tinnitus

xpost.

This is one of my biggest fears. I keep a pair of earplugs on me at all times, usually, just in case. I also keep an earplug loosely in my right (slightly worse) ear when I listen to music. It's very frustrating, and I don't get to listen to nearly as much music as I'd like, because if I'm not responsible I'll get pangs of ringing, pain, and bad pressure, like a few days ago, forcing me to go 4 days this weeks without music :(

Also, are there particular frequencies that are worse for your ears? Like are repetitive bass drums going to do more damage than say, mid or high range guitars, for instance?

I imagine there's no limit to the frequencies that can damage your ears, and likewise everyone's head noise is special like a snowflake.

Assuming that hearing damage is indeed what tinnitus is. We don't really know that for sure. There's correlation, though, for damn sure, if not causation.

I've had a low running case [of tinnitus] for years. Much as I love ______________, I have them to blame.

^^^Wouldn't have guessed the Kitchens Of Distinction!

the notorious 4k notch

your ears are better protected against low frequencies (that's why they don't explode every time you're out in a strong wind), but that theory kinda goes out the window at loud concerts, since the bass ends up having lots of more destructive frequencies appearing alongside it just as a result of natural distortion and so on.

After I saw The Flaming Lips (of all notoriously loud bands?) my hearing was fuzzy and pitched up a few tones for several days. That was fun. I will assume that that's the main reason for the EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE that interrupts the sounds of silence in my head.

Tinnitus is generally associated with hearing loss, as the ringing is always there (it's from all that stuff in your head like blood cells etc. that are right next to your ear, I think) but your brain filters it out. When you have hearing loss, your brain detects it, and turns up the volume so to speak to cover it up.

I wish I could just have a child's eardrums implanted into my head, that would be nice.

Tinnitus is generally associated with high frequencies, I think - as you get older, your ability to detect high frequencies decreases dramatically. For example, it is accepted that people can hear up to 20khz, but many people top out at 16khz.

I remember reading somewhere awhile ago that the military had developed some pill that could protect hearing, provided you took it before/after being exposed to loud noise - apparently it was just a concentrated cocktail of antioxidants, which was supposed to counteract all the free radicals which are released by your ear hairs when they are assaulted by, say, a Dinosaur Jr. concert. Or something.

this whole thread is making me nervous given that tonight i will be experiencing a gig for the first time in quite a while.
a small pub, loud guitar kind of experience.
the joy and the pain.

I have to go to a 5 music festival in a few weeks, I'm pretty nervous about that (although I find using nasal rinse bottles and taking decongestants to relieve pressure helps, if only as a placebo).

the ringing is always there (it's from all that stuff in your head like blood cells etc.

I seriously doubt that blood cells etc make any kind of sound, at least not that our ears are designed to pick up. The straight-up as-we-know-them physiological explanations don't quite work, or else someone would have already put an evil, bony finger on them and concocted a sketchy drug to "treat" it. (Cynical? Moi?)

It seems to be either neurological or psychological, but of course you can't rule out physiological factors. The trouble is that something like this, with no outward symptoms that doctors can see with their eyes, no way to learn about it from a cadaver -- this shit stumps medicine every time. It's a cocktail of causes, very likely. Ever try to un-mix a bloody mary?

i've had a strange case of tinnitus, ever since i saw lightning bolt. not only was i standing five feet away from their mind melting amps, but i also got kicked in the head a few times, by some dude who seemed to be having a seizure while crowdsurfing. best show i've ever been to.

anyway... that was two years ago, and i've had a lot of trouble sleeping, since. forgot the last time i found sleep before 5:00 AM.

hardcore.

every single detail of that story is extreme. I think you should lay off the Mountain Dew and see if that helps.

wear ear plugs, people

i'm studying for neuro right now, but tinnitus never came up unfortunately. some thoughts, tho:

-- my dad has tinnitus, and has ever since an injury to his inner ear (lifting something very heavy underwater...blew up one of his ear drums)
-- it's possible to hear blood flow: clinicians do it all the time w/steths, but it's possible to hear it internally, too! after i go running or whatever i 'hear' my heart pounding.
-- my guess is that tinnitus as a result of loud music might have something to do with damaging the hair cells that are responsible for transduction of vibratory input to neuronal signal. damaging them might make them 'always on,' so as far as your brain is concerned, there's a XXX kHz pitch going at all times. that might also explain why tinnitus is associated with higher pitches: higher frequencies mean higher energy, so i guess it isn't surprising that they'd be more damagin

also, according to the internet, there's something called "objective tinnitus," which is a sound that a clinician can hear, too, if they listen to your ear! neat!

