All - I would like to share something with you.
First let me share my story with you:
I have had tinnitus for about 2.5 years now. It came out of nowhere and instantaneously, literally within half a day, maybe less, I heard ringing and loud. During the first 2/3 months, it was really bad, I hear it even when I was outdoors. I started to do some research online on what is this noise that I am hearing (up until that point, I had no idea that a thing called tinnitus was even a thing); during my research I read someone commented on a forum stating something to the effect of:
"Anyone else who thought that their tinnitus was the sound of silence when they were kids?" And holy mother effing shit, all of that memory came exploding back. . .
I had tinnitus when I was a young child (my earliest memory of it was when I was around 5 or 6 years old) and it just disappeared during my childhood (don’t recall when) and I never even remembered any of it since. So I lived over 35 years of my life with absolutely no tinnitus and no recollection of ever having it, but it came back out of nowhere 2.5 years ago. This really left me believing that I always had tinnitus and somehow when I was a kid, while my brain was still developing, it had rewired itself to completely blocked out (or ignore) my tinnitus and then somehow 2.5 years ago, something happened to my brain and/or environment and the tinnitus return. Which is why I am really intrigued by Lenire, as it uses the science of neuroplasticity to rewire the brain to ignore the tinnitus.
About 4 to 6 months after the fateful day of getting sudden tinnitus, I went through TRT (tinnitus retraining therapy; most audiologists can provide this therapy). I don't want to tell you too much about TRT if you don't know about it or have not done it. But I would highly recommend you look into TRT. About 6 to 8 months into TRT, my tinnitus is manageable, and I can carry on and enjoy life with minimal nuance.
Then around late last year, I had a flare up; I suspect it was a combination of stress and hearing my tinnitus frequency (I brought a new humidifier and it makes this whistling noise that is very close to my tinnitus frequency - my tinnitus frequency is about 6,200hz, give or take). Since I still have the TRT equipment, I started TRT back up on my own, and it calm things down after few weeks (less than a month), the second round of TRT actually yield a better result on most days than the results of my first round of TRT.
Right before the flare up late last year, I wanted to do Lenire, but after reading
@amirm experience, I said f that, I don't need my Tinnitus to get any worse, so I never went through with it. But when my tinnitus flared up late last year, I investigated a little bit more into Lenire, I came across another therapy that uses the same science as Lenire. It's called Neosensory (
https://neosensory.com). It was cheap relative to Lenire and TRT, so I said f it, I gave it a shot. I started on new year’s day (I am not yet done with the therapy yet, the therapy treatment takes about 2 months),
but. . .
So far, half way into the treatment, I can happily report to you that it has worked for me (albeit things got worse before it got better). There are many hours of most days in the past week and a half, I said to myself: damn, it's quiet, so quiet to the point that I am like where the hell did my tinnitus go? Of course, if you go looking for your tinnitus, you will find it rather fast because you are not supposed to think about it, in fact, you shouldn't even know what tinnitus is (like when I was a kid), but that's how quiet it is at certain times of the day. Also, during the daily treatment, the tinnitus disappears, even in dead quiet rooms; so, I actually look forward to the treatment each day. Sometimes, I will do the treatment for 15-20 minutes and I say heck with it, let me take a nap, I end up doing the treatment for an hour while napping and I wake up feeling great.
I want to report this to the group here, because I want you all to know about my experience with this bimodal therapy. Now, I must warn you, try at your own risk because it is based on the same science as Lenire and we have a patient here (sorry Amir) where Lenire did not work, if anything, possibly made things worse.
Separately, I also want to share some of my tricks of the trade with you.
- I find that after a good night of sleep, my tinnitus is almost nonexistent in the morning. I read an article that popped up on my google feed several months ago where some research was done where tinnitus has some relationship with rem sleep.
- Anecdotally, low atmospheric pressure seems to make my tinnitus worse. So, I like sea level.
- When I am deeply focused and concentrating on something, the Tinnitus disappears, literally disappears, like now when I am so focused on writing this, despite I am writing about tinnitus. I find interesting podcasts to be helpful, because I am so focused on the topic and listening tentatively, the tinnitus disappears.
- Anecdotally, exposure to low frequencies helps.
- Rooms with a lot of reflections and reverbs helps A LOT. This also means my treated listening room sucks for tinnitus.
Here is another thing I'd recommend you all to do, or rather don’t do:
Never talk about tinnitus with your loved ones, in case they have tinnitus and have no idea what it is and their brain has long ignored it and are living a normal life; or they were like me, who had tinnitus when they were a kid and it just disappeared. You don't want to make them aware of tinnitus if it doesn't bother them. Also, I would try not to let your loved ones stay in quiet rooms for too long and too often (I suspect, with no evidence, that being in a quiet room often and for prolong period of time along with stress is what triggered the restart of my tinnitus 2.5 years ago). Feel free to talk about tinnitus with your mortal enemies though
. I absolutely refuse to talk about tinnitus with my family. In fact, couple of weeks ago, I was in my mom's house, and I noticed some ticking sound (it turned out to be some timer btw) and I asked my mom what is that sound, her reply: "I don't know, there are a lot of sounds that this house makes lately, like that ringing noise." Folks, my mom has tinnitus, but apparently it doesn't bother her nor does she even know what tinnitus is, so I won't be talking about anymore background sound with her ever again. Of course, if her tinnitus begins to bother her, I will pay for her TRT and Neosensory/Lenire treatment.
In the end, I want to say this to you and anyone suffering from tinnitus: It can be managed, in fact, managed to the point that it doesn't even bother you and you will live a normal life, like I am now. Think about it this way, tinnitus existed for eons, I believe I read somewhere that Socrates suffered from tinnitus; tinnitus probably existed at the point of evolution where that humanoid’s biology is capable of tinnitus. And for tens of thousands of years (if not longer), there is nothing anyone can do about it. But the science is unraveling the mysteries of this condition just in the last few years and decades alone. I am very optimistic that in the near future there will be even more science on tinnitus where a treatment (most likely some form of therapy) that is even better than bimodal treatment that Lenire and Neosensory is based on. But even without it, you can live a rather normal life, like I am now.
Sending all of you my very best regards and happy listening.
www.theguardian.com
mynoise.net
