Some examples:

- jutting my jaw forwards

- moving my ears back with my face muscles

- pushing downward on the top of my head with my hands

Another possible clue: this has been true since I can remember — even as a child, well before I developed tinnitus. I always thought this was normal, until mentioning it to others, and it seems no one I know shares this experience.

This, to me, suggests that (my flavor of tinnitus, at least) may be due to physical/muscle related causes, and not necessarily associated with hearing damage or neurological. Or that I was “destined” to get tinnitus at some point, as if I was born with some defect that others weren’t.

Or, it could just be that there is something else unrelated with how my muscles are connected to my hearing that cause the same tinnitus (e.g. same frequency), and that the persistent tinnitus actually is hearing damage.

I’ve not looked into it much, and have really only mentioned this to my doctor (who mostly blew it off as irrelevant), and others in my family. But thought I’d share here in case anybody experienced something similar, and may have insight into what causes this “muscle-related tinnitus”, and if it’s somehow connected or unrelated to the persistent tinnitus.

There have been small studies regarding somatic tinnitus, see for instance

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2633109/

For modifying tinnitus loudness, the most common is that it increases when clenching the jaw. In the above paper, the cerebral blood flow was measured with PET, and for people with somatic tinnitus, when clenching their jaw, in addition to the sensory-motor areas, the auditory cortex became activated as well. However, the underlying reason is unknown.

In my case, I had pretty severe hearing loss as a little child because of liquid in my middle ear. Due to that, I continuously had my mouth open so that I could hear at least a little bit through the eustachian tubes, and I guess this might have influenced the interactions between these brain regions. But who knows. In the end, my parents realized what's going on and I got tympanostomy tubes, and I'm hearing fine now. Of course I don't know if the tinnitus really comes from that, because I cannot remember (I must have been around 3 years old).

After some research I’ve found some people can control something called the “tensor tympani” and generate sounds described as a “roar” but being a subjective experience I am not certain this is exactly what I am doing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/earrumblersassemble/

I assumed tinnitus was mostly caused by damaging the little hairs that sense sound becoming damaged from loud sounds and not working anymore, which I would have done with headphone use in my teens/early 20s.

I find I can clench the muscle, but can only and occasionally relax the thing.

When I do clench, my ear response curve in the midrange, say 800Hz to a few KHz, is improved.

Have a fan handy? Try it and listen. You may hear a lot more from that fan.

Squeeze your fist and hold it up to your ear. It's audible.

Partially covering the outer ear makes the flow of blood audible.

That's not tinnitus-related.

Hearing a crackling sound when you flex your ears is quite common. This noise typically results from the movement of small muscles around your ear, particularly the tensor tympani muscle in your middle ear. These muscles contract to dampen certain sounds, like chewing, but can also be voluntarily or involuntarily activated when you move your ears. This action can cause a vibration or movement of the eardrum, leading to the crackling sound. It's usually harmless, but if you experience pain, discomfort, or any other symptoms, it's advisable to consult a healthcare professional.

The clicking sound is the opening of the Eustachian tube. Flexing the tensor tympani sounds like a deep rumbling.

It's one of those things where trying to describe it to someone who physically can't do it or doesn't know how to may make them question your judgment and/or sanity.

> "[...] relieve your ear pressure without moving anything else"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frenzel_maneuver

With controlling the muscles in the ear, one can do it without a nose clip. It's called BTV (or VTO sometimes in English)[2], and instead of forcing air in to open the eustachian tube, you just open it by muscles.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ear_clearing [2]: https://www.freedivinginstructors.com/article/204

To me, it "feels" kind of like moving the base of my tongue sideways and tensing my bottom jaw (in the same way I would pre-yawn).

I've known how to do the basic BTV/VTO for many years, but it wasn't quite enough for me to equalize pressure while diving (without descending very slowly, I suppose). Just a few minutes with the techniques on that page has already improved my ability dramatically.

But for freediving with the air going towards the stomach and much faster descent it's still a bit tricky. One thing is if I'm not equalizing quickly enough, no amount of force I can muster will open the tubes again without actually doing a more classic pinch nose technique. Doing a classic equalize you will often "overblow" air in and can descend a bit before needing to equalize again. But with VTO you're only equalizing to a perfect balance so will need to make sure to keep equalizing to not get under pressure. But of course not as much hassle hands free, I try to just do click-click-click continuously, almost every kick down to remind myself to keep it open. But yeah, if I get too much under-pressure I'm not able to open it again hands free.

I also feel head angle matters a lot, so trying to not bend the neck too much to look down, but instead swim down while looking "straight ahead" instead of where you're actually going helps for me.

There is, however, a simple trick anyone can do to equalize the pressure both ways: swallow. Works wonders with babies and toddlers.

Of course, one might not be able to distinguish what muscles one is contracting, so it might be that most people actually tense both the tvp and the tympani at the same time, getting both the roaring sound from the tympani and the clicking sound from the tvp when the tubes open. Hence it's two different, but connected, things.

tensor tympani rumble = deep continuous rumbling sound you may hear when yawning

Eustachian tube clicking = a single slightly wet click you hear when you move your soft palate to block off your nasal cavity from your throat (via the tensor veli palatini muscle)

So with this I can play a melody with the ringing noise. Sometimes I do this until I fall asleep. :-)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_reflex

As I understood it, the ear and the jaw muscle are delicately close. "Pressure" on the ear can somehow cause the nerves to send such signals.

I got prescribed some special training to relax the muscles in the neck and jaw area; still need to start it.

I read that being able to modulate the tinnitus to also be quieter somehow is a good indicator of being able to improve it with therapy.

Putting my symptoms here:

- Constant noise in ear

- Also seems like noise / tingling sensation in the brain

- Is higher just when I wake up

- Started along with an infection that went to the ear. Infection cleared up. Tinnitus didn't.

- Been on for a year and a half.

- Its terribly unbearable. Not suicidal level but very close to it.

I feel that, it sucks. For me it started with like a "blocked" feeling, now I'm at the point where it's constant static which makes it impossible to sleep on my side, sometimes my left ear goes "deaf" momentarily and a sharp ring starts and it makes me "zone out" but ends after 15-30s

It's living hell.

For years I clenched my jaw and grind my teeth mostly at night to the point of damaging my teeth. I wore a guard and then didn't now again back at it due to jaw pain. The guard helps a bit mainly from damage when asleep and seems to protect my jaw joints.

My point being even if my jaw is totally relaxed there is a hum from the muscles in my jaw. It's like a 60Hz hum musicians hear from AC interference in speakers. I have to wonder if it's part of the constant noise I hear in my ears.

I also get BPPV too it's severe sudden vertigo it may be related to my clench and tinnitus. It's just random no clue what causes it. I can't even walk and have to lay down and not even close my eyes just pick a spot and stare. I had to do that for 12 hours one time my worst time.

I always assumed the softer bones around my ears get deformed because of this which in turn causes me to be affected by tinnitus.

Honestly the thing that helped best was meditation. I tried guards, even a specialized one to realign my jaw slowly, but I feel those are just symptom relievers.

If they're detecting nerve damage, it's happening from nerve compression. Tinnitus being a manifestation of the compressed nerve.

I would bet money rapid palatal expansion with a proper midpalatal suture split would cure you.

Why is it that orthodontics used this method? I can see locally it's still only some dentists that seem to use palate expansion when it's seemingly easier, prettier, quicker, healthier etc. than teeth removal + braces?

Thinking about removing my retainers and having a palate expansion done instead as you recommend as i seriously feel like i'm never really getting enough air during sports, sleep etc.

EDIT: This whole reddit thread is quite crazy, full of people having all sorts of issues cured by various methods that classic ortho wont approve: https://www.reddit.com/r/orthotropics/comments/11ow1yb/expan...

also have tinnitus bte

Enlarged tonsils themselves are indicative of poor nasal breathing. If you have them completely removed you'll suffer from greatly reduced immune response. You have a fighting chance with intracapsular. Palate expansion through a good Ortho is still probably way better.

