- Apr 5, 2018
- 2
- Tinnitus Since
- 1997
- Cause of Tinnitus
- Probably crash cymbals
First post in this forum.
How I got here?
I searched for something like "tinnitus louder".
I may "sound" funny, English is not my first language.
My story, roughly speaking:
I am getting past mid thirties.
Yet I have had tinnitus for probably over 20 years
It started in my youth, when I was playing the drums at school in their "music room" on some evenings when they'd let me. Back then, late 1990's, I never saw anyone use ear protection when playing drums, and it didn't occur to me I'd need that.
Now at some point, after such a maybe half hour of drumming back in the day, there'd be a high pitched whistling tone that did not come from the outside. But the next day, it was gone. So I young fool didn't take it seriously. Until it stopped going away one day, and then I was stuck with it.
One interesting note would be the frequency of that pitch, which I hear on both ears: it seemed to exactly match the frequency of my CRT TV (they all have a whistling tone, I believe at roughly 16 kHz). I wondered back then whether there could be a connection between those. Like, my ears were damaged, and my brain tried to recreate the missing usual background noise - the TV whistle. Btw, I recently got the chance to listen to a (European) CRT monitor again. I don't hear it as loud as I could back then (when I'd always know where they had their security cam monitors behind their counters, hah...), but it still seems to match the "main tone" (there are some less loud "side tones" which seem pretty close to the main tone, so it mainly sounds like a less pointed, clean frequency, there is some very high pitched "hiss" quality to it, I can't make out distinct frequencies).
It used to be the case that I would hear that tinnitus only at nights, when all was more quiet than during the day.
When I was twenty-one, it was a very good yeeeear... oh no wait. There was a short abrupt worsening episode that lasted for a few weeks, and probably cost me some cracks in the audible (to me) frequency spectrum of especially one ear, which now sounds a lot less lively than the other if I cover that, but I can still hear "very high" freqs, so it's not just capping the high end.
That was when I, still young fool, did not know that a guitar amp speaker purposefully cuts the high end of the electric guitar signal *massively* starting at 5 kHz or earlier (or maybe stopping at 5, I forgot).
So I used my extra mean sounding guitar pickup "won" at that great new site called eb*y, but had no guitar amp, and no amp simulation / direct-in box with cabinet simulation. I just soldered myself some amplifier with headphone output. And played some metal riffs, and then I was disoriented and had an extremely loud tinnitus especially on that ear, somehow managed to get to the ENT who said there was some damage, probably recoverable though, and gave me some blood thinning meds, which apparently was the magic substance du jour which doctors prescribed without knowing what it achieves and how.
Well, the tinnitus got back to "normal", and the ear's frequency response improved, but she explicitly said to only measure up to 8 kHz, ay beyond that was not "clinically relevant". Well to me it is, pfff....
The thing is, by that age, and actually even when I was sometimes playing drums (only in school, did not have an own kit), I was otherwise rather conscious about too loud music. To this day I'll not turn head phones so loud that I cannot hear me slightly knocking on the desk with finger nails. I visited a very small number of concerts in my life, and always with some more or less adequate hearing protection. Hell, I even find cinemas too loud and the rare occasions I actually went there, I'd at least stick some ad-hoc protection like balls out of paper tissue in my ears.
Not to mention when I use tools like drills, then it's the big "mickey mouse" protectors.
If an ambulance drives by, the guy with the fingers in his ears may be me. (no idea if ambulances make as nasty a noise as in Germany, but they certainly do here, probably producing a few new "sudden deafness" patients they can pick right up on the way back)
Now that I am looking back, probably already 5 years ago it started to be a little bit louder, but I didn't really pay attention back then.
Not sure it's significant, it doesn't feel that loud to me, but for half a year now, I am using a WaterPik water jet inter-dental cleaning thingy every evening, and my head is pretty close to it.
Anyway, for 1..2 weeks now, it is very noticeably louder, especially in the morning and during the day.
It feels like it's actually somewhat less loudER in the very evening, for whatever reason.
For what it's worth, I can tell you that during the past few years, overall, I have sub-optimal sleep, quantity and quality wise, for a host of reasons that I won't further elongate my already humongous intro post with. Also, for over 5 years, I am wearing made-for-sleeping ear plugs (SleepSoft and similar), 365 nights / year. Of course the tinnitus is louder with those, as the outside noise is less loud. (That's probably not the cause for the sleeping issues, though. I was usually quite good at ignoring the noise)
Well. Now it's markedly louder, seemingly out of the blue. And it kinda seems it will stay that way.
(EDIT: throughout the years there were days when it would suddenly get a lot louder, esp. one ear, but only for a couple minutes or so, and then fade back to "normal" again. It felt like my wiggling in the ears with my fingers, trying pressure in different angles (and running around the apartment like a crazed chicken), helped make it go away, but that may have been an illusion)
I guess the reason for this post is, among other things, the curiosity about whether anyone has anything interesting to say about this.
Do I need to run towards the nearest pure oxygen* tent ASAP and it may go away? Probably not ^^
EDIT #2:
Whoops. On a hunch, because of one change within the past months, I entered 2 search words into google, and up came this:
https://www.healthyhearing.com/repo...-possible-link-between-aspartame-and-tinnitus
For a few months now, I am regularly using chewing gums with mainly xylitol as a sweetener, to reduce the adhesiveness of food residues to the teeth, and to compensate the acidity in the mouth.
But as one of the last ingredients on the list, that chewing gum has Aspartame.
I'll have to look into that later in more detail, as it's getting late here... Perhaps I should be looking for an alternative. (It's the cheapest xylitol gum I know, darn...)