interesting. i don't have much of a problem with continuous ringing, only after shows and occasional thing where i hear a high ringing pitch that goes away after ten seconds or so. but after going to an audiologist i found out that i've definitely lost some hearing in the upper range, and that's mostly from overexposure to LOW pitches (well, there have been a lot of loud high pitches too over the years).

it's possible to hear blood flow: clinicians do it all the time w/steths, but it's possible to hear it internally, too! after i go running or whatever i 'hear' my heart pounding.

Ok, yes. It's pretty obvious that's not the problem, though. I shouldn't have responded to that post at all -- totally my bad.

damaging them might make them 'always on,' so as far as your brain is concerned

That's interesting! Of all the ear doctors I have been to, not one of them ever said that. That almost makes... sense.

the going theory on tinnitus, and the one that makes the most sense to me, is that the mind "fills in" a frequency which it notices is missing from the sound spectrum to which it was accustomed before the listener's hearing was damaged. your hearing can be damaged for a little while before your brain "notices" that it's not getting information from (say) the 4k region, at which point it starts feeding you the tone 24/7.

the other thing is that bass frequencies do the most damage - they don't "carve out" at the frequency where they occur; they damage the high receptors.

word

wear ear plugs, people

^^^^ I can't stress this enough.

the other thing is that bass frequencies do the most damage - they don't "carve out" at the frequency where they occur; they damage the high receptors.

― worm? lol (J0hn D.), Thursday, May 7, 2009 12:49 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

genuinely curious about the mechanics of this! wonder if it's due to how frequency transduction is arranged along the basilar membrane: high frequencies come "first" along the length of the membrane, low frequencies at the far end. given a high amplitude signal of any frequency, the high-end receptors will ultimately be subject to the most disruption. that is, any given sound wave will pass by the high-freq receptors, but not all will 'make' it to the low-freq receptors.

someone who knows about sound/harmonics: so, i feel like i've 'heard' high tone harmonics while listening to low tones, but not the other way around. assuming that's true (that is, that low tones are more likely to have high tonal 'activity'), then it would make sense that very loud, low-freq, complex tones (construction sounds, lightning bolt) would preferentially damage high-freq receptors because a) they'd be getting spiked activity even in the absence of clear, isolated high-freq tones and b) the basilar membrane is generally less-compliant (stiffer) at the high end anyway (a structural necessity for high-freq transduction)

given a high amplitude signal of any frequency, the high-end receptors will ultimately be subject to the most disruption.

(this is not strictly true...only in the case of a complex tone, with harmonics. the basilar membrane is designed such that a clear tone of a given freq will preferentially deform the membrane only at the point of maximum amplitude for that freq. but, we don't sit around listening to sine-waves all day, so if low-tones have the ability to 'encode' harmonic information in a way that high-freq tones do not, it would stand to reason that high-tone receptors are seeing more action at any given time)

30 seconds of wiki would suggest i'm on the right track, here

can u tell i am procrastinating

genuinely curious about the mechanics of this!

you're ahead of me here - my training's in nursing, I generally know a little of the "what" and less of the "how"

the going theory on tinnitus, and the one that makes the most sense to me, is that the mind "fills in" a frequency which it notices is missing from the sound spectrum to which it was accustomed before the listener's hearing was damaged. your hearing can be damaged for a little while before your brain "notices"

This would certainly go with my experience. I have 2 "noises" in my tinnitus; a very low humming and a quite high pitched sound in multiple "notes" as if listening to the fade out of some bells. My bf has played me that "note only teenagers can hear" frequency before and he can hear it (he says) and I cannot. Also the TV apparently makes a hideous whistle when it has no signal I can never hear.

I *have* had one damaging concert exp: mogwai about 5 years ago with no earplugs, couldnt hear too good for 2 days afterward. Thats it though. I dont use bud earphones ever.

I read somewhere some ppl think codiene can aggravate swelling/irritation in the hearing fibres. I wonder if thats true? Also, I'm sure sure sure smoking is doing something bad?

the thing is, as you get older, the li'l hearing receptors are gonna go anyway, mogwai or no. talk to some old people - an incredibly high number of them have tinnitus, it's just that it's about 9th on their list of physical complaints

Yeah, tell me about it. God i'm only 38 and I'm already going deaf and getting stiff in the limbs. TOO SOON GOD PAL.

if you still have your youthful shape then count yr blessings young'n

I pictured you shaking a cane at me while saying that, J0hn =)

Xposts: Taking too much aspirin can make your ears ring (don't know about codeine, though)

And I was just reciting what an ENT told me, and information I've gotten (second-hand) from audiologists.