Citation needed. Every doctor I've talked to said the exact opposite.

  Some examples:
  - jutting my jaw forwards
  - moving my ears back with my face muscles
  - pushing downward on the top of my head with my hands

Moving the jaw forward and then to the right has the biggest effect for me, causing the ringing on the left ear to increase. It's asymmetric in that moving the jaw to the front left has only a very small effect on the right ear.

Moving the ears backwards has no effect for me.

Have you tried pulling up to make it less noticeable? I’ve long suspected my neck muscles had something to do with making tinnitus worse. Or, like you said, maybe there is a correlation or interaction with head & neck muscles that isn’t causal but nonetheless seems to affect the symptoms. Cervical traction, i.e. a device that pulls up on your head, sometimes seems to help me, as does neck stretching & relaxation. Make sure to consult a doctor or physical therapist about cervical traction, it’s easy to overdo it without guidance.

Last time I went for a hearing test the doctor asked me if I had been in an explosion (not to my knowledge).

I have quite significant hearing loss these days, which has been tied back to having Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, relating to connective tissue development, which in part could impact areas that result in certain types of tinnitus developing.

Worse thing about tinnitus and hearing loss is that the more your hearing goes, the louder the tinnitus gets. Haven't heard proper silence in over a decade. Bit of a nightmare sometimes!

I only have it on the left side, and my TMJ lines up marginally worse on that side, so it's probably related.

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S180759322...

I do clench my teeth a lot from anxiety and get muscle pain in the sides of my face on occasion. I wonder if that’s related.

I can modulate it as well using my jaw muscles.

What I’ve always found interesting is that I can’t describe the sound. It’s high pitched, but I’ve never found a frequency of tone that matches or even comes close to the tinnitus.

I would imagine the signals my brain receives from the damaged nerves is very complex. Not white noise, but probably the equivalent of a tone with lots of specific harmonics.

As for my experience, it’s been an issue for so long it doesn’t generally affect me. It’s always there and I can’t ignore it, but it doesn’t disrupt my life, other than having generally not great hearing.

Recently a neurologist recommend transcranial electrical stimulation. Seems that it helps in some cases. Have to look around if someone is performing that here.

My feeling is, for a lack of better word, grateful, (definitely not a good thing for your or me) that I finally found someone the same as mine.

Next time I ever want to see a doctor again for this (not helpful btw, they don't really have cure or seem to understand my situation), I will just show your comment!

Works for me too. Never noticed it would do it before though. I’ve had very mild tinnitus for as long as I can remember. But I mostly only hear it when it’s quiet around so I’m lucky in that sense I guess.

The head massage technique I've had some friends send me to temporarily alleviate symptoms never worked.

Probably a related mechanism, but I can also sometimes hear my eye muscles working. It only happens if I'm sick or otherwise feeling under the weather, but moving my eyes rapidly is then associated with a swoosh-like auditory impression. I haven't heard anyone else experiencing this so far.

I have explosion-related tinnitus/hearing damage and it also reacts to muscle movements. So, it seems like they are the same.

I’d love to know if there are any videos of exercises that could help reduce or cure this form of tinnitus.

https://youtu.be/2yDCox-qKbk?si=eEjtlP97v8UiubX4

I was told that the clicking sounds are just due to gas in the joint by a TMJ specialist, but I can literally feel my jaw jut to one side, so I'm convinced the bone is damaged.

I had braces as a kid and something always seemed off intuitively about how they "fixed" my teeth.

Also got TMJ, recessed chin, and i've never felt my breathing has been very good afterwards, like my whole face became too narrow after removing 4 molars making me just a bit less attractive.

And after deep diving orthodontics i'm pretty fucking mad. It seems there are way better methods that keep both aesthetics and a more natural breathing - ie. a little palate expansion to make space for your teeth instead of removing teeth and having braces for years.

It's even quicker, like what the actual!

