I Can Hear Things That Many Cannot in Spite of My Tinnitus

[Fleegle]

So I have tinnitus - of course, right? We're all here for that reason.

And I was listening to a noise outside my window the other night and asking people if they can hear it. "No. What noise?" was the reply. That noise. That "zhou zhou zhou zhou" noise. Can't you hear it.
After a while I noticed that it was the sound of my own heartbeat. I could hear it in my ear - the one with tinnitus. I can cup my ear and "hear" it much more easily that way.

I have an electronic clock next to my bed. I can hear it too. It is making a buzzing sound. A faint electronic buzzing sound. I think I am hearing its power transformer or maybe the LEDs in its face. bzhhhh

And yet most of the time their are cicadas having a party in my head and they have the left door open and all that noise is coming out of that ear. At least it "sounds" like it.

I make observations.

 

[JohnAdams]

Same here. WTF.

 

[carolinet617]

Ugh, same. For me it's lights. I've started eating meals in almost darkness because I can hear the overhead lights in the kitchen and it triggers my tinnitus because of how high pitched the buzz is.

 

[MattS]

It seems pretty unlikely that our hearing is improving. More likely our brain is becoming more "tuned in" to these frequencies. Which is actually backward of what we want...

 

[Dosman]

Interesting. I can hear those sorts of things too. Faintly buzzing LED lights, whining TVs, etc. If I'm in a room and I hear some faint high-pitched sound I almost compulsively hunt for the source.

 

[Fleegle]

... and it triggers my tinnitus because of how high pitched the buzz is.

Hmmm... I like that word "triggers". Does that mean that tinnitus has a trigger? Could that explain why on some days it is low but on other days it is high? A trigger?

Perhaps no accident that you used that word, carolinet617.
Now I am thinking. Thinking about blockers or subtractive/additive frequencies.
What if T is a reaction to external stimulus?
What if I find and then cut that frequency that "triggers" it?
Or a noise cancellation that ONLY cancels a frequency? Or cancels everything but that frequency?

I have been monitoring my "good days" and "bad days" since 2015. I wake up with it, or without it.
Maybe it is to do with my activities the night before?
Now I might try some experiments.

 

[carolinet617]

Hmmm... I like that word "triggers". Does that mean that tinnitus has a trigger? Could that explain why on some days it is low but on other days it is high? A trigger?

Perhaps no accident that you used that word, carolinet617.
Now I am thinking. Thinking about blockers or subtractive/additive frequencies.
What if T is a reaction to external stimulus?
What if I find and then cut that frequency that "triggers" it?
Or a noise cancellation that ONLY cancels a frequency? Or cancels everything but that frequency?

I have been monitoring my "good days" and "bad days" since 2015. I wake up with it, or without it.
Maybe it is to do with my activities the night before?
Now I might try some experiments.

Yes, it's interesting! I think some people definitely have triggers but it seems like some don't as well. It seems that some people have a fairly consistent noise and tone all the time that doesn't change much but for others it varies due to all kinds of factors. Some people are triggered by certain foods or alcohol or caffeine or medications, unfortunately different for everyone! If I sleep badly, I'll almost certainly have a bad tinnitus day the next day...I feel like I've heard quite a few people say the same.

I'm triggered by electrical and high pitched sounds in general, especially background music on TV shows and things like that. My tinnitus might be fairly quiet one day but then if I watch TV for a bit it suddenly gets much louder the rest of the day. I think the longer you have tinnitus, the more data you can gather and see if there are things that trigger you specifically which can definitely help in moderating it. Mine is still fairly new though so there are probably other things I haven't noticed yet. Some days it's super loud and I can't figure out why which is very frustrating! As horrible as it is some days, I know I'm lucky that I do sometimes have quieter moments if I'm able to avoid the things that I know trigger me personally, since some people have it severe all the time with no break.

 

[Fleegle]

@carolinet617 Sounds like you know your triggers and can avoid it. My attempts to collect data will only bear results if I can gather data on everything. I have tried going without dairy for a week - but no change. I have managed 9 days straight with no tinnitus but that was a way back now. And I could not correlate to anything except my growing excitement that I might have beaten it - but then... no.
I might kick in with a sleep monitor, and a media entertainment tracker. And food tracker.
So there are many things I might need to track
I will work on a frequency blocker. I might make an app of sorts - but much to learn.
Keep in touch!

 

[Greg Sacramento]

@Fleegle You had mentioned me back in May 2018 for the link that I gave on the sternocleidomastoid muscle. From doing an update on your posting history, I still think that your problems started with the neck. This type of problem could start from a fall, injury or hypertension of neck. It could be enhanced by posture and where one leg may be shorter than the other. I wonder if your C spine straighten and your C1 - C2 is off. I would try outward neck muscle therapy, but not muscle pressure therapy. A good therapist can tell what muscles need work, but it does appear that one side of your sternocleidomastoid is off balance causing one sided tinnitus. This muscle can also pressure neck arteries, where a sound is heard with bad ear to the pillow. This muscle may not be sore, but interaction can sooner or later cause mucus, nasal, TMJ, clicking jaw, sore teeth, ETD, block ears and over 50 other things. It could well be more complicated such as with neck and now more so in other places, where a CT back when you had it wasn't very helpful.

 

[valeri]

Thank God I'm not the only one, I've been thinking what the hell is going on with me.
I too pick on sounds, very faint sounds sometimes, that nobody else can hear.
It's mainly things like fridges, lights and electronics!

Does anyone experience a bothersome sound to change or even disappear depending on how your head is turned?

Like I hear a sound and if I turn my head only slightly the sound sometimes disappears, if I turn my head back it's there again.

Sometimes I look as if I have Tourette's

 

[carolinet617]

Thank God I'm not the only one, I've been thinking what the hell is going on with me.
I too pick on sounds, very faint sounds sometimes, that nobody else can hear.
It's mainly things like fridges, lights and electronics!

Does anyone experience a bothersome sound to change or even disappear depending on how your head is turned?

Like I hear a sound and if I turn my head only slightly the sound sometimes disappears, if I turn my head back it's there again.

Sometimes I look as if I have Tourette's

Yep, same here! Sometimes I panic thinking I have a new tone, then just turn my head and it's gone.

 

[Mister Muso]

It's our superpower.

But seriously, this is one area where I find mindfulness helps me to stop dwelling and obsessing over stuff. Just live in the moment, notice yourself noticing these things - then let it go. Breathing exercises can help as part of this process.

 

[Fleegle]

@Fleegle I would try outward neck muscle therapy, but not muscle pressure therapy. A good therapist can tell what muscles need work, but it does appear that one side of your sternocleidomastoid is off balance causing one sided tinnitus. This muscle can also pressure neck arteries, where a sound is heard with bad ear to the pillow.

Hi @Greg Sacramento ! Thanks for following my story I woudl like to know what kind of Therapist? And what is that therapy you mentioned - outward neck muscle therapy?

 

[just1morething]

And I was listening to a noise outside my window the other night and asking people if they can hear it. "No. What noise?" was the reply

Could be that our brain is turning up the gain for the damaged inner ear hair cells, so not only we have the tinnitus to deal with, but the increased sensitivity to other noises outside of our body.

 

[JohnFox]

All I know is that I can hear dishes clanging together way to much!! If one dish even touches another one, I cringe.

 

[carolinet617]

Could be that our brain is turning up the gain for the damaged inner ear hair cells, so not only we have the tinnitus to deal with, but the increased sensitivity to other noises outside of our body.

Interesting! My therapist (who isn't an expert on this or anything, but I thought this was an interesting theory) thinks that since I'm now hearing a noise that my brain used to tune out, it's now also not tuning out all kinds of other noises I previously never noticed. Like with the lights, when I got my friend to stand still super quietly, he eventually could hear it too but never would have had I not alerted him to it. I guess that's the theory behind habituation, getting the brain to learn to tune it all out again.

 

[Fleegle]

I am with you @JohnFox
And I believe so too @Mister Muso - a superpower it could be.

 

[Fleegle]

Does anyone experience a bothersome sound to change or even disappear depending on how your head is turned?

Only a few times have I done this, and I got to a point where I thought yippee I can control it! but then next day....
Once I was watching TV, and that day the T was "off" and I was hearing something, like chit chit chit like something was trying to break through or I was going to slip into a T episode (which was weird because I don't have episodes, just full days ON or OFF), and then I was able to maintain position and turn my head slightly right and if I help my head in a certain way it didn't start. I could rule the universe at that moment.

@valeri I too am in Australia.

 

[MattS]

@carolinet617 Sounds like you know your triggers and can avoid it. My attempts to collect data will only bear results if I can gather data on everything. I have tried going without dairy for a week - but no change. I have managed 9 days straight with no tinnitus but that was a way back now. And I could not correlate to anything except my growing excitement that I might have beaten it - but then... no.
I might kick in with a sleep monitor, and a media entertainment tracker. And food tracker