I've had tinnitus for as long as I can remember, so I've never had any negative feelings associated with it. As a kid I just thought it was natural that everyone's ears would ring all the time and would get louder when it was quiet. My ears are ringing right now as I write this.

Then I developed pulsatile tinnitus in my early 30s, which means I can hear my heartbeat in my (right) ear at all hours of the day as well. When I tell people about it, I like to describe it like the heartbeat from Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart.

Developing pulsatile tinnitus really affected my mental health for a while, despite living my whole life with a constant buzzing and ringing in my ears. I couldn't get over the fact that there was now this loud whooshing sound in my right ear, 60+ times per second, and my doctors couldn't even tell me why after several MRIs. I thought I was going crazy, or that I'd developed some kind of brain tumor invisible to scans.

I don't have any great advice except to say that eventually (maybe six months to a year) my brain just adapted to the sound and I hardly ever think of it anymore. It's as much a part of my life as the buzzing and ringing I've had since I was a kid. It can be annoying when I'm trying to listen intently for something (my wife is a birder and it's hard to hear things she points out), but it thankfully doesn't affect my mental health anymore.

My dad had tinnitus and it bothered him relentlessly. He was constantly following potential new treatments, talking to doctors about it, etc.

I have it too. I've taken the approach of truly accepting it: "I will hear these sounds the rest of my life, and I'm truly okay with that". As a result it doesn't give me anxiety or bother me, and I find it helps it fade into the background. The more you focus on it (and let it bother you) the more it stays in the foreground.

I know the advice of "just learn to be okay with it" is easy to communicate but very hard to actually do. I found mindfulness meditation helped me learn to accept things without judgement, including the presence of my tinnitus.

I got a high-pitch ringing tinnitus when I was about 18-20. I went from being a person that falls asleep in <5 min to needing at least 1h + needing a background radio/white noise/stream to fall asleep. I sympathize and recognize everything that you reflect on here. I felt kind of "depressed" the first year.

But no matter how cliché it sounds, it does get better with time. The brain does get better and better with filtering it. I also discovered that my tinnitus gets worse with caffeine, stress and lack of sleep. In periods when I live a overall "healthy" lifestyle in respect to sleep, stress, food, working out etc. I forget that I have tinnitus. When I sleep to little and/or when I'm stressed, it comes back full force. I have totally cut out caffeine, which also happened to help with my migraine.

Now ~15 years later I'm in my early thirties and I rarely think about it tbh. However, after a bad cold about 5 years ago I got a secondary tinnitus which is a low-frequency humming. This set me back and cased me some sleepless nights but I have adapted to this as well.

The thing I miss the most is the concept of "total silence". I do envy my fiancé sometimes if we're out in the woods or whatever and I know that she can just relax while "hearing nothing".

Let time do its work and experiment with your body/health to find what makes it lessen. Chances are that de-stressing, sleeping well and eating and working out does make it better.

I have it too.

It suddenly came one day I was more stressed than usual. Stayed since then.

I often catch myself falling asleep thinking: maybe when I wake up tomorrow, it’s gone. Just to wake up the next day and hear it again.

It’s very annoying. But I have learned to live with it. Some days are better some are worse.

I got it about ten years ago and it drove me absolutely insane for a few months until I just accepted that I would have it. Then a weird thing happened: my brain stopped paying attention to it. Now I mostly only hear it when I think to myself, “do I still have tinnitus?” and try to listen for it. It’s still there, I just don’t care anymore. I had no idea that even what you hear can be such a subjective experience until I went through this, but it makes sense. You do this all the time when you tune out ambient sounds and conversations to focus on something.

Just wondering do you think you got tinnitus or was it there and you suddenly started noticing? I don't know I got it around 20y ago but I'm honestly unsure if it was one or the other because it became worse and worse the more I started focusing on it. Eventually it subsided. I can still hear it if I listen for it (as I just did now and I can hear a distinct 'bruising' kind of sound) but there's literally months between I even think of it or notice it. There have been studies that lots of 'normal' people notice tinnitus when they enter a sound-proof room. What helped me was just taking long showers - I literally couldn't hear a thing during the shower and some time after. And it seems the 'drown out' period would last longer. And just knowing something would stop it somehow made me ease more into it and maybe reduced the fear that had been programmed into my brain. I also did omega 3 and gingo biloba (just low doses) and felt like it had some effect. Was there any trigger and how 'loud' do you perceive it?