I still have retainers on, and i'm considering having them removed and having rapid palate expansion done as others in this thread recommends. As they also point out, i also have a hard time breathing correctly during sports, and have been worrying over sleep apnea.

I wonder if rapid palate expansion would fix this also.

Every now and then I get ringing in my ears that fade out quickly, which is normal. I always thought that was the sort of constant ringing people had when they talk about tinnitus, and the one you describe is a different class of tinnitus.

I've never tried or noticed this before until you mentioned it, but this makes my tinitus noticeably worse. It's not really louder, but seems to add "harmonics".

I initially assumed it was caused by babies / children - we have three and they are loud. Plus my kids have screamed directly into my ears on occasion (and been punished for it).

I can do that as well.

I think mine might be related to stress, hypertension, and an all-around lack of relaxation.

Not everyone's nervous system works this way but for a significant portion of the population there is the capacity of the nerves to refer pain to other parts of the body, whether in the nerves themselves or signalling in the brain region itself cascading or both.

There also seems to be a lack of understanding or consideration that merely normal pressures on nerves, with subtle levels of additional pressure, will actually cause a pain signal or sensitization of that nerve line (either or both directions) to occur.

What you state could be a clue to pain somewhere in your body. It could be tooth pain, it could be jaw pain, it could be bite-alignment pain, e.g. where your jaw position and bite with teeth is causing pressure on nerves that it doesn't expect or want.

It could also instead be a hypersensitivity to sound you have, and so those nerve line(s) are amped up - so then anything connected or in close proximity to it will then

From my experience with pain, 99.999% of doctors have no real understanding of pain, and there's a whole body of work waiting to be written and to start being taught closer to properly; and the rest of them still only have a fairly niche but not holistic understanding.

There is a book called "Hearing Equals Behaviour: Updated and Expanded" that dives into a sound therapy developed 70+ years ago in France, called Berard AIT [Auditory Integration Training], for where you can do a non-standard audiogram to check for imbalances in the hearing - for which at certain frequencies you can with accuracy predict a set of behaviours that person will likely have. If such imbalances show up in these special audiograms then it's either a sign of damage or a sign of how the brain is processing audio-sensory signals, and which may been interfered with - proper development disrupted - if say you had painful ear infections as a child who's brain is rapidly developing, and now where your brain is abnormally associating sound as pain. Berard AIT can get rid of tinnitus, depending on its cause, essentially giving the brain an opportunity to recalibrate.

Did you ever have ear infections as a child, and do you remember if they were painful at all?

A muscle related tinnitus seems entirely plausible to me in addition to any potential nerve related tinnitus tied to, for example, listening to loud music.

Uh, this has always made me hear a high-pitched whirr. Like a tiny buzzer with a dirty power supply. Huh.

I could potentially use this information to design a hearing aid that boosts sounds in the affected bands so that I can hear them. I am not sure I can inverse filter the tinnitus-related noise since it is random intensity though a notch filter could be an option since it is narrow band.

I hope the tinnitus discovery thing in this article ends up being useful.

>I am not sure I can inverse filter the tinnitus-related noise since it is random intensity though a notch filter could be an option since it is narrow band.

Are you talking about basically using active noise canceling to silence tinitus? I don't think that's possible.

Isn't the normal frequency response of a healthy ear dependent on the shape of the ear cartilage and the configuration of the ear canal and the ear drum? It would be different for every individual. Kinda like how Mom could always hear everything we did and said after bedtime while Dad, without even using his selective hearing, wouldn't even know we were still awake.

>Are you talking about basically using active noise canceling to silence tinitus?

Yes. Model the tinnitus and design the inverse filter based on the bandwidth and inject that inverse filter to become an active subtraction of the tinnitus response. I know it probably isn't possible because the noise is variable and originates in the brain instead of external to the ear so it is not easily quantifiable therefore the inverse operator will not be exact, optimum, or anything else. However, if you can model the signal then you should be able to design the inverse operator. Since the signal is just a band-limited input there is no reason why you can't dink around until you have a close enough model to be able to design the inverse filter which you would then inject as an external input thru an earpiece or some other sound generator.

