Listening to a Dog Whistle Sound on YouTube Could Not Have Worsened My Tinnitus, Right?

Hi everyone,

I often hear people describe their tinnitus tone as a 'dog whistle' on this forum. Curiosity led me to searching dog whistle on YouTube to see whether I have this kind of sound. The volume could not have been any quieter and yet after listening to it for half a second, maybe 1 second at most, I instantly felt my tinnitus go up and it's still at this level around 2 hours later.

This may just be a coincidence as I woke up this morning with increased tinnitus which I kind of forgot about while I was at University so it could've just been that coming back to my attention. Although the sound was minimal in volume it was very high pitched and did feel uncomfortable which I guess is normal for a sound like that. I am convinced this can't have caused me any permanent damage but I guess I'm just asking if it is possible for high frequency sounds like this to spike tinnitus even at low volumes?

Cheers.

 

@Mnq16, it's almost impossible for this to have caused permanent damage, except if you turned it way too loud or max volume. I believe you'd have a "full feeling" if that was the case.

Still, it's not recommended to listen to such single or very narrow band high pitch frequencies because all the sound wave's energy is concentrated on just one or a few cells (correct me if I'm wrong!) and our hearing is most fragile at higher frequencies. Be careful with volume and exposure time!

 

Yeah I agree, as I said it wasn't for longer than a second and the volume was way down so hopefully it passes soon. I remember thinking straight after maybe I shouldn't have done that and then bam, spike. In any case I won't be doing that again that's for sure.

 

Probably anxiety.

Did you hear anything...? I thought a dog whistle was beyond our frequency range...?

 

Yeah I think so too. I did actually hear it, I can now tell why dogs hate it, it's a horrible sound. As far as I know I have no hearing loss (my tinnitus came neurologically.) so that may be why, although I have spiked from loud noises before so who knows.

 

You still need to be careful with noise, that’s a given!

Now that I think about it. When I was a kid I might have tried one, I heard mostly the sound of air going through it.

And where I walk, there’s a dog running loose. Suddenly he stops sniffing around and goes flying back where he came from without me hearing anything. They must have one of those...

 

If you're a little sensitive to sound, then the pitch could have caused a spike, but I can't believe it's anything permanent. Let a few days pass before drawing any conclusions. My case is a little weird, but I can get multi-day spikes from low level sound, so it isn't impossible, and shouldn't be permanent.

Wish you well,
Stacken

 

Yeah I do get hyperacusis from time to time so perhaps this was just that playing up due to the frequency, in any case I'm not as worried as I am usually when I spike.

Sorry to hear that man, is your case due to severe reactivity? Wish you all the best my friend.

 

Yeah, I have some severe reactivity, most likely due to the severe loudness hyperacusis.

Thank you for your well wishes.

 

For anyone interested or to anyone this may happen to in the future this seems to have settled back down to my usual horrible 5/10 tinnitus after about 24 hours.