Went to a Birthday Party Tonight — Hoping for the Best!

Why are you looking to pick a fight John?
Why are you looking to make enemies?
Really: Why?

 

Sorry Matt, but I expected more cogent responses from you. Your so called scientific method is anything but for the reasons I mentioned. One of the big problems with solving tinnitus is the inability to do the very things you falsely ascribe as legitimate with your charting. Subjective tinnitus is just that. Subjective. Numerical assignment of tinnitus volume and pitch...to do it precisely is a fool's errant. It also has little relevance to others. Your 3 maybe my 1 or 5. Pseudo science.
Preservatives in the food you ate at the party may have had a greater influence on your immune system and tinnitus longer term than sound level. Based upon the description of sound at that party and methods you used to reduce sound levels, it should have ZERO influence on your tinnitus. You are both ambiguous in your comments about not enough data and then stating what you believe. You have NO idea if that party has ANY influence on your current tinnitus level. Your short term data collection is not unequivocal.

And then there is your most recent ridiculous assertion that I don't believe tinnitus will be solved. No it won't be by your unscientific, anecdotal party participation...lol. Sorry, you are correct there. But it will be solved and therapies are already forthcoming in the next year.

It will be solved by scientists who have made it their life's work like Dr. Shore.
Her body of work. Her courageous and rocky road to the truth that led her to bi-modal stimulation:

https://experts.umich.edu/discover/publication?and_facet_profiles_author=1367'

And there are many others just like her dedicating their life to solving this unwelcome noise too many have.

 

Seems I hit a nerve.

 

You can ignorantly pursue your pseudo science experiment. People will certainly let you.
If you had been around a while longer you would have learned one of the impediments of solving tinnitus or applying any scientific method to understanding it better is inability to quantify a baseline and actual changes. It is a subjective noise that can't be empirically measured...or certainly very easily by the layperson. That entirely debunks your so called study. You are measuring plate movement that rest on the hot, molten rock of Earth’s mantle causing a seismic quake by holding your finger in the air. But your statistics are perfect...lol. You are trying to figure out global climate change by measuring temperature on vacation in the summertime. You did hear that Montana had record snow very early in the year didn't you?

Seems to me where you are trying to go...because I tried to add meaningful dialog to your ill fated experiment...and had to laugh out loud when you defended the statistics behind what you do. A statistician with inability to see the broader picture. You are the guy measuring the intensity of lightening by the static electricity discharge elevating the hair on your arms you are measuring with a yard stick. A laughable supposition. Since you engaged me, instead of me calling you out because you basically were arguing with Bill which was also comical, since you never figured it out, I finally had to speak out. Everything about any extrapolation you make from attending your party is wrong other that any 'qualitative' or general conclusion you could draw which is also scientifically flawed and precisely what I asked twice and you didn't have the courtesy to answer. What do you think? Did the party matter? Since you couldn't answer definitively your judgement fell within the 'noise' of your experience forgive the pun, based upon copious error such a broad experiment like going to a party would portend with so many variables contributing to tinnitus level. A farcical exercise in terms of deducing any change to your tinnitus you can't reliably measure. The party could have changed your tinnitus .05% which is well outside your inability to measure it which is like measuring quantum particle motion with a tape measure. Sound damage is cumulative you may have heard. Go to 50 parties in row and you may onto something even with your crude SWAG of what your tinnitus level is.

I tried to bring you along with comedy. I tried to ask you the only questions that were answerable. You wouldn't have it and why I am now explaining because I have to spell it out for you.

Btw, along the jagged road to the truth, you are now getting there. You are learning some of the lessons of tinnitus many know. No, getting to the truth isn't always pretty or elegant as I have mentioned previously and why many don't have the stomach for it and why some even bury their head in the sand of denial and stay ignorant and place people on ignore because what others believe doesn't comport with their flat earth beliefs.