Anyway, good day or whatever time to you all.
* Do they still do that?
How I got here?
I searched for something like "tinnitus louder".
I may "sound" funny, English is not my first language.
My story, roughly speaking:
I am getting past mid thirties.
Yet I have had tinnitus for probably over 20 years
It started in my youth, when I was playing the drums at school in their "music room" on some evenings when they'd let me. Back then, late 1990's, I never saw anyone use ear protection when playing drums, and it didn't occur to me I'd need that.
Now at some point, after such a maybe half hour of drumming back in the day, there'd be a high pitched whistling tone that did not come from the outside. But the next day, it was gone. So I young fool didn't take it seriously. Until it stopped going away one day, and then I was stuck with it.
One interesting note would be the frequency of that pitch, which I hear on both ears: it seemed to exactly match the frequency of my CRT TV (they all have a whistling tone, I believe at roughly 16 kHz). I wondered back then whether there could be a connection between those. Like, my ears were damaged, and my brain tried to recreate the missing usual background noise - the TV whistle. Btw, I recently got the chance to listen to a (European) CRT monitor again. I don't hear it as loud as I could back then (when I'd always know where they had their security cam monitors behind their counters, hah...), but it still seems to match the "main tone" (there are some less loud "side tones" which seem pretty close to the main tone, so it mainly sounds like a less pointed, clean frequency, there is some very high pitched "hiss" quality to it, I can't make out distinct frequencies).
It used to be the case that I would hear that tinnitus only at nights, when all was more quiet than during the day.
When I was twenty-one, it was a very good yeeeear... oh no wait. There was a short abrupt worsening episode that lasted for a few weeks, and probably cost me some cracks in the audible (to me) frequency spectrum of especially one ear, which now sounds a lot less lively than the other if I cover that, but I can still hear "very high" freqs, so it's not just capping the high end.
That was when I, still young fool, did not know that a guitar amp speaker purposefully cuts the high end of the electric guitar signal *massively* starting at 5 kHz or earlier (or maybe stopping at 5, I forgot).
So I used my extra mean sounding guitar pickup "won" at that great new site called eb*y, but had no guitar amp, and no amp simulation / direct-in box with cabinet simulation. I just soldered myself some amplifier with headphone output. And played some metal riffs, and then I was disoriented and had an extremely loud tinnitus especially on that ear, somehow managed to get to the ENT who said there was some damage, probably recoverable though, and gave me some blood thinning meds, which apparently was the magic substance du jour which doctors prescribed without knowing what it achieves and how.
Well, the tinnitus got back to "normal", and the ear's frequency response improved, but she explicitly said to only measure up to 8 kHz, ay beyond that was not "clinically relevant". Well to me it is, pfff....
The thing is, by that age, and actually even when I was sometimes playing drums (only in school, did not have an own kit), I was otherwise rather conscious about too loud music. To this day I'll not turn head phones so loud that I cannot hear me slightly knocking on the desk with finger nails. I visited a very small number of concerts in my life, and always with some more or less adequate hearing protection. Hell, I even find cinemas too loud and the rare occasions I actually went there, I'd at least stick some ad-hoc protection like balls out of paper tissue in my ears.
Not to mention when I use tools like drills, then it's the big "mickey mouse" protectors.
If an ambulance drives by, the guy with the fingers in his ears may be me. (no idea if ambulances make as nasty a noise as in Germany, but they certainly do here, probably producing a few new "sudden deafness" patients they can pick right up on the way back)
Now that I am looking back, probably already 5 years ago it started to be a little bit louder, but I didn't really pay attention back then.
Not sure it's significant, it doesn't feel that loud to me, but for half a year now, I am using a WaterPik water jet inter-dental cleaning thingy every evening, and my head is pretty close to it.
Anyway, for 1..2 weeks now, it is very noticeably louder, especially in the morning and during the day.
It feels like it's actually somewhat less loudER in the very evening, for whatever reason.
For what it's worth, I can tell you that during the past few years, overall, I have sub-optimal sleep, quantity and quality wise, for a host of reasons that I won't further elongate my already humongous intro post with. Also, for over 5 years, I am wearing made-for-sleeping ear plugs (SleepSoft and similar), 365 nights / year. Of course the tinnitus is louder with those, as the outside noise is less loud. (That's probably not the cause for the sleeping issues, though. I was usually quite good at ignoring the noise)
Well. Now it's markedly louder, seemingly out of the blue. And it kinda seems it will stay that way.
(EDIT: throughout the years there were days when it would suddenly get a lot louder, esp. one ear, but only for a couple minutes or so, and then fade back to "normal" again. It felt like my wiggling in the ears with my fingers, trying pressure in different angles (and running around the apartment like a crazed chicken), helped make it go away, but that may have been an illusion)
I guess the reason for this post is, among other things, the curiosity about whether anyone has anything interesting to say about this.
Do I need to run towards the nearest pure oxygen* tent ASAP and it may go away? Probably not ^^
EDIT #2:
Whoops. On a hunch, because of one change within the past months, I entered 2 search words into google, and up came this:
https://www.healthyhearing.com/repo...-possible-link-between-aspartame-and-tinnitus
For a few months now, I am regularly using chewing gums with mainly xylitol as a sweetener, to reduce the adhesiveness of food residues to the teeth, and to compensate the acidity in the mouth.
But as one of the last ingredients on the list, that chewing gum has Aspartame.
I'll have to look into that later in more detail, as it's getting late here... Perhaps I should be looking for an alternative. (It's the cheapest xylitol gum I know, darn...)
Anyway, good day or whatever time to you all.
* Do they still do that?
Last edited:
