A Real Cure for Tinnitus

[DRMLFL]

I have had it for about 30 years, i was careless at work and didn't use hearing protection when i was young, i listen at low volume when using headphones and don't notice any change for the worse afterwards.

Ok, this is good to read that no changes occur. But how do you check the volume? Is it your impression or can you actually tell a number of dB for example arriving at your ear drum? I don't want to make you feel insecure. Unfortunately, we are never careful enough with our ears. "Extreme" noise exposure is cause #1 in so many cases.
All the best to you!

 

[Down South]

Yes, the way hearing aids are sold is deplorable. Those 3 types were (I assume) economy, business and premium price category. It's interesting (and sad) to see how this works the same in most (if not all) countries. It's a shady business practice in most cases I have to admit and only a few hearing care professionals actually really do care about you and understand the "problem". The vast majority just lives this stupid salesman lifestyle, being super proud selling premium stuff with the least amount of time investment and smallest effort. It's incredible how the reputation of this industry is so low and still manages to make big money and pays a sh*tty salary on top! I have been ashamed of it more than once in my career and I have had lots of discussions with clients about this situation. No matter how you do it, it's always wrong.

Do you think there is a direct link between this accident with the student and your tinnitus? I hope you can live with your tinnitus well and that it is not a stress factor for you! Do you only have tinnitus on the left ear or is it also a different overall sound compared to the right side (duller or thinner for example)? An audiogram could help to see what you are hearing. And what does your tinnitus sound like?

Indeed, many people in the future could potentially have problems with their ears. Loud music is like alcohol. It (kinda) feels good but too much of it and everything gets distorted!

Yes the link with the rifle loaded with blanks is certain. The tinnitus is at a constant low level and I can live with it fine. I had a useless 'hearing test in the UK over 25 years ago , it was a joke that I had to pay £115 for or wait 6 months to get for free.

Moving from one region, the Aveyron to the Tarn where they have an excellent health check system. They arrange an appointment for a whole body check consisting of blood test, heart, lungs, sight and hearing. The hearing test is carried out in an anechoic chamber and a detailed chart is prepared showing the level of hearing in each air and all the tests cost nothing.

I think you are right about tinnitus and dementia. My wife, like me loved (past tense) music but a few years before vascular dementia began developed raging tinnnitus, worse in her left ear than the right. Her hearing aids have to be adjusted every day and are an expensive waste of money, listening to music simply isn't possible.

In the UK you can get hearing aids for free via the NHS. Via sites like Indiegogo you can buy 'hearing aids a lot cheaper than usual. Then you look online at reviews to find they are absolutely useless.

Many years ago before my wife retired, she was encouraged to go to a pub disco by her students - she was a lecturer in paediatric nursing. Against my advice she went - she was virtually deaf for 3 days.

We used to live on the South coast of England and most week ends Londoners would visit. London like most big cities is a noisy place to live and compared to locals, they shouted. I used to work on big construction sites and when I got home all I wanted was silence, I couldn't listen to music. I went self employed working on renovation on old houses, bliss compared to the big sites.

 

[DRMLFL]

Yes the link with the rifle loaded with blanks is certain. The tinnitus is at a constant low level and I can live with it fine. I had a useless 'hearing test in the UK over 25 years ago , it was a joke that I had to pay £115 for or wait 6 months to get for free.

Moving from one region, the Aveyron to the Tarn where they have an excellent health check system. They arrange an appointment for a whole body check consisting of blood test, heart, lungs, sight and hearing. The hearing test is carried out in an anechoic chamber and a detailed chart is prepared showing the level of hearing in each air and all the tests cost nothing.

I think you are right about tinnitus and dementia. My wife, like me loved (past tense) music but a few years before vascular dementia began developed raging tinnnitus, worse in her left ear than the right. Her hearing aids have to be adjusted every day and are an expensive waste of money, listening to music simply isn't possible.

In the UK you can get hearing aids for free via the NHS. Via sites like Indiegogo you can buy 'hearing aids a lot cheaper than usual. Then you look online at reviews to find they are absolutely useless.

Many years ago before my wife retired, she was encouraged to go to a pub disco by her students - she was a lecturer in paediatric nursing. Against my advice she went - she was virtually deaf for 3 days.

We used to live on the South coast of England and most week ends Londoners would visit. London like most big cities is a noisy place to live and compared to locals, they shouted. I used to work on big construction sites and when I got home all I wanted was silence, I couldn't listen to music. I went self employed working on renovation on old houses, bliss compared to the big sites.

Unbelievable how health care was/is performed so differently from one region/country to another. It's cheeky that they asked you for money for a measurement!

There are some countries where you can get hearing aids for free, the "problem" is, the price doesn't have to do absolutely nothing with HOW WELL they are fitted to your specific audiogram and how much information you, as a client, receive from the hearing care professional/ENT/audiologist and what you can expect from these devices. In many cases the clients simply are not happy with their devices because nobody ever told them what the result will be/sound like. I made this experience many many times. They often believe that there is this one "magic" setting which solves the "hearing problem" from now on and too often forget (or never knew) that this means an immense amount of diligence and work. You don't become a singer/guitarist/drummer over night!

The "best" formula 1 race car cannot compete on a basic track with less than optimal settings!

 

[Down South]

Unbelievable how health care was/is performed so differently from one region/country to another. It's cheeky that they asked you for money for a measurement!

There are some countries where you can get hearing aids for free, the "problem" is, the price doesn't have to do absolutely nothing with HOW WELL they are fitted to your specific audiogram and how much information you, as a client, receive from the hearing care professional/ENT/audiologist and what you can expect from these devices. In many cases the clients simply are not happy with their devices because nobody ever told them what the result will be/sound like. I made this experience many many times. They often believe that there is this one "magic" setting which solves the "hearing problem" from now on and too often forget (or never knew) that this means an immense amount of diligence and work. You don't become a singer/guitarist/drummer over night!

The "best" formula 1 race car cannot compete on a basic track with less than optimal settings!

Agree with everything you say. There are two 'push buttons' for each ear piece one to raise the volume and one to decrease. I have to click the up buttons 60 times for each ear. As you say the price has nothing to do with how well these products will perform. Doctors,dentists,audiologists it's sadly down to luck, good or bad. Protocols should be rock solid across a profession, they aren't that's the reality.

I have heard that there are audatif devices that cost from $5-10K that are suppose to be excellent. I'm sure there is price fixing going on in Europe - I cannot speak for other places in the world.

 

[DRMLFL]

Agree with everything you say. There are two 'push buttons' for each ear piece one to raise the volume and one to decrease. I have to click the up buttons 60 times for each ear. As you say the price has nothing to do with how well these products will perform. Doctors,dentists,audiologists it's sadly down to luck, good or bad. Protocols should be rock solid across a profession, they aren't that's the reality.

I have heard that there are audatif devices that cost from $5-10K that are suppose to be excellent. I'm sure there is price fixing going on in Europe - I cannot speak for other places in the world.

I assume that the hearing aids are synced which means you increase the level of both with only one device. If not those must be very "old" models. And one should also avoid to make everything too loud, this can cause several things to happen (decrease of speech intelligibility because of the overcompressed/distorted/clipping sound due to bad fitting or even worsening the hearing loss because of loud noise exposure over a longer period of time.
Yes, sadly, like you said, the medicine in total is messed up, lots of times it's just a business.

10K $/€, holy moly, these devices better tell you they love you all day long! Here in Germany you pay 5-7K for premium class. Which means something like 20-30 frequency bands you can adjust, whereas basic modes only have 4-6 frequency bands. There are some benefits for a more premium class, don't get me wrong. But they are not always necessary to get really good speech results. I often had clients with the free basic models and a great outcome. But I always recommend them to invest just a little money (maybe 200-300€ in total) and pick something more "precise" in audio representation. If they want the rechargeable version they will pay maybe 400-500€.

Hearing aids are, as I mentioned somewhere else in this forum, really simple devices with quality which is not sufficient for the audiophile. The sample rate of hearing aids is only 33kHz which is not even CD quality. On top of that they cannot reproduce frequencies below 125Hz and above 10kHz. So, music will compulsorily sound really bad. You cannot get away this specific grainy, hard and metallic sound of hearing aids currently. I doubt that this will change in the next few years.

 

[guy48065]

Not good news for a 63yo with constant tinnitus and a family history of hearing loss.

 

[DRMLFL]

Not good news for a 63yo with constant tinnitus and a family history of hearing loss.

