My High-Pitch Reactive Tinnitus + Lower Pitch Resonances

I live in a building that is mixed residential and commercial. At the beginning of November 2020, a business moved in next to me that would play loud music all day. This happened without any warning, and I was trying to stay home as much as possible due to COVID-19. The first thing I did was try to mask their thumping with my own low-pitched noise which I generated on the computer.

I now constantly go back and forth between whether or not I had done enough of this to damage myself this seriously, considering I did not really notice any ringing until weeks later. In fact, many of my sounds have had an even more delayed onset.

The second thing I did, still early November, was order a $300 pair of Sony noise-cancelling headphones, so I could start to get my things in order in the apartment without being overly distracted. I knew I was going to have to leave soon for my sanity, but now I'm not sure I succeeded in the "sanity" part.

The symptoms might have started ramping up already without me knowing it. Although nothing was sounding bad to me in the "real world" yet, I noticed that some of my music was sounding a bit "off" in the new phones, like the compression algorithm was doing something a little wonky in the highs. I put up with it and gravitated towards music that sounded better.

I was spending less and less time at the actual apartment and more time trying to find other places to sleep, and exhausting myself by spending time waiting in my car and other places when I would normally be lying around, chilling out, winding down for the night, etc.—and the places I did find to sleep, I could not sleep in late like I normally would.

A few weeks into November I made the dreaded visit to the landlord's office... I did not want to be "that guy" but I needed some kind of an option. They said they had another space that would open up for me in January.

Around this time, or a few days later, is when I started to notice the actual high-pitched ringing. It had somehow crept up on me instead of just "switching on" like most cases I read about. Mind you, I'm already a wreck in a multitude of ways by this point. I start googling, I hope it's ear wax impaction or something. I make an appointment with my primary first thing in December and get to the Audiologist/ENT on the 17th. Hearing test went fine (many discussions about the limitations of audiograms here), ENT found nothing (many discussions about the futility of discussing tinnitus with ENTs here too), I was sent off with a sad little pamphlet. My mom texted me to ask how it went, and asked me to call... and I broke down crying on the phone.

Since then I've been noticing various changes to my collections of sounds. Some come and go. The high pitched sounds seem to be agitated by all external sound, both high and low, while the lower pitched sounds seem to resonate with external sounds close to their frequency. It seems like if I give my ears as much of a break from sound as possible, it takes more to ramp them up. Stress and noise both send them through the roof. The effect on my concentration, humor, work, even ability to daydream, is severe. Music is mostly out of the question, and like many others here, that was my love (and hopefully will be again). Stuff that needs to get done gets done because I plow through it joylessly, such as the move into the new apartment. Sometimes the ringing has mercy, but hoping for those moments is not living.

I've spent hours and hours on this site searching for clues about what to expect, and how to at least not make it worse. I definitely don't think my job is helping (loud, stressful, busy supermarket), but I don't know how long of a leave I could take without getting into financial trouble. I get scared, when I'm there, that I'm hurting myself more. Maybe a few weeks, but I doubt anything would change noticeably for the better in such a short time. The new apartment is not that much better than the original one, noise-wise, so I'm plugging up a lot and using the NC headphones without music. A night doesn't go by that I don't have dark thoughts, but I've started working on deep breathing and seeing if I can get more "sleepy" feeling again. I have to remind myself that a lot of people are suffering through a pandemic, I don't have to keep this apartment or job forever, and if I can learn to manage, there may be some hope in the future with regenerative treatments like FX-322. (I know they've had clinical trials near where my parents live, which is frustrating in a "so close yet so far away" kind of way.)

So anyway, I'm at about 2 1/2 months. Seriously, if I can get back to hearing music I love without being frustrated by it, I will be the happiest person in the world, I will never again judge other people for their taste in music, and I will shower praise on everyone in my life who has listened to me going on and on about how horrible this is.

 

...Okay I just read through this post real quick and the fact that we both started to experience tinnitus after buying these Sony headphones — on top of all the other similarities — really disturbs me. What the hell?