Ultimately what you are asking is a question about yourself. What kind of sound exposure should you subject yourself to have as normal hearing as possible without aggravating the demon known as tinnitus. I used the analogy of nursing a damaged knee back to perfect health. The precise rehabilitation is unknowable because everybody's knee damage is different and everybody's body is different in terms how it will respond to rehabilitation. You need to listen to your body which in effect is what we do with our tinnitus each day. I took the opportunity to interject common sense into conversation in this thread because you were off on a wild goose chase playing with your statistics. Ultimately I believe you need to do what I did when confronted with the same dilemma as I have been since contracting tinnitus. You need to listen to your body and talk to experts in the field. Get your hearing checked, explain your tinnitus and ask their opinion. They will likely tell you that, the goal is to subject your hearing to as normal sound levels as possible. You can't do this right away. For many including me, this imparted physical pain. It made my ears hurt. Also my ears had fullness when I first contracted tinnitus which also faded with time. You don't want to rehab a knee too quickly or you will impart more damage. You need to listen to your body. But you need to push the margin according my audiologist. Normal hearing = ability to sustain normal sound levels which also includes listening to headphones at modest volume level versus hiding under the bed which never allows the brain to adjust gain back to normal volume tolerance which was altered by an unexplained change to your hearing apparatus that your brain increased gain to compensate for. You need to adjust it back and the only way you do this is by incremental desensitization if you believe in the concept of neural plasticity ergo the brain will adapt on some level either good or bad based upon stimulus either too little...elusively just right...to too loud.

No one size fits all independent of your myopic focus upon statistical significance. Hard to extrapolate from others based upon the heterogeneous nature of tinnitus in conjunction with your age, health, immune system and physiology and hereditary which roughly predicts your hearing into the future. Sound is only one part of the equation.

Hit a nerve? You are the original stray man. You do know what a stray man fallacy is right? Your extrapolations like....tinnitus can't be measured therefore it can't be solved. Hit a nerve? Wrong again. Please stop with your silly assertions. Argumentative? Why because I dismiss what you write and initially try to cajole in the direction of the truth with comedy? Just setting some of the disinformation promulgated on this forum straight along the rocky road to the truth as I learn here too and why I am here.

 

I probably shouldn't continue to humour your diatribes, but I will, for now, mainly because I worry that you're ridiculousness will convince some that learning about their tinnitus is futile. Moreover, I hope to actually initiate some full-on experiments in the near future, and I'd hate for your ridiculousness to colour people's perceptions of those opportunities.

I'll go slow for you, to make sure you can keep up.

First:
- Is this a well-controlled experiment for learning about tinnitus in general? Of course not.
- Did anyone say it was? Of course not.
- In fact, did anyone say it was an experiment for learning about tinnitus in general at all? No, unless we include you.

So then, first: we seem to be in full agreement that were this a study about tinnitus in general it would be a poorly designed one. (Yay! We're off to a glorious start!)

Second:
- Is one of the biggest problems with tinnitus that it's almost impossible to equate people's subjective experiences? Certainly (though there are others, as well).
- Would this make my experiment challenging to interpret with regard to tinnitus in general? Once again: of course (though I would nonetheless strongly argue that this still doesn't make it futile, just complicated).
- Was this a surprise to me, that you, the almighty, have suddenly awoken me to? Sorry...but no. In fact, I just discussed the problems of subjectivity to @all to gain about 50 msgs ago in this thread. Feel free to skim back to find it.

So we're still mostly in agreement, I think (other than regarding your almightiness)?

Third (and listen close, because this is the big one):
- If this isn't intended as a study of tinnitus in general, then what is it? A case study about myself.
- Can I indeed use this subjective data to learn something about myself? About my own tinnitus? Yes.
- In fact, is this pretty much the only way to learn something about my own tinnitus? Yes.
- And was this whole exercise intended to learn something about myself? About my own tinnitus? Yes.

I'll just repeat that last one one more time, because you seem to have gotten yourself all tangled up in a different conclusion: the whole point of the exercise was to learn something about my own tinnitus (which others are free to extrapolate from, as they see fit).

@Bartoli understood this.
@all to gain understood this.
Even @Bill Bauer understood this, in his own way.
How did your own assumptions go off base?