It was and is never my intention to spread fear, doubt, concern and all those negative emotions with the things I'm writing here. And if that can put your mind to ease, many people (I really believe everybody) have tinnitus, only certain circumstances can lead to this condition. The "psychological" aspect of tinnitus is way bigger than people believe, I guess this is the reason all these devices like Lenire and Neosensory Duo work with bimodal stimulation. They try to generate certain emotions with sounds and a tactile interaction like the vibration of different body parts. I know this sounds stupid, but it's a bit like you train your dog with the ringing bell when it's time for food.
In some cases tinnitus is really "just" a matter of lifestyle like too much alcohol/sugar/nicotine/stress or depressions. Or constantly thinking about this sound in your head that could become louder at any moment and make your mood even worse. This absolutely can lead to depression which makes the whole topic to a vicious circle.
Best thing I can recommend is to meditate at a silent place and concentrate to keep calm. I can see why somebody invented yoga and things of this nature, it absolutely makes sense to stay in "that" moment and visualise your surrounding and movements. Sometimes pink or brown noise at low level (slightly below your tinnitus) can help to stay focused.

I hope you can find peace with your tinnitus!

 

[GrizzlyAK]

I'm 62 and have had tinnitus for a while now. It got noticeably louder the last few years. Before that, it was noticeable, but not annoying. Now, sometimes it is annoying. For me, it is high pitched, relatively constant pure tone ringing, equally in both ears. It doesn't really seem to mask other sounds, and I just remind myself that it is not a physical sensation and therefore can be safely ignored. Seems to work for me. Most times I can completely ignore it. I typically sleep with crickets, cicadas, or frogs chirping in the background (a soundtrack, now that I live in AK where none of those things are. It was great growing up in the South where the cicadas were deafening!). I've always protected my hearing from a young age, and actually still have very good, above-age-average hearing. I use hearing protection religiously, still, and always have them at the ready at movies if they get too loud (which is not as often as it used to be). I have, on 2 occasions, on hunts, fired a large caliber rifle without protection, which was incredibly painful (and stupid). I'm certain that exacerbated the tinnitus. I read a study where people with tinnitus were given specially created music that had been processed with notch filters for the frequency (-ies) prevalent in their tinnitus, which (they theorized) led the brain to learn how to ignore it. I thought I might try to determine my frequencies and remix some of my music collection that way to see if it helps.

I've also noticed that when I tighten my neck muscles, you know, like when you fake being really mad, that my tinnitus actually increases in volume while doing so. It immediately returns to "normal" when I relax. This has led me to believe that, although tinnitus may be a neurological or brain-created phenomenon, there appears to be some physical connection to it, given that flexing muscles changes its intensity. I'd be really interested to know if anyone else has experienced this, or can reproduce it. If you don't know what I mean, think a teeth-gritting, wide, fake grin with a little head trembling thrown in. Please let me know.

 

[Down South]

It was and is never my intention to spread fear, doubt, concern and all those negative emotions with the things I'm writing here. And if that can put your mind to ease, many people (I really believe everybody) have tinnitus, only certain circumstances can lead to this condition. The "psychological" aspect of tinnitus is way bigger than people believe, I guess this is the reason all these devices like Lenire and Neosensory Duo work with bimodal stimulation. They try to generate certain emotions with sounds and a tactile interaction like the vibration of different body parts. I know this sounds stupid, but it's a bit like you train your dog with the ringing bell when it's time for food.
In some cases tinnitus is really "just" a matter of lifestyle like too much alcohol/sugar/nicotine/stress or depressions. Or constantly thinking about this sound in your head that could become louder at any moment and make your mood even worse. This absolutely can lead to depression which makes the whole topic to a vicious circle.
Best thing I can recommend is to meditate at a silent place and concentrate to keep calm. I can see why somebody invented yoga and things of this nature, it absolutely makes sense to stay in "that" moment and visualise your surrounding and movements. Sometimes pink or brown noise at low level (slightly below your tinnitus) can help to stay focused.

I hope you can find peace with your tinnitus!

I tell you what would really help, would be a list of hearing aids in Europe which have real value. I state Europe because that is where you operate.
In ear audio has advanced considerably in a relatively short space of time. I know my wife wouldn't care what size hearing aids were if they would give her back the ability to listen to music. I don't think anyone would care if it meant having to use full size over-the -ear h/phones.

There isn't anywhere that one can access unbiased advice. I live in a small town in France of around 10,000 and we have at least 5 audative come spectacle shops. On a par with pizza and hairdressers.

 

[phantompowered]

Not to open a can of worms, but: cannabis helps.