I just don't understand how people can go to events every weekend, listen to music for hours a day and live to hear.

Nah, never take asprin so its not that. I suppose it could just be from that one Mogwai gig, but I fear J0hn's right and the answer is just lol u old.

;;_;

...and smoking. That has to be doing something. Though if I have a few days off it makes no diff. I wonder how long a temp case of tinnitus takes to wear off if one ceased the cause?

So, does anyone's tinnitus get worse when they yawn, bite hard, jut out their jaw? Because mine does, and I'd heard about relations between TMJ and tinnitus, but having known nothing about TMJ, and not really having problems with my jaw I didn't really bother. But a google search about this has yielded results. I think I may ask a doctor soon to about this, perhaps get checked up.

I have a TMJ problem sometimes and it definitely makes my tinnitus worse. There are a lot of nerves that go through the point between the ear and the top of the TMJ.

That definitely might explain why I started having hearing related issues, more or less from out of nowhere at 18. It becomes very grating going to doctors and ENT's who just tell you its allergies, despite never having had allergy problems.

Tinnitus vs. The Hum: fite! (quietly)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8056284.stm

broken tellies most likely

there was a good article about tinnitus in the nyer a while back

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/02/09/090209fa_fact_groopman

This October, I'll have had tinnitus in my right year for a full decade. Ummm. yay.

the scariest part of that article btw:

This past August, I visited the University of Buffalo, which houses one of the major clinical and research centers for the evaluation and study of tinnitus. After filling out a detailed questionnaire, I met with Christina Stocking of the Speech-Language and Hearing Clinic, who has a doctorate in audiology and specializes in the condition. Stocking thought that I might have suffered noise trauma during a youth spent on the New York City subways. Sitting in the first row of a rock concert exposes you to between a hundred and ten and a hundred and twenty decibels; the screech of the New York subways can reach about a hundred and fifteen decibels. Moreover, since much of the New York subway system is underground, the noise reverberates in the tunnels, unlike in Boston, where many of the trains are above ground and noise dissipates, or in Paris, where several metro lines run on rubber wheels.

No shit. Every time I've visited a city with trains (mostly Chicago) I've wondered exactly how loud things are getting in the tunnels. I'm surprised there's never been a "wear ear protection on the subway" health movement.

Then again, there are a half dozen reasons why my hearing should be shot, but I've been lucky so far. I thought I was having a tinnitus issue last week at work, but then another coworker confirmed the florescent lights were screeching. And I could hear it.

I just celebrated one full year with tinnitus in my left ear...(what the doctor told me at the time: "when you notice that it's gone, you will know you're dead"...so, I got that to look forward to)...really screams when I have a head cold...(like right now)...fuck it though...in general, I feel like I'm winning...

Mines still bad. I'm more bothered by the current poor hearing in general, though. Which tinnitus never normally messes with. My hearing's been muffled since my cold 1-2 months back. I'm reluctant to go to a GP though because their answer to everything is "syringe of water in the ear" and they can fuck right off with that, it's dangerous and I dont know why they think it helps.

My tinnitus is noticably higher in one ear than the other. I feel the need to tune my head.

It's such a mystery how all over the place is. I think I can categorize and roughly quantify it:

40% of the time, it's either not there at all or I'm not conscious of it, which as a practical matter probably amounts to the same thing. When I am aware of its complete absence, especially when out walking late at night, it's like a gift.

25% of the time, it's very faint--there, but not a bother at all. I'd accept this 100% of the time if given the choice.

25% of the time, it's actively annoying, enough to spoil a walk.

10% of the time, often after waking from a nap with the TV on, I'm thinking "Are you kidding me?" And I regret every time I ever listened to music really loud in the car.

from that xpost Scientific American coverage: Our approach is to make everything in the auditory system much more hyperactive to everything but the tinnitus.
Reminds me of reading long ago that William Shatner was trying a headset, I think it was: white noise biofeedback, auditory system learning to ignore tinnitus. He said it was making a significant difference, but I don't know about long term results

just listen to Merzbow once a week (not kidding)