I'm a geophysicist with hearing problems, not an audiologist or otolaryngologist. It sounds reasonable to me. We deal with convolution/deconvolution and other signal processing as a regular part of the job process.

Yes, there's some individual variation, but human ears are all generally roughly the same structure, so there are known baselines for how they work. There's about 40 dB difference in minimum audible threshold between 50 Hz and 5 kHz. Same with near the top end of the hearing range, though where exactly that lies is more subject to individual variation (and age)

>so it is not easily quantifiable therefore the inverse operator will not be exact, optimum, or anything else. However, if you can model the signal then you should be able to design the inverse operator.

It's not originating from actual sound, so I think the approach fundamentally doesn't apply. Active noise canceling relies on destructive interference to actually physically remove the sound before it is perceived. Once you have the nerve signal, I think there simply isn't an anti-sound that would result in some other nerve signal that adds up to perceived silence.

There are those that don't, mainly newer models I assume. I think it has to do with the exact shape of the waveform that drives the (horizontal part of the) deflection yoke. Some of them are noisier than others.

Related, we did a hearing range test in a high school science class. I could detect the tone generator at a frequency well beyond what anyone else in my class could pick up. I couldn't hear it as a sound anymore after a certain point, but could still feel it as an uncomfortable "pressure" inside my ears.

I like the sound and can hear when a shop has a CRT security camera when I walk past lol

The longer you wait with getting it, the harder it will be for your brain to adjust to processing the full corrected sounds.

If you have time to acquire a new hobby, an audiomoth is a great tool.

Something brought it back in the past couple months and triggered the same reaction again.. it’s not clear what the trigger was this time, but it’s like my brain needs time to re-train itself to ignore it as background noise. It’s an emotionally exhausting process that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

The only advice I can offer to people here is to treat tinnitus like any other serious injury (which it is): take time to let your body heal, don’t push yourself too hard, don’t come down on yourself for how you got it, and don’t judge yourself for any feelings it might bring out. Get help if it’s making you depressed.

There are definitely some helpful coping strategies that people have highlighted here, particularly white noise (look into notch filtering as well), and everyone needs to find the approach that works best for them. Allow yourself to grieve; you’ve lost something - the sound of silence (at least what you used to think of as silence - most humans never experience true -inf dB). It’s easier to move on if you come to terms with it from that angle, rather than continually trying to make it “go away”.

Happened when I was 17 at a concert. Too loud. Brain seemed to just stuff it away and emotionally I was fine (because I was young and dumb).

“Came back” when I was in early 30s and devastated me for about 3-5 months with anxiety and insomnia. I used CBT to basically ignore it and my brain did its thing pushing it to the background and lowering the volume.

Came back again at age 40…same deal (but not nearly as bad since I’d seen the movie before) and lo and behold…brain stuffed it away again.

Now I just accept that it’s a part of life. Will come back probably and I’ll deal with it.

For example listen to the following, at a level that it isn't uncomfortable and your Tinnitus might be gone for a short time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNf9nzvnd1k

This is called residual inhibition. You can Google "tinnitus residual inhibition" and find many papers about it.

Benzodiazepines work also very well in some cases, when taking them I have no Tinnitus at all, but that's ABSOLUTELY NOT a viable long term solution because of the long term negative effects.

I am not sure about this paper, but what I've read and believe the most is that the Tinnitus is caused by neurons in the brain, that have lost nerve input signals from the ear (due to hearing loss, nerve damage etc..), and start to emit parasite signals.

Benzodiazepines reduce the brain activity thus reducing/silencing the tinnitus. Residual inhibition seems to work by stimulating the region where the hearing loss has occurred, the neurons responsible for the Tinnitus all the sudden get stimulated and stop emitting noise signals for a few dozens of seconds then resume. But so far there is still a lot of research to be done and we are decades away from a cure that is SAFE enough. Benzos work but are just not worth it, this is like fighting back pain with opoids.

Until then I think it is best to protect our hearing, you can buy custom made earplugs which are comfortable to wear, last about 5 years and cost around 200 USD. I use them when I am in loud environments like on an air plane, train, at a bar etc...

Also it is best not be in completely silent environment as this is where you will notice the Tinnitus.

When listening to music with headphones it is important to take regular breaks and not to push the volume too high to give your ears some rest.

Edit: Last advice, don't try to listen to your tinnitus, but focus on other noises/sounds, if you are listening to the Tinnitus you are telling your brain that the signal is important, when you should be telling it, that it isn't.

What "works for me" but your kilometrage may vary...

i listen to LOTS of white noise. All night when i sleep, when i'm out and about and might normally listen to music, and sometimes just randomly throughout the day.

For whatever reason, listening to white noise over long periods seems to tone down the volume of my beeping, _sometimes_ to the point where i have blessed silence for several days at a time (recently a full 2 weeks, though that was a new record in my 13-ish years of beeping).

Whether or not the white noise _genuinely_ plays a factor is difficult to say, but it's been my experience, the past three or four years, that the volume of The Beep and the duration of the rare Quiet Periods seems to be affected by how how much white noise i listen to.

(Sidebar: "quiet" is never quite silent, but The Beep sometimes (thankfully) fades to the point where i have to actively listen to hear it, exactly as it was when this all started out around 2010.)

(Sidebar: though the tone of my beep is near-constant, wavering only very slightly, the volume varies wildly, from minor background noise to headache-inducing and concentration-shattering.)

That said: "white noise" is a generic term here. i often get better results with what my phone's white noise app call "pink noise" or "blue noise" - they're just different frequencies of the same style of noise.

Edit: FWIW, i've heard from two other tinnitus sufferers that white noise has a similar effect on them. That doesn't mean that it definitely helps, but it seems to help for some of us.

At least my experience with AGC is that it's useless because times of silence ends up just being filled with noise... "audio system tinnitus..."

https://youtu.be/2yDCox-qKbk?si=eEjtlP97v8UiubX4

it works reliably well

  >When listening to music with headphones it is important to... not to push the volume too high

(of course a reference to https://www.livescience.com/what-is-call-of-the-void)

this works for 2-4 mins for me

https://youtu.be/2yDCox-qKbk?si=eEjtlP97v8UiubX4

This seems promising? https://hms.harvard.edu/news/scientists-regenerate-hair-cell...

It was shown in a couple of papers that we can restore hair cells in mammals. Damaged hair cells are the root cause for the majority of people with hearing loss & tinnitus. The most promising path seems to use so called supporting cells in the inner ear and convert them into hair cells. Researchers are getting closer and closer every year. I think we are now at a point where it's not a question of if but rather when.

Here is a quote from one of the leading scientist in the field:

What is needed to help make HRP goals happen? Frankly, funding to keep our research moving forward. A postdoctoral fellow with five to six years of training starts out on a modest salary of about $45,000, plus $12,000 in benefits. So that’s $57,000 before they even pick up a test tube in the lab. Each person will typically use between $15,000- $20,000 a year in supplies and chemicals. Simply maintaining a single cage of mice for one year costs $210, and my lab can use between 300-500 cages of mice for our experiments! HHF and its donors have been extremely generous in their support, however with additional funding the output from the consortium could be significantly greater and accelerate the pace to a cure.

Link: https://hearinghealthfoundation.org/spotlight/groves

Overall the field of hearing restoration still only receives tiny amounts of funding (

Best bet at this point is probably when a former big tech executives would get hearing loss/tinnitus and then decides to put real money behind the problem. Bryan Johnson who created the Blueprint program has hearing loss but I guess he is not wealthy enough to make a difference.