I'm really sorry to hear that.

I once read something about the prevalence of depression in people with tinnitus. I was surprised by it, but I didn't really consider how disruptive it must be when you're accustomed to not having it. By contrast, I've had it basically my whole life. I remember laying awake at night, listening to the deafening ringing, thinking about how weird it was that silence isn't silent. It wasn't until later that I knew my experience isn't the norm.

I'd love to have a treatment or cure. Especially for folks like you that truly suffer from it.

Also got tinnitus here. Woke up with it about 5 years ago. I'd recently had COVID and was also on a strong medication. But I've been a lifelong insomniac so this article has me wondering.

I can only sleep when there's another noise in the room for frame of reference, otherwise the tinnitus feels like the loudest sound in the universe. My current solution is an air purifier on its audible middle setting (basically white noise with a use), and a humidifier in winter.

I’ve had tinnitus since I was maybe 5 years old, maybe from my frequent ear infections at the time? I remember discovering it during nap time and noting that silence had a high-pitched, discordant set of tones to it. But I thought it receded when normal sounds, like people talking, tv or music, or wind occurred. It was just the sound of silence.

I still have it, and now I know what it is. I think it’s worse now, but I can still unconsciously ignore it most of the time, although knowing what it is and that it’s aberrant and not something everyone hears has made it psychologically more irritating than when I was young.

Oh, that blows, I’m so sorry. I’ve had it 40 years; I hear it now, louder than anything else in the room.

But mostly I don’t. You do really get used to it. It won’t get better, but you will.

Avoid complete silence (a bit of white noise or other background sound helps to mask it for some people), and try to avoid threads like this. Anything that makes me actively think about tinnitus is the absolute worst trigger, suddenly making it seem really loud after barely noticing it for weeks/months.

The brain definitely seems to get better at filtering it out over months/years though, at least until something makes you focus on it

You'll get used to it. 42 male here. Started at 12-13 years of age. Barely notice it anymore. Some things (lack of sleep, extreme stress, some medicines/drugs) accentuate it a bit, but it's annoying at best, not interfering. I also produce music, so I don't think it has affected my hearing. So you'll be good. Stop worrying.

Oh, use a fan based white noise machine (or a loud fan) during sleeping, really drowns it out.

Don't worry: you will get used to it in a couple years and won't even notice it.

Similar, I went past an event that was playing unusually loud music last may. I ended up with tinnitus and hyperacusis.

I don't know which is worse, but the combination has me contemplating euthanasia on a regular basis

I don't have tinnitus, but I live about a mile from a major highway. Depending on the time of day, the wind, the temperature, etc, it can carry the road noise directly to my yard. It doesn't bother my wife or my kids, but I hate it.

When it gets to be too much, though, I can just go inside, and that's not something that you can do with tinnitus.

I'm sorry that you're going through that, that must be terrible. Have you tried adding white noise?

I've had it for a few years now. One time I got a throat infection and it amplified to a slightly louder volume. It went down to its original level a few months later, but the time when it was slightly louder was scarier than when it first appeared. I was worried it was going to keep increasing.

I got it late Feb 2020. Wasn't great to have that sound haunt me through the rest of the isolation.

i have it for more than 12 years. 8 years ago, I began to dont give a f“““ anymore. I now can go days and weeks without hearing it. Even when reading in silence. Sometimes, when my brain decides to losten to it again, I immediately start to distract myself. Sometimes for hours, until „I forget“

A lot of people hear a slight hiss. Is that tinnitus? Faint enough that it's not noticable 90% of the time.

I'm on the exact same boat. Same age and got it randomly this Summer. Are you able to modulate the pitch by moving your jaw sideways or wide opening it? Would be great to bounce off some ideas. I'll drop you an email if that's OK.

Same thing here , but triggered by tiredness/stress. If I sleep a lot and well, then it somehow fades until I’m tired again.

