Residual Inhibition Durations?

I recently learned what residual inhibition is. This is where you can match your tinnitus tone and the ringing stops for a little bit. I would like to know how long residual inhibition lasts for other people. Please share your experiences with this.

 

It only lasts about 20 seconds for me.

 

http://www.residualinhibition.com/residual-inhibition.pdf

I started to experiment with this. It seems that using frequency generator app to play 8000 Hz , I can inhibit my tinnitus for a moment. Very interesting. But I need to make it very loud as I am partly deaf on that frequency so a little bit worried if it won't do more damage. It is so loud that I need to plug my good ear. But then I can barely hear it with my bad ear and tinnitus seems to stop for some moments.

Very interesting. Does it mean that as soon as the remaining damaged hair cells receive the signal they stop generating the tinnitus - good question.

 

It looks like for some people residual inhibition can last from seconds to minutes, even hours. And this research paper hypothesizes that in some cases it may even be permanent.

A New Method for Assessing Masking and Residual Inhibition of Tinnitus

For me, at first it was just a few seconds but this morning I was experiencing a pretty massive spike where I couldn't even hear the TV over the tinnitus sound. I started messing with white noise, violet noise, pink noise, and a tone generator playing a single 10.7 kHz tone for a couple of minutes. After doing this my tinnitus sound initially disappeared, then after maybe 30 seconds came back at a low level and stayed that way for several hours. It then spiked again to how it was when I woke up. I just tried the same thing I did earlier and the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee is much lower now and has been for a few minutes.

I'm starting to wonder if maybe this could be a way to manage it while it's spiking. I have no problem playing a 10.7 kHz tone several times a day or even several times an hour if needed in order to reduce the shrieking noise for even a few minutes every once in a while.

 

I've always had trouble getting residual inhibition. Why do some people experience it and others not?

 

I've been doing as you describe for years. It's not perfect but sometimes I can get residual inhibition that seems to quieten it for a while (preserving what sanity I have left). I have found tonal (whilst I have hissing) is more effective. This is backed up by studies regarding residual inhibition that have also found tonal stimulation is more effective, but becomes less effective with repetition.

Bring it home Shore!

 

Before my worsening, listening to high pitched residual inhibition track on YouTube would turn my tonal tinnitus into a hiss for about 5 minutes. Man hisses are so great. Best thing ever.

 

Interesting. One of the studies I read showed that repeated tonal stimulation could actually become more effective with repetition. Although in my own experience, at least over the course of one day, I did find that the more I did it, the less time the effects lasted. Initially it lasted just a few seconds, then it lasted a few minutes, at one point it reduced it to more tolerable levels for an hour or so, but toward the end of the day it was back to only lasting a few seconds.

The fact that it happens at all makes it seem that if researchers can pinpoint the mechanism that is at play with residual inhibition, they should be able to figure out how to use it to permanently reduce the severity of at least some types of tinnitus.

Couple of other things -

I would much rather have a hissing tone than a shrieking whistle. I'd be very happy if there was a way to get residual inhibition to turn my whistle into a hiss.

Also, I'm not sure why this is but when I play the external tone, I find that much less annoying than my internal tinnitus tone. Starting to wonder if maybe I should just play a 10.7 kHz tone through a Bluetooth speaker all the time.

And the only way I can truly mask my tinnitus is with very loud sound whether that's white noise or standing next to a waterfall or having my head under the shower. Otherwise, I can still hear it over sounds that aren't that loud. Ambient crowd noise, noise while driving even at 75 mph and with the radio on, the TV even while watching a movie with the volume turn up on my sound system as loud as movie theater volume, etc... Those don't mask it.