Ear ringing?

[Nords]

I have had Tinnitus for as long as I can remember. It doesn't normally bother me and most of the time I don't even notice it. But mention it (or post something like this) and there it is ringing away. I can imagine that a sudden onset would be hard to ignore.

Same here, although it's probably not helped by years of six-hour watches in submarine engine rooms, even with a variety of earplugs.

I can still hear high frequencies and I can pick out transients from the background noise, but I'm having a lot of trouble distinguishing conversational frequencies from the background.

Some of tinnitus seems to be just system noise-- your pulse, fluid sloshing around in your ears, even "bad" neurons firing from faulty stimuli. At least it's relatively constant instead of getting your attention every few seconds.

When my father-in-law developed tinnitus, ironically as a CBS audio technician, it manifested as the noise of gushing water. For the first few weeks he used to get up every night convinced that a faucet had been left on or a pipe had burst. I'm glad I didn't have that symptom.

Mine plays in-a-gadda-da-vida.

That's a completely different ear worm that's going to be with me for the rest of the day!

 

[Sue J]

For years I've had a hissing/ringing in my ears. I've gotten used to it but I'm much more diligent about wearing hearing protection if warranted. I have a summer job at a outdoor concert venue and I ALWAYS wear ear plugs for the rock/country shows.

What I find even more annoying than my ear ringing is the sound of my husband's gum chewing. Constant, persistent, non-stop open mouthed chewing that is at a frequency that cuts through other sounds, including TV.

If we try hypnosis do you think it would be most effective to treat me or him?

Or does this belong in it's own topic.......

 

[Tiger]

I've had tinnitus since I was around 50 (now 72). It manifests itself as a "hissing" sound sort of like the sound of steam coming from a radiator (if any of you are old enough to remember steam heat you know what I'm talking about. For the most part it's a "white" noise that I'm not aware of. If I think about it I can hear it if not I'm not conciously aware of it.

 

[TromboneAl]

When my father-in-law developed tinnitus, ironically as a CBS audio technician, it manifested as the noise of gushing water. For the first few weeks he used to get up every night convinced that a faucet had been left on or a pipe had burst.

Once Lena heard some strange "dew-ee" sound that I couldn't hear. It turned out it was a caused by a life-threatening and headache-producing AV malformation in her brain. It was fixed by placing a titanium clot-producing doohickey in her brain at UCSF.

 

[Nords]

Once Lena heard some strange "dew-ee" sound that I couldn't hear. It turned out it was a caused by a life-threatening and headache-producing AV malformation in her brain. It was fixed by placing a titanium clot-producing doohickey in her brain at UCSF.

Yikes.

I suppose he could have been flirting with an AV for the last couple decades, but he eventually just grew to tolerate it. He says his tinnitus was caused by "two decades of wearing headphones on the sidelines with the producer screaming at me over the noise of the football game". Overwork (admittedly with overtime) and chronic fatigue had to have been a factor too. Looking back at photos from that period, it seemed to age him visibly in just a few months.

Thanks-- if I ever hear strange noises with headaches like that then I won't be shy about asking for a CAT scan.