I assume my brain is somehow able to filter it out, unless it’s too tired/busy.

I've had tinnitus longer than I can remember (33m) and I also have moderate visual snow also as long as I can remember. Sadly, I have no tips on tuning it out, but I'd do anything for a cure

It gets better,I promise. It becomes an annoying companion,but you develop ways to forget about it

Don’t let it get to you like this.

I have had it since I was 13 (60 now). The base noise is filtered out unless I listen for it, but ion occasion I get a temporary deafness, followed by almost a popping sound, then a LOUD tinnitus at a different frequency which slowly fades.

Sometimes I get a new frequency. Since 2000 it has gotten worse, since 2020, much worse. But changing my environment seems to effect it for better and worse.

No doubt mine is connected to my mental illness and probably temporal lobe seizures.

Fellow tinnitus haver here.

The worst thing you can do is fixate on it. To avoid that, you want to make it so that you never hear it. Play some noise whenever you need it especially when sleeping. Then, over time, learn to accept it. And then the craziest thing happens: it does actually get better. You don’t just get used to it, it actually improves. It’s a profound connection of mind and body.

Got it similarly. 7-8 years ago. Probably from ANC. It used to feel loud, now I have to remind myself to hear it. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

I wont call it anecdotal evidence but i am told, in "traditional" Greek medicine,tinnitus is a symptom of constipation.

Its told you fix constipation, your ringing ears will get fixed.

I know its not 100% but try to fix your bowel movement if it isn't working properly already.

I'll do even better — here's the original 2022 paper:

https://academic.oup.com/braincomms/article/4/3/fcac089/6563...

I thought you were exaggerating so I went back and counted: I stopped at 50 and I wasn't even CLOSE to reaching the end of the page!!!

uBlock Origin reduces it to an almost reasonable number of three embeds plus the "trending" section. But the cookies consent modal is also disgusting

Not sure about stress, but definitely have the same exp re sleep. If I’m tired the ringing is very noticeable, when I wake up early after a late night it can be deafening. But besides from noticing it being “louder” it seems to go away, or I just ignore it.

as always, the devil (and research) is in the details

it seems that these researchers think it's non-REM sleep that helps in prevention, not just sleep in general

Mine will also dial up when I'm sick or am dealing with allergies or the day after eating too much junk food.

So perhaps the connection is sleep -> stress -> tinnitus?

Same experience here.

This way: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4411996/

> The doctors were pretty useless and said they couldn't see anything wrong and to just live with it.

Unfortunately that is the truth of it. Sometimes tinnitus can be traced to other parts of the body, but more often it seems to be caused by the brain acting up. And we just don't have enough knowledge about the brain to fix things like that, so all you can do is try to habituate.

I've heard other people say this.

Wonder if the root cause is inflammation, which might go up with stress, bad sleep, bad diet, etc

Ive had almost the exsct same experience. I dropped 100+ rounds through my mosin one day stupidly without hearing protetcion, and have been listening to my electric crickets ever since. It isnt distracting at this point but would be nice to turn off eventually.

Someone explaining their tinnitus symptoms made me realise that I had tinnitus for years. Until then I didn’t “hear” it because I just assumed it was normal.

Since then, I’ve realised that tinnitus is contagious! So I prefer not to talk about it just in case I pass it on.

I doubt most dentists know more about sleep apnea than you do. Look elsewhere.

I can play a pure sine wave tone with a tone generator app, and dial the frequency up until it precisely matches my tinnitus. I originally did this just to determine that frequency.

But I noticed a side-effect: if I then turn off the tone generator, my tinnitus would disappear! Unfortunately that effect only lasts for a minute or less, so it is not really practical to get relief this way.

I have a coworker that swears by certain sound baths to remedy his tinnitus. It “cures” him for 10-12 months and then he just goes back.

Don't know about the tuning fork one, but there is a method where by if you poke some muscle on the back of your neck repeatedly, it stops for some people. This is apparently due to that muscle being the thing that makes a noise, and poking it eventually physically exhausts it temporarily. Obviously that only works if that's your cause.

I vaguely recall that tuning fork remedy as well