Do you think there's any chance that the clamping of the headphones on our heads / ears / neck could be the issue rather than the actual headphones & ANC? This is what I was initially suspecting after my audiologist told me that the ANC couldn't be the cause, but. Reading your post, I'm once again having doubts. I mean, we have the same headphones — the XM3 or XM4, right? It's just so freaking weird.

I mean. On the other hand, in my case, a lot of things point towards my neck or spine being the issue but... I'd be lying if I said that the doubt that the headphones are somehow the culprit has completely left my mind.

Do you still use them? With ANC?

I was too scared / paranoid ever since this whole thing started so I put them on a shelf for weeks... but, weird coincidence, I decided to use them tonight (without ANC, still not comfortable with that possibility) — because what the heck, I've used earbuds recently and it didn't spike me or made things worse. And, headphones are headphones, right...?

Edit: Ugh, this...

...is exactly how it started for me too. I'm so weirded out by the similarities! Damn.

 

XM4, yes. I had that same period of suspecting them and putting them aside for weeks, another part of why your story seemed familiar. But I don't want to be superstitious, if we can't come up with a genuine scientific reason why these phones could be a problem. I know the literature said something about an algorithm to make your low-bitrate mp3s sound more natural (ha!), but it was vague as to whether that had to be activated by the owner. I wasn't able to pair the phones with the app on my ancient Android so I didn't get to experiment with EQ, but I found them very bottom-heavy by default, and maybe my brain was constantly listening too hard for the highs. I don't know. My best guess is I had an infection or stress overload. Millions of people use headphones.

 

That's what I've been trying to tell myself for weeks now. Heck, my sister uses the XM4s on a daily basis and has no issues whatsoever.

I guess I might be trying a little too hard to find a definitive cause for my tinnitus by comparing similarities between my case and other people's.

Sorry if I seem superstitious — I'm usually not a superstitious person, but sometimes I get so... desperate to understand my situation and find a solution that I just don't know what to believe anymore. It's kinda sad haha.

 

Don't take it as me accusing anyone of superstition so much as me trying to overcome my own tendency... we have so little real info and it's too easy to become afraid of everything as a result. I've analyzed my situation to death. It just got too crazy and weird for acoustic trauma to explain the whole thing, in my opinion. And I need to know that in order to know how to live from day to day... not that I know it 100%, but trying to approach knowing so I can make the best guess as to whether or not it's safe to be around normal levels of sound, and/or to use masking sounds that help me cope.

 

Well, I'm just about at the five month mark. Only one month 'til I'm "chronic," hooray! I should just note any changes... at this point, most of the troubling sound is high pitched hissing and squealing. I guess I could be glad that a lot of the other stuff has subsided, but the high pitched stuff has been the most torturous part this whole time. Anyway I've had some days, periods, and moments where the hissing recedes a bit, or sounds like it's breaking up or getting "swirly," so I hope that's a good sign. But all of this is so erratic, and I still have times when I just want to reach into my head and kill it.

I am long-term optimistic, short-term pessimistic.

To five months. *clink*

 

Right there with you. Hit my five months a couple of weeks ago. From what I’ve read people still improve materially after the 6 month mark. Some people take a couple of years to recover. Best of luck brother.

 

Six months.

If anything has changed over the past month, it has been extremely subtle. I often find myself thinking the hissing — and it has almost all pretty much turned to hissing by this point — is in a more narrow slice of the spectrum than I recall it being previously.

The overall volume is still erratic and wildly fluctuating. At times very bothersome, and at times near silent, but never for long.

The clarity of ambient sound seems a little more consistent.

The whistle and hum that appear in noisy sounds like fans and motors seem to be a little quieter much of the time.

All of this is extremely subtle, if not my own wishful thinking messing with me. I look forward to updating you on an odd-numbered anniversary, so that my hopes and expectations can be lower.

 

I have a hum too. The ringing I can live with by the hum is something else that really is aggravating and upsetting. It's like a vibrating cell phone that never stops behind my right ear. Fucking awful.

The days I don't hear it I think PROGRESS - I can deal with the rest of the orchestra.

And then it comes back and feels impossible to track why.

 

I have similar tinnitus... I wish you the best.

 

It's certainly mentally challenging with the constant fluctuations. The tinnitus in my right ear fluctuates massively, the left ear is pretty quiet and stable. I have had a couple of very good tinnitus days recently which has given me some hope. Hopefully your tinnitus will settle down.

 

Hi @Keith Handy, I’m so sorry to read that you’re going through such a difficult time just now and hopefully, in time it will settle as you’re still very early into it.

I have a similar thing going on too, after a noise incident, I’ve developed a new high pitched whistling which makes sounds very reactive and frustrating like music, kettles, showers, external sounds.

I completely understand your frustration and hoping that it settles soon for us both xx

 

Seven months (a little late) - while it's nearly impossible to gauge changes over a few weeks, I can definitely say that how I describe it now is different from how I would have described it a few months ago, and the "trends" I had been hoping to confirm seem to be actual trends. Since February/March the sound has become thinner, weaker, and hissier. It still fluctuates a lot in response to noise and stress, but it seems like when I get a really annoying surge at work, it only lasts a few minutes and then drops back to its current average. Often it sounds more "swishy", or sometimes a bit like a spinning bicycle wheel.

Also, I haven't felt the need to use any masking in weeks.

TL;DR: the previously observed "trends" seem to be legit, and I hope it continues in that direction.

 

Hell yeah.

 

8 months: as always, there are better and worse days. It rises and falls a lot in response to stress and changes in ambient sound, but even at its loudest, it's less oppressive than it was. Six days ago I had an exceptionally quiet morning, and today it's pretty light and "wispy/swishy". The lower-pitched sounds are less prominent too.

I believe this is not a day by day thing, but a month by month thing... and even then, any changes over a month are subtle. But, the more time goes on, the more certainly I can say this is not what I was experiencing in early February. I've had a few times lately when I almost wanted to use masking again, but usually I have no urge to do so.

My mantra for now is "see how this is at the end of summer, and then by Christmas."

 

I can relate to this. My tinnitus started reacting two or three months back. It reacts to any sound. I also love playing music and also playing video games but lately it has been difficult to try any of those. I'm so glad yours is getting better and hope by month 9 things will get back to the way they were before February. I'll be following your journey to recovery and I hope things go well.

 

Nine months: still progressing in the same manner.

I have two sources of income, a retail job and a one-on-one teaching gig. The former is, as you would guess, quite a bit noisier than the latter. During my last few teaching shifts, the hiss and distortions dropped to barely audible levels. As you may also correctly guess, the retail job is harder on my reactivity; not so much the short and nearby sounds, but the constant hum of coolers, the piped-in music, etc.; back in February I took three consecutive weeks off because I was so terrified that it was hurting me. But lately it has been much easier, and in fact, today, all I had was a little hissy "swish" sound that would come in and out and not loudly enough to demand all of my attention.

In the past month, I've also done a few 90 minute car trips to and from my parents' house without being overwhelmed by the head noises; I've even had music on in the car, and have been able to enjoy it more than I would have several months ago, despite it still "competing" a bit with the ringing. It seems a bit clearer now.

I have more tangible, concrete reason for long term optimism now than I could have had in the winter; back then it was 50/50 if I was ever going to get better at all, and I hated it more than almost anything I've ever experienced; I say "almost" because if it had been a shorter duration of time, I could have dealt with it better psychologically, but it wasn't as unbearable as, say, a kidney stone; but, my kidney stone only took a couple days to pass, so it's an apples-to-oranges comparison.

I recall being so "off" in every way, that I was doing nothing but counting minutes and desperately trying to sleep for more than a half hour at a time, waking in a panic, not making any jokes, not swearing (seriously, that's not like me), just feeling generally paralyzed and terrified of everything. That has not been the case at all lately; I'm back to my old sleep habits, I'm able to think about and talk about things other than what I'm hearing. I still consider myself to be in a recovery stage, and not just living my life as normal, but the responsibilities that I have to routinely attend to like work and chores are not a big deal. Before, if I so much as changed facial expression, I would have a shrill mini-spike that made it sound and feel like something in my head was breaking. Now, it takes a lot more to have that effect, and when I do, it's a gentle, narrow, hissy thing that doesn't overwhelm me.

So, TL;DR: I could confidently speak to my past winter self and tell him things will improve. I hope things still get better, but so far, so good.

 

Ten months, same general trend. By now it sounds like more of a thin sizzling than a hiss. It often drops to inaudible for a bit when I putter around, but then ramps back up again... but to a level that's tolerable, even with foam plugs in.

Still annoying though, and still disruptive to listening to anything (music or ambient sound) for pleasure.

 

Eleven months, not much different than at 10 months. Have had a few exceptionally good periods lasting maybe a day and a half here and there, but I'm tired of the overall thing and just want normality back.

 

One year. I was finding it annoying and screechy a few days ago, but for the past 72 hours it has been pretty mild and thin. So I guess three full days is a pretty long time for it to not be too bothersome without roaring back.

I'm sure the difference between what I do and don't find tolerable is like 2 decibels or something minute like that. Or maybe the presence or absence of one or two particular frequencies. Considering how bad this all was back in the early part of this year, I consider it a win that I'm definitely not experiencing the same or worse.

Over the summer and fall there were a few times when I had music on in the car, and it was a little frustrating but not that terrible; I was sort of able to get into the mood of it despite having to ignore the hissing and sizzling. I've watched a few movies with my parents too; the last one we watched together, A Fish Called Wanda, it was at the relatively loud volume that my parents normally set it to and I didn't even feel the need for the Etymotic plugs. I'm hoping I can watch that upcoming Beatles documentary and find it reasonably enjoyable; if so, that will be a nice sort of milestone. Nonetheless, I don't anticipate listening to music regularly until maybe next spring or summer. The tinnitus sounds are at a bearable enough level that I'm able to find joy in projects like building, coding, visual art, and so on; in February, all I could do was lie on my side, look at my phone, and breathe.

On a more fun note, I just bought my first 3D printer.

 

At 13 months I am noticing extended periods of time when I completely forget I have any tinnitus... maybe not hours, but something like 20 to 40 minutes at a time (extremely rough and unscientific estimate). The one consistent thing this whole time has been fluctuation, but the bottom end of the fluctuation has been virtually normal and the top end is annoying but temporary. The sound is super thin and doesn't seem to get "in front" of real life sound like it once did. (I've watched all eight hours of the Get Back documentary with almost no issue, though I'm not yet listening to music regularly.)

I'm super lucky, but don't forget that I was really struggling, suffering, and defeated for several months, and I want to leave a trail of my glacially slow progress for anyone who is scrambling to find signs of improvement being possible, like I was last winter and spring. During that time, I felt, for all intents and purposes, like I was "dead" or "just waiting to die." There are only a handful of people on here who have posted during both the worst periods and the later, better times, with Jason C. being the best example. I highly recommend going through the "view all posted content" link for his full story.

This was going to be a one sentence post, but there you go, 'til next update.

 

14 months, a pretty good update. I've had some stretches of several days where the tinnitus sounds are weak and thin. I've noticed something about the high pitched stuff, it's not actually the highest sounds that bother me the most, it's the tones just below them, which are now sometimes gone and sometimes come back; the very highest sounds are more like a weak, fuzzy little sizzle, gonna guess somewhere in the vicinity of 16 kHz; the tones that bother me when they make themselves known are maybe 10 kHz; this is all very, very rough, but it's clear that the worst sound isn't so much at the top of the range as it's in a range that is particularly sensitive, if that makes sense. I remember EQing music prior to all this and often finding that making small cuts on frequencies between 4 kHz and 10 kHz often made things sound less abrasive without losing essential clarity; those frequencies need to be there, as part of the complete spectrum, but it always seemed easy for things to get a little too harsh in that range, for me anyway.