EDIT (to put numbers into perspective):

The size of the problem: Sensorineural hearing loss disables over 360 million people worldwide. Irrespective of its cause and severity, hearing loss can have a large impact on people’s health and well-being. The treatment of hearing loss is currently limited to the use of hearing aids or devices surgically implanted in the middle or inner ear. These devices often perform poorly in noisy environments and can be very costly. It has been estimated that the costs of untreated hearing loss are €213 billion in Europe alone each year.

The funding (EU): An international consortium of 7 partners has been awarded a €5,8 million European Commission Horizon 2020 grant to develop and test a new drug to treat hearing loss caused by the loss of sensory hair cells.

It didn't make the tinitius go away, but perhaps subdued it slightly. Hard to say.

But if as one of the other posters suggests tinnitus is a neurological response to lack of input, deafness in higher frequencies tallies. Like others though, jutting my jaw forward makes the tinnitus louder, so not sure how that interaction works for something originated in the brain.

Something I haven't seen mentioned here is _very_ occasional short periods (seconds) of apparent deafness, typically at night, in a quiet room, and only when very tired or sleep deprived. I say apparent because since it's quiet, it's hard to know if it's the tinnitus momentarily stopping, or all sound; and the presence of sound may prevent it from happening.

[0] https://www.dxomark.com/apple-macbook-air-15-m2-2023/

I can't say I buy that. I've got tinnitus. Also sometimes my brain has a loss of input as I can't see, hear of feel something and it's nothing like tinnitus.

It seems more likely to me that it's a problem with the gizmo that converts mechanical movement into electrical impulses. It consists of a string like thing, the tip link, between two hairs that pulls on an ion channel in a nerve cell wall to let ions in and trigger the nerve to give a sound signal. (pic here, fig 1 if you scroll down https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674%2809%2901170-2)

When you get an over loud sound it probably yanks that thing too hard leaving the ion channel stuck open some how or something along those lines.

The whole thing is tiny - the tip link is about 150nm long. Another pic here (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2921850/ fig 1)

The difference is your auditory nerve doesn’t directly carry touch signals so you hear sounds instead of say an itch.

Well, at least that will get rid of the tinnitus, I thought.

No such luck! I still have tinnitus.

As such I think there may be more to tinnitus than undetected nerve damage.

It isn’t clear cut though: I have some hearing in that ear after all (to the surprise of the doctor). But the tinnitus came back (or never went away) before any hearing returned.

Unless I'm actively thinking about it (like now), most of the time it's nt an issue, and it's quiet enough to be easily drowned out.

Couldn't sleep. Couldn't do my job. Forced to take extended time off. Terrorized by the possibility that I would never be able to work again.

Closet I've ever come to suicide.

I may simply remove that fan in the future.

Removing the fan may or may not be relatively safe depending on how much airflow a 12 inch sub can push through a ported enclosure when it's running anywhere near full enough power to actually heat up the power supply.

Eventually, other symptoms started appearing and only then did they do an MRI, and lo and behold, a tumor was found at the base of her skull and right behind her sinus cavity, it was pressing against her auditory nerve and was the cause of all the tinnitus. The tumor was basically untreatable via surgery and it was too late for chemo.

Turns out it’s about my neck. I religiously paid attention to my neck position and fixed my posture, and as a result, my tinnitus gradually disappeared.

If I sit in a bad position or sometimes do some weird move, my tinnitus can return but I immediately start a neck massage and fix my posture, and it goes away. Sometimes it can be very severe and lower volume version remains, but it goes away the next day.

I think it happened because I used to move my head forward when sitting in front of a screen. There are chiropractors, who claim to fix tinnitus by fixing the head position and say that it’s associated with some nerve in the neck.

So I decided to work on this and bought a keyboard and a mouse and made myself a rule that I will always use the laptop with a stand or external display so I don't lean over the laptop and sit straight up the way it is ergonomically recommended, pretty much like it says on articles like this: https://healthandbalance.com.au/workstation-desk-posture-erg...

I also begin doing neck exercises, recommended to me by an orthopedist(I got some neck pain for a few days, the orthopedist gave me a couple of movement I should do regularly to increase the straight of my neck muscles, I will leave links to the leaflets of the movements). I also did the push the chin to push your head back movement because although I didn't have clinically severe situation with my head moving forward I noticed that on my old photos my head wasn't leaning forward that much.

