I'm Sorry, Everyone. I'm Not Weak and This Isn't Suicide, There Was No Other Way to Hear Silence.

You mean like Lord of the Flies?

 

Winner gets the cure. That’s gonna be a fucking dirty fight.

 

My bet is that @fishbone will be the last one standing. He has been preparing for an event like that for a long time.

 

I'm off to the gym to hit the weights

Ding, Ding!!!!

 

Tinnitus is a progressive condition. It can only get worse. There's your answer. Whichever path you choose you will get fucked anyway. Choose to be a hermit and live the rest of your life lonely with a barely increasing tinnitus till your dead. Be stupid and non caring about it you will be suicidal within a year.

The key is balance I guess. Live a decent life, but let it get worse progressively over a few decades.

That's not to account for random sudden loud noises though. Or a cure.

 

Does the published literature support that this condition gets worse over time on average? Not from what I recall. I will have another review of it.

 

Everyone's damage and threshold to more damage is different it's always going to be difficult to know something like this. One person can be fine for 20 years with no change. Another can be feeling basically dead because of one brief acoustic trauma.

I never got to abuse my ears for 40 years. I got a temporary threshold shift and T from a music festival at 18, worsen extremely by awaking to a woodsaw outside my window/slamming of a window like 5 years later that continued a cycle worsening T/H.

 

Hey Jemina,

I have not been on this site for a couple of years. The people on here helped me get my shit together.
I have pulsatile T in one ear and High frequency in another ear.
I had a breakdown, depression, lost my fiance and friends 2 years ago when Tinitus joined the party.
You will get through this, I go movies, got a job, hit the gym and got my life back. You will adjust and am on no meds now. I have a fan on at night, tv is louder and listen through headphones to mask. I wish you well and pray for you.

 

I use to have barely noticeable hiss/static tv noise and it was very very low. Due to the years/decades of loud noises and situations, it got much much worst. The two things, that made my tinnitus the demon it is today (Loud sounds/and meds).

After periods of bar hopping and concerts and night clubs, I noticed that It got worst and worst. There has to be some reason for the tinnitus to get worst (most of the time). I haven't had martial arts in almost 2 weeks due to the holidays and my ears feel better.

Anything can trigger the tinnitus and causes spikes. That's why some folks could possibly journal their routines to see what helps them and what can possibly trigger a spike....

 

If T/H/etc are destined to only ever get worse no matter what, as you claim, then how is it that everyone who get it don't necessarily get worse? If about 20% of people get tinnitus at least once in their lifetimes, wouldn't it be an unparalleled public health crisis, loaded with about a billion-plus people on the planet right now whose condition will get worse and become suicidal?

 

Ok the age of tinnitus onset is a huge factor here but I'll discuss that later. I'm out at the moment. Think of it logically. You have tinnitus due to loss of hair cells. The more hair cells you lose the louder your tinnitus gets. Over time it is inevitable to lose more hair cells. Time=increased tinnitus in theory.

 

@fishbone will be top 3 along with probably @AZeurotuner and @Bill Bauer. Bill sounds like he'll be annoying to fight honestly. Fishbone is a gentleman but resilient.

 

What about @Jazzer? I hear he's been taking daily relaxing baths for a while now. Has he been preparing all along?

 

I've run Ultras, I'll take all of you nerds!

 

Let the ‘silence games’ begin!

 

Hey can I join and brag about how I used to be an muay thai fighter but then took an arrow to the...err..ear?

 

Whoever makes the most noise would likely win. Just steal everyone’s ear protection, scream a few times, and watch everyone flee into the ocean.

 

My money is on glynis. She's a tough cookie.

 

And graceful as well. A nice combination. She may just charm all the others into defenselessness.

 

This simply is not true. I know many people whose Tinnitus got better over the years. No worsening. And these are the people who are not in this forum. They just get on with life. And don't obsess over every noise exposure. I don't want to sound rude. I understand obsessing over these things. I'm no different. I just want to clarify that not caring about mild Tinnitus and continue with life including noisy events etc does NOT mean your Tinnitus will get worse.

 

Yes, it just means that the Probability that it will get worse will be higher.

 

No. It is my deepest belief that if you would just keep on living without all your analytic thinking of sounds and volume your Tinnitus would be much better. Beside the physical component this is mainly a brain thing. And the brain loves focus.

 

How can you not focus on disco loud tinnitus?

 

I agree - the more you are afraid of it, the louder the T. However, personally, when I am in a safe environment where it is unlikely that I will be exposed to noise, it is easy to not focus on T. If I were at a loud restaurant, etc., all I would be thinking about is that I am about to pay for these couple of hours with years of my life spent in Agony. I would be thinking that I am getting a very Low Compensation for making my body uninhabitable. Of course, not everyone who plays with fire gets burned, but of course the more you play the fire, the higher is the chance that it will catch up to you. The risk is real, just ask the people whom I quoted in my post below
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/learn-from-others-mistakes.29437/

I've had plenty of spikes, and most of them were clearly not due to stress (or due to the "extra focus"). When I got exposed to something like a slamming door or a loud phone, I would completely disregard it. After all, it is just a loud phone - no way it could harm me - or so I thought. I would be completely calm, and then the spike would come as a surprise.

In any case, the bottom line is to create an environment for yourself where you can relax and forget about T (to the extent that it will let you). Pretending that dangerous environment is safe is insane and (if you are rational and are informed) will and ought to result in the most stress of all.

 

Not wearing a seatbelt does not mean you will die in a car accident.
Not wearing a condom does not mean you will get an std.
Not using a reserve chute during a jump does not mean you will die.
Crossing the road without looking does not mean you will die.

Want me to go on?

 

It's not linear. More hair cells lost does not equal a proportionally greater tinnitus. If that's how it worked, then due to age-related hearing loss there would be precise descriptions in medical literature of how loud the inevitable tinnitus of a 60-year person is supposed to sound and how louder it gets year-on-year. There wouldn't be many stories of tinnitus spontaneously going away, and this forum would have millions of members all with steadily and unstoppably worsening tinnitus, instead of a few hundred sufferers who often leave after a few months and never come back. The fines for breaking noise ordinances would be as stiff

Of course there IS a relationship but it's definitely not a simple linear thing. So tinnitus worsening is NOT inevitable at all.

Plus we don't actually have to outrun entropy until our deathbed - we only need to keep T manageable until viable treatments appear, and that can happen as soon as this month. The end is near, and in a good sense.

 

Ah entropy. The literal bane of existence. Damn laws of physics. Screws us all.

 

Seriously, screw entropy.

Although it should be possible to eliminate it from our lives. Not universally, of course; but LOCAL entropy can definitely be reversed at the cost of increasing entropy elsewhere. And we have this big-ass blob of helium increasing its entropy and blasting us with free energy all day long! If only we learned to properly harness it before we go extinct.

 

What potential treatments are possibly coming this month? Just curious. I'm in a bad spot and recently posted about it but I've perused the forums a bunch before this and always see people talking about the next breakthrough coming soon, and it's always just been disappointment.

If I knew real treatment for H (T too but especially H) were coming in the near future my suicidalness would drop quite a bit.