long time lurker here. Like a lot of you, I've spent more time than I should reading up on potential treatments and cures. Also like a lot of you, I've had a more emotional response to this than I probably should have.

I got the ringing back on the second Wednesday this January after watching a TV show on my headphones a little too loud. Immediately after the show ended - bam, I could hear ringing with my headphones off. This startled me instantly, and I took them off and it was still there. I've had pretty severe anxiety about the whole thing. I'm lucky though - even though it's blaring loud when I am getting into bed, I can still sleep as well as I did before I got it. That much is good. I've had it for 8 months, and while it might be classified as chronic, I know there's always a chance of my brain just losing the perception of it, as it's happened to others. Might be around for a while, might also not be. I can't predict the future unfortunately.

Some things to note:

- My T was bad in the beginning - I could hear it over traffic. It got better after a few months... but now it's gone back up there and fluctuates down and up.

- I've had about 2 days of pure silence since it started. Boy were those nice days. I can hear it over a lot of sounds if I look for it, but I generally don't notice it since I game a lot and it takes my focus from it.

- For some reason, when I slept in silence for a while, it would cut the noise down tremendously when I woke up, and on a scale of 1-10 it would even hit 0. That effect has gone away with time. It's almost as if my brain has adjusted to keep the noise alive. Great... It's probably because I'm not sleeping as long though. Gotta work on that.

- I read about tinnitus once when I heard that Lars Ulrich from Metallica had it. I also had no appreciation as to what he was going through since I hadn't experienced it.

- My dad has had tinnitus for 20+ years after he lost most of his hearing in one of his ears out of the blue. He never has complained about it, ever, and I didn't even know he had it until I was talking to him about mine when I got it. He was frank though - if he could go to bed in silence, he'd prefer that, and if research gives him that opportunity he'll take it. Other than that he can find no reason to think about it.

- My brother developed tinnitus a few weeks after I did, after he got hit right on the ear during a dodgeball game. His tinnitus has subsided to virtually gone 3 months after he developed it.

- My sister didn't know it but she had tinnitus for a couple months, and had loud ringing in her ears when she tried to sleep. Hers went away too.

I have hope that "good" researchers are trying to build legitimate treatments for this. However, based on most of the articles and research I have read, a lot of researchers just seem to be trying to pump out papers to get their name out, and tinnitus being a hot topic gives them that avenue. I hate that. Stop researching things that are showing horrible results such as rTMS. If you can even cut that noise down by 50% you'll have a lot of happier people.

Nice to meet you all.

- Paul

 

Hi Paul, welcome to the forums

Developing tinnitus after watching a show with headphones, thats seems like a really usual daily activity, ain't that bad luck ? lol

Mine is pretty similar to yours, i can sleep as i used to but it just takes sometimes a few minutes longer to go to sleep. I also noticed gaming on my playstation really helps on focusing on something else very quickly. Riding my BMX is also great or any sports

Your stories of family having it for a few months are encouraging, and by the way, i know some people who had it for 2 years and then it dissapeared by itself.

 

Yep! I didn't even think the volume felt that loud, and there was NO loud sounds throughout the show. Just conversation. It's crazy that it was even the root cause...

You might have even known what show it was - Maoyuu Maou Yuusha (I'm guessing you might based on the feeling you selected ). I didn't end up watching the rest of the series hahah.

 

Anime gives tinnitus ? lol that's not on the wikipedia page haha

and i don't know that show, i haven't watched any series for a long time, i'm more into anime movies now like the ones by mamoru hosoda, this guy is awesome!