After a week or so after I started sitting right, my tinnitus begin to improve rapidly. I even began sleeping the orthopedically correct way and avoiding any stress positions. After some time I tried experimenting stress positions, like using the laptop the way I used to and the tinnitus returned in full force until I fix the posture and do some massages. After a year or two the tinnitus was almost completely gone and stress positions don't immediately bring it back anymore so I can use laptop again but if I'm not careful and overdo it, get carried away and lean into the screen it returns.

the leaflets:

https://imgbb.com/XWnTZVB

https://imgbb.com/r6PBbTK

Good talk here[0] BUT BE WARNED, I recall* that there's a high-pitched squeal during this talk as a demonstration of what tinnitus is like for done people. It's extremely nasty especially if you're wearing headphones.

Incidentally, the self-adjusting feedback loop model helps explain why things like wiggling your jaw can alter the experience of tinnitus. Due to wiring issues, sensory input from muscles and joints can get mixed in with the auditory inputs. A similar mechanism (which isn't fully understood) helps explain why, for example, people having a heart attack can experience pain in the left arm. There's nothing wrong with the arm, the normal sensory signals from the arm are mixing with those from the heart.

[0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=XGq3MXQlRJs

* Can't verify right now, trusting my memory.

There are many different forms of tinnitus and usually some mechanism or cure operates only on a fraction of all cases so I'm hoping that this is as broad as possible. Note to younger self: stay away from loud concerts.

Or try those "concert earplugs." They reduce the overall sound level while better preserving high and mid sounds. It also reduces the booming sound ('occlusion effect') when talking.

I paid $15 for a pair recently, but experimentation shows it's mostly just silicone earplugs with a hole through the center and a small mesh screen.

Removing the fancy "audio filter" and stuffing a tiny (tiny!) wisp of cotton in the hole seems to do the same thing, honestly. You can probably reproduce these using 30¢ HF silicone earplugs if you find a way to "drill" a hole through them...

I have tinnitus and it SUCKS. The people who threw the outdoor music festivals I went to in my 20s should be brought to trial...

My note to younger self is similar: get great earplugs and use them diligently.

I wish I could use earplugs (or IEM headphones with good sound isolation) a lot of the time, but I found out the hard way (after infection subsided I have intermittent tinnitus as well).

Phrasing…

I have a slight case of tinnitus and need to do a 2 week round of neomycin. Doctor says it shouldn't make it worse since it's a short course, but I'm still concerned/anxious about it.

But e5 on the piano played loud is an instant trigger, that particular frequency is really not working for me. Never made any link with antibiotics but if I ever have to do a cure I'll be sure to pay attention. What mechanism are you concerned about? Is this a well known thing?

I find I really should wear earplugs way more often than I think. Putting dishes away, shoveling snow, scraping ice, even just running a sink. For everyday wear I cut down cheap foam plugs to ~half length (and reduce the depth of insertion), and I also wash them beforehand/periodically with plant-based soap. This removes additives in the foam which I find can cause skin irritation and reduce breathability.

Hope you get some relief.

I did in the past, haven't in years so thank you for the reminder, I really should do that. I think in part it is because I've simply given up on ever seeing an improvement, just a very slow rearguard fight.

A couple of pieces of advice to people who might be struggling with their tinnitus:

1. You need to learn to cope with it - once you're used to it, it will mostly fade into the background and be manageable. Accepting that it'll never be silent again was very difficult, but that's the only thing hat helped me feel better in the end.

2. Wear ear plugs when it gets too loud! It's too easy to get irreversible damage to your hearing, and that's the only thing you can really do - prevent it.

Curiously, yesterday I woke up at night because the tinnitus had gotten louder again - stupidly, I played drums the other day at a jam session without earplugs. I could punch myself for that one, and see it as (yet another) wakeup call to be more careful.