Just to finish this off for good:

- Are there still weaknesses to my approach? Of course.
- Is the subjectivity still a concern? Of course.
- Would the data be more reliable with 50 observations after 50 parties, instead of one observation after one party? Of course. However, - and I'll go even slower here, so that you can keep up: in order to get to 50, you must first collect 1. Complicated stuff, I know.

So, to summarize:

- This was not an experiment about tinnitus, it was a test of my own tinnitus, posted to the support msg board (that people may extrapolate from as they see fit).
- Were this an experiment about tinnitus, it would be a terrible experiment; but as a test of my own tinnitus, it is pretty darn reasonable.
- As a tenured professor of psychology/neuroscience, who runs scientific experiments for a living, I actually know what I'm doing (I can hardly imagine walking around with the arrogance you show!). Moreover, I am hoping to initiate some real experiments about tinnitus in the future, and I may ask for Tinnitus Talk members to participate in these experiments if they are willing. This is the real reason I'm still defending myself here - because I don't want your silliness undermining these efforts. Don't worry, though, you won't need to take part.

Finally: Just so you know, I will NOT be responding to any further msg's from you on this. No matter what you devise, no matter what craziness you come up with next, no matter how humourous or sarcastic or arrogant or imbecile it is, I will not respond. So feel free to blow your load all over the screen - such is your perogative. But you'll not be gaining me as an audience. Good day.

 

I really don't care if you respond. I asked you a couple of questions and you disrespected me by not providing any sort of response that a grade schooler could have responded to. That is the point. Your farcical bar charting of post party tinnitus is a joke. A waste of your and our time. Many here understand that.

You wrote:
In fact, is this pretty much the only way to learn something about my own tinnitus? Yes.

My response:
Completely absurd. Nobody is served by bar charting tinnitus a few days after a party and posting about it...lol. Not you, not me, not even the janitor who doesn't have tinnitus. Your subjective 'quantification' of subjective tinnitus which changes even hourly is a joke. That is the point. And when you apply your so called statistical analysis to it, its like lipstick on a pig.

One can't draw any conclusions about tinnitus effect of a party until after a long period of time and no doubt this data will even be tainted and unreliable because of sound events you incur and even diet and how much you exercise during this period of observation. Its a farcical relationship you tried to establish and you should know better. Its as bad as Michael Leigh throwing headphones under the bus because he wore headphones likely at elevated sound levels which 'he' believes caused his tinnitus. He doesn't know that. He could be genetically predisposed to tinnitus. He could have punished his ears by listening for hours and hours at elevated sound levels. Headphones aren't to blame any more a single party would be to blame for 'any perception' your tinnitus has changed. People get tinnitus late in life who went to rock concerts like I did minimally and who listened to headphones minimally and by contrast, so many young people here contract tinnitus early in life, some of whom never abusing their ears with excessive sound. I have a friend who was born with tinnitus. He has had it his whole life. They were dealt the genetic short straw. Their habits including sound listening is only one single element of why they have tinnitus. My audiologist believes genetics are the single most important factor for hearing loss and tinnitus presence. My grandmother had acute tinnitus and she never listened to headphones a day in her life or even went to a rock concert.

You need to wake up and smell the coffee and I hope what I wrote helped explain what happened in our conversation. You still believe your 'charting of tinnitus' has veracity for you. Sorry, its BS. You could chart if for the next year and you wouldn't know if attending a single party had any influence on your tinnitus. Even if you had a spike right after the party, you wouldn't know if the party is the root cause. People have spikes in their tinnitus all the time and have no idea why. What caused your tinnitus to emerge initially 5 months ago...this change to your hearing apparatus or your brain chemistry could morph once again for the worse and your tinnitus could spike. You may have that spike for day or for a month and attending that party would have nothing to do with it.

So forgive me for raining on your psuedo scientific parade...a guy who has set up experiments his whole professional life.

Of course you have no further response. There is nothing to defend.

 

All these long paragraphs are giving me a spike

 

Sorry about that. You know what really causes spikes? Charting subjective tinnitus and drawing conclusions from it.
Don't tell Matt.
PS. I am having a pretty low tinnitus today. Must be all that headphone listening. I will have to chart it to find out.