Over the course of the past year I've noticed very slow partial recovery of some top-end clarity, too; at some point in the fall I first started re-noticing the small speakers above our heads at my department at work; the place has speakers everywhere, all playing the same thing, but for a while it wasn't noticeable at all that I could pick out a specific speaker above my head. As this started, though, the highs of those speakers were noticeably compromised, like all the sibilance and cymbals/hi-hats in the music were intermittently swishing like a low-bitrate mp3. That swishing seems to be reducing. I also noticed over the summer that I must have had some minor degree of hyperacusis, a particularly reliable gauge being the beep of a scanning gun in our department (around 3.5 kHz?). For several weeks I would walk further away any time anyone used that scanner, or if I had to use it myself would always use it at waist level and point it toward the floor. But I'm noticing that that beep sounds more normal and doesn't seem to be attacking my ears the way it did.

To be continued...

 

@Keith Handy, thanks for sharing your updates.

Did you ever have pain from the shrill intensity or what I’d describe as “zaps” that feel like you’re being shocked?

I recently developed a very shrill high pitched hiss that can’t be masked and it also causes that painful zap like once per minute, sometimes more. It’s torture.

Did you ever experience something similar and did it get better or go away?

 

Knowing your history, they should go away in time.

B12 with fish oil (Omega 3) - noted in research studies - greatly helps.

I once tries this, and problem solved.

 

@Greg Sacramento, thing is, I don’t know if the “zaps” are part of the shrill tinnitus tones - because they sound like squealing car breaks almost. It causes a jolt of pain in my ear because it’s so piercing. Do you think it’s part of the tinnitus tones or my ear reacting to the loud frequency? My hissing, ultra high pitched tinnitus is pulsating kind of.

 

@Jerad, five reasons with tinnitus.

1. Occipital nerves, the nerves that run through the scalp, are injured or inflamed. This can cause pulsating, throbbing, zaps or shock-like just behind the ears where it can feel like it is coming from the ears. Possible causes of irritation or injury to the occipital nerves include trauma to the back of the head, chronic neck muscle tension, arthritis of the spine bones of the neck, degenerative disk disease in the neck, diabetes-related nerve damage and that compress the nerves. I had this.

2. Discontinuation of antidepressant medications. I had this.

3. Loud frequency.

4, Hyperacusis - but very rare.

5. Neuropathic pain arises when the nerves that transmit pain signals are damaged.

It would not be a tumor. Very rare.
Possible from neurosurgery.
Possible from cancer treatments.

There may be more reasons, but I never came across any.

Within hospital ER medical care where patients had tinnitus - our findings when I was on staff (estimates).

Reason 1 - occipital nerves - 50 cases
Reason 2 - discontinuation of antidepressants - 100 cases
Reason 3 - loud frequency - 1 case
Reason 4 - hyperacusis - 1 case
Reason 5 - neuropathic pain - maybe 5 cases

 

@Greg Sacramento, thanks for the info. Given that this issue started after using topical colloidal silver for 10 days, do you think it’s nerves that are injured or inflamed? Does this clear up naturally with time?

Would I benefit from Prednisolone?

I’m very concerned about the new issues, as they’re quite debilitating - ultra high frequency hissing and the jolts of pain. Thanks.

 

Hi @Jerad, 74 people reported to have side effects when taking colloidal silver including topical. Among them, 1 person has tinnitus. I don't have the list of side effects.

The trigeminal and facial nerve can cause zaps, shrill tones like squealing car breaks and jolts of pain within the ear.

Pain may also be felt in jaw and face, and this would be classified as neuropathic. I extremely doubt that you have trigeminal. Facial nerve could be reactive, with no facial symptoms.

Medication ototoxicity may be cause with what you described - a delayed cause from 2002-2003, but symptoms such as your do resolve. Continue to discuss with your doctors. Improper Antidepressant withdrawal could be cause, but other drugs are also possible such as aspirin.

B12 with fish oil (Omega 3) should help.

There could be other reasons, but I haven't come across any.

 

@Jerad, your symptoms could be caused by topical colloidal silver by way of facial nerve if you have a prior history of medication ototoxicity. Often the zaps are temporary.

Treatment noted for zaps and shrill tones is B12 with fish oil (Omega 3).

 

What are trigeminal symptoms for tinnitus?