Tinnitus Seems to Be Somehow Linked to a Crucial Bodily Function

Science Alert ^ | December 06, 2024 | Linus Milinski et al.

[Red Badger]

[Red Badger]

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?........................

[logi_cal869]

Interesting...

[mairdie]

You do post the most wonderful threads.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Great! Two days ago, Conservative Mind posted an article linking Age Related Macular Degeneration to sleep apnea. Now Tinnitus is related to sleep apnea. I have sleep apnea and both AMD and tinnitus. Lucky me!

[Red Badger]

[mairdie]

Quick! Tell RedBadger to stop posting these health threads. You don’t need to catch any more problems and, clearly, his threads are the cause.

[RummyChick]

There can be mechanical reasons for it. For example, a special type of MRI might show something pressing up against an ear nerve.

[rexthecat]

Thanks for the thoughtful post! For me, my tinnitus is probably the result of working around six 155 howitzers that fired hundreds of rounds a day. I-Corps, 1966-1967. Semper Fi.

[Macho MAGA Man]

William Shatner aka Captain Kirk has suffered from Tinnitus for years after a premature explosion went off next to him while filming the original series episode “Arena” where he fought the Gorn lizard. If you watch the episode in the beginning you can see when it happens. He and Spock are pinned down taking refuge. Kirk takes off running and an explosion prematurely goes off and he’s completely stunned and falls to his knees and they quickly go to edit. See it here at the 2:30 mark and beyond.

https://youtu.be/hGHcc-OW2Jw?si=xPs4bYQE17uZ5Jo0

Shatner discussing his Tinnitus.

https://youtu.be/E7bL9BhESYA?si=SC7hXz1XCrS8r0dG

[laplata]

Thanks for posting this.

[PLMerite]

That would explain a few things in my case.

[dayglored]

I have severe tinnitus, from many decades of playing loud rock-n-roll guitar in bands. It's constant 24x7, as loud as normal conversation, so it makes normal conversation very difficult. Mine sounds like a large field of giant maniac crickets, each armed with circular saws, slicing up sheet metal. It's unbelievably awful. All day long, all night long until I'm deep asleep. It plays hell with speech comprehension, and the associated high-frequency hearing loss means everything (music, TV, nature) is very muffled.

This has been the case for over 20 years (I'm 72). What keeps me from losing my mind completely are a few important things (in no particular order)

• Meditation, even 5 minutes at a time, deep breathing, relaxing.
• Top-class hearing aids, Phonak and Oticon DSP types. They're $3k each ear.
• Hydration - drinking lots of fluids. Dehydration makes it worse.
• Getting enough sleep. Sleep deprivation makes it worse.
• Learning to accept it and ignore it. This takes mental focus, which is tough.

The above works for me, and I recommend it to anyone suffering from this curse.

[Red Badger]

Mine sounds exactly like millions of crickets or locusts on a summer night. I haven’t heard silence in 50 years or more.

I wear hearing aids in both ears, very expensive programmable types I got from the VA. But they aren’t perfect, as they feedback all the time and drives my wife crazy because she can hear it but I can’t, too high a frequency.

[laplata]

Welcome home, brother.

I have tinnitus in my right ear. I think mine was the result of firing an M-60 too much without ear plugs in I-Corps, 1971-72. (101st Airborne.)

[ProtectOurFreedom]

LOL...yeah! That’s the root cause of all my problems! Thanks for figuring that out, doc.

[mairdie]

Anytime, POF. Just like Snoopy, the doctor is always in. 5 cents or a clever retort.

[Red Badger]

Semper Fi!.......................

[dayglored]

> I haven’t heard silence in 50 years or more.

I hear ya there, brother (no pun intended). I'd give a lot for just a few minutes of silence.

The first time I wore my first set of really good hearing aids, I heard my daughter's voice clearly for the first time in our lives. I broke down crying, her voice was so pretty, and I'd never really heard it before.

That evening (it was summer) I turned the hearing aids volume way up and walked out into my yard, and for the first time in many years, I heard the crickets -- the real ones, not the tinnitus ones. The hearing aids gain allowed the real crickets to outmatch the tinnitus. It was a revelation. The next day I did the same thing and heard the local songbirds for the first time.

Changed my life.

I don't know what to say about the feedback you experience. Mine feed back if I've got them turned way up and I put my hand near my ear. So maybe it's something about how yours are mounted in your ear, how you wear you hair (if it's long enough to cover your ears), or even a high collar on a shirt? Just thinking out loud....

[libh8er]

Could be something as simple as impacted ear wax.