Poll: Rainforest Masks My Tinnitus — Does It Yours?

I spent a couple days trekking through the Sumatran rainforest looking for and finding orangutans. It was really weird, at times soothing, my tinnitus was really indiscernible from the noises of the jungle. It was incredibly loud with wizzes, whirs, chirps and squeals. I had to plug my ears to figure out which was in nature and which were in my head. It was pretty cool to be able to say to my friends, "hear that crazy loud bug screech, that's what the inside of my head sounds like."

In the end I found it a relief to have my noise be only one of many in the real world.

 

When my tinnitus isn't being somatic, yes, I like rain, frogs, waves, funny sounding birds etc.

But I am sick to death of crickets!

 

No mine gets louder and sharper with background noise.

 

I couldn't tell you about a rainforest in Texas. When I'm outside with the wind blowing, especially in the fall or winter with leaves blowing, my T goes from very loud and intrusive to somewhat ignored. The same can be said for being on the water in the wind, especially with the waves.

When I come back inside......eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

 

Rain used to mask it. But lately i have the feeling, that my hearing (especially in the left ear) has gotten worse. So if i sleep with open window and its raining outside i can barely hear it with my leaft ear anymore. But being outside in windy weather could get me some relief.

 

rainforests, the most endangered masking technology

 

In general, I do much better outside in nature, than inside. Wind, rain, moving water, etc, all make my T very much more tolerable. Maybe I can move into a tree house in Costa Rica next to a small waterfall a couple hundred yards from the ocean. I’ll call it my T house.

 

It does but if I really try I can find my T even through that. The only thing that masks it 100% is the shower. The problem with rainforest noises is I don't mentally focus on anything in particular and that's how my mind sort of gravitates back to the high pitch component in my left ear which is the hardest to mask. Content that has more "mental interest" seems to work better, i.e. talking heads.

 

I like to combine heavy rain sound with the fire sound.

 

Me too. I love the sound of rain and fire and used it as a sleeping aid before tinnitus, it works well.

 

I have learned that masker sounds around the 2 frequencies of my tinnitus is helpful. Because my hearing aids are programmed with “notch therapy”, the actual frequency of the masker is “notched” out. Rainforest sounds are good maskers for me and the variation of the higher pitched sounds is actually good therapy for me. The varying pitch from the wildlife and the ability to automatically vary the volume in my masker program is very helpful. This is the site I use https://mynoise.net/ that allows me to increase the frequencies I need and also set the volume to vary. I paid for the app that runs on my iPhone because it can run in the background of my hearing aids that are blue toothed into the iPhone volume controls.