Is My Tinnitus Gone? Definitely Not. Does It Bother Me When Wearing Hearing Aids? Definitely Not.

I owe it to you guys to make this post. Never, EVER thought I'd make a Success Stories post here in the beginning. Back then, nothing but total cessation of tinnitus would be a success for me.

Background, either the Pfizer COVID-19 shot or TMJ caused my tinnitus. My primary doctor thinks the vaccine, my ENT thinks TMJ. Specifically around the time my tinnitus started I can remember trying to yawn really wide to pop my ears that I thought were plugged, when it was really just undiagnosed TMJ referred symptoms, and I felt a pop by my ear and it hurt really bad for about 20 seconds. Later that day I realized I had a loud ringing in my left ear that wasn't going away, and as I'm sure you all can relate to, it was TERRIFYING.

No matter the cause, I had to deal with it. 7 months went by and I was a nervous wreck, treating TMJ was successful for my jaw and ear pain but useless to stop tinnitus. I read about hearing aids and figured I'd give those a try, even though my hearing had tested perfect 3 times since getting tinnitus.

I go to an audiologist and get these $4300 hearing aids (Widex Moment), and from the first week it was basically the closest thing to a miracle I've ever experienced. Suddenly I'm not monitoring my tinnitus every 5 seconds or 5 minutes, but hours would pass without me thinking about it. I've had them for about 9 months and they're the best thing I've ever done. It boosts background sound by about 10%, and the 'comfort' setting I use softens the sound I hear which provides a nice white noise type effect. What it does is provide enough extra background noise for the tinnitus to wash away in the sound.

So I wear these every day, NOT at night since they're not designed for that, though they do make nighttime hearing aids for tinnitus masking as well. Every night when I take them off it's like, oh there's the tinnitus that I forgot I had all day. I sleep with a fan and the Relief sound app which has water and white noise that I custom built into what works best for me. I am not trying to sell anything, just giving concrete examples of what works for me. So every night when I lay my head on the pillow, since I'm a side sleeper, I hear it and it's unbelievably loud, but it's just like 'oh there it is', and I'm able to drift away in my thoughts, which has the desired effect of not hearing my tinnitus.

Sometimes when I wake up to go to the bathroom at night, I don't even hear my tinnitus - it's always there yes, but it's not taking my attention anymore. If I listen, it's there (14 kHz in both ears since it originally migrated from my left ear, and another sound I got in my right ear that also migrated with is a flutter type wah wah wah sound). But I'm able to pivot my brain off it now which was impossible before heating aids. I'm guessing some people are able to do this without technology but I was not, and I'm someone that likes solving problems so I threw everything at it I could. And now I literally forget I have it.

Another thing that greatly helped me was staying away from tinnitus websites once I got the hearing aids - the technology provided enough for my brain to stop getting consumed by it, and by not thinking about it through external means I found a positive effect.

So I finally get my success story after initially refreshing the page 20 times a day frantically looking for what helped others. My tinnitus is still with me and likely always will be, but that's ok. It's not even in the top 10 problems in my life anymore.

Good luck everyone, thanks to this forum for giving me tons of things to try and being there for emotional support and letting me know I wasn't alone. It's time I leave you all and get on with my life, take care.

 

Thank you for sharing your story.

How significant is your hearing loss?

 

That’s amazing! I’ve been reading about Widex Moment and Zen hearing aids from others as well that don’t have hearing loss, but have found them to help tremendously with tinnitus. Apparently, this also aids in a type of TRT/habituation for when you don’t have them in. I’m almost 4 months in and going to start looking into them.

 

I'll be getting a trial pair of Widex Moments in a week or two. I can report back on my experience.

 

Reporting back here. I got pair of Widex Moments last Thursday, which means I'm on my 4th day of using them.

Some background: My right-ear tinnitus is a daily on/off fluctuating hiss, and I have fluctuating high-pitched reactivity in both ears. I have mild/moderate hearing loss in both ears in the high frequencies.

In the last 4 days, I've had 2 days of right-ear hiss and 1 day of high reactivity.

On the high-reactivity day, the Widex Moments spiked my reactivity. I had to remove them after about 4 hours because my reactivity was going haywire. I will still use the hearing aids on high-reactivity days in hopes that I acclimate to them.

On the right-ear hiss days, I have to say that, surprisingly, the hiss is a fair amount less bothersome. Without the hearing aids, I'd get exhausted from hearing the hiss by the afternoon. But with the hearing aids, the hiss is somehow less bothersome and more ignorable, much like @SectorClear's experience. I'm guessing that, because the hearing aids are amping the background noise in the frequencies that my ears lack, it's making the tinnitus blend more and become more ignorable.

I'm using the PureSound setting. I'll next try the Comfort setting like @SectorClear is using.

 

I look forward to hearing your updates Joe.

 

Hi there @Stayinghopeful, I'm glad that my updates are helpful. Let me know if there's anything in particular you're wondering about. Here's my latest update:

There are several pre-defined settings that the audiologist installs onto the hearing aids. For instance, if you commute a lot, the audiologist can put a Travel setting onto the hearing aids. You switch between these settings from the mobile app. It looks like this:



The ones my audiologist installed are Universal, PureSound, Music, Social, Comfort, Zen A, Zen B, Zen C, and Directional Focus.

The Zen ones overlay some musical tones that are supposed to be calming. I don't prefer these. The hearing aids allow you to stream your own music via Bluetooth, so you could play anything you like.

Directional Focus allows you to emphasize a certain direction. For instance, if you're driving, and people in the back are talking to you, you could direct the focus to the back.

The settings I've been trying out the most are Universal, PureSound, and Comfort. Here's what I'm finding, bearing in mind that I have moderate hearing loss in the high frequencies. With Comfort, I hear higher frequencies the least, so it sounds the most bass-y. With Universal, I hear a bit more in the higher frequencies, but very similar to Comfort. With PureSound, I hear the much more in the higher frequencies.

So, for me, PureSound works the best. I can hear people speak much more clearly. And! When I listen to cricket noises, it masks my hissing tinnitus in my right ear quite well. I'm having a bit of a bad day today (lower than normal hissing), and I'm listening to the cricket noises now, and I must say it almost feels like a good day

Regarding reactivity, I've been able to acclimate to the sounds my hearing aids are feeding me. I no longer react as much. I can wear my hearing aids for most of the day now. I put them on around 8am, take them out in the early afternoon for a couple of hours, then wear them again until I go to sleep around 10pm. When I take them out, I hear my reactivity humming for about 10-20 minutes, but then it settles back down.

 

This is amazing. I guess everyone should have hearing aids.

 

I've been trying the Zen settings more. I've changed my mind about them. I'm actually finding then to be helpful. They sound like what a music box sounds like. I read in the manual that the notes are random, so there's no set tune for me to get sick of. Zen A has the lowest tones and Zen C has the highest tones. I prefer Zen C.

 

@SectorClear, with the Widex hearing aid, do you have the experience of silence? Or is it just that the tinnitus is less annoying? Or is the idea that you would habituate to the tinnitus and then have silence again? My tinnitus is caused by the COVID-19 vaccine.

 

Hearing aids don't give people silence. If someone's tinnitus is mild enough, the low volume masking covers it up. Or he doesn't hear it, as they say.

 

I have the Widex Moment hearing aids. One went bad so they have to send it in. They think it’s the lithium battery. I don’t know if Widex Moment hearing aids are only maskers? Okay, I was supposed to meet with their Sales Representative. I like the Bluetooth built in. I have to use my phone to adjust these, otherwise they have bells and chimes.

My other 2 hearing aids are Audicus. A lot cheaper than Widex. They have a small remote control for volume and masking. Sometimes the masker sounds just like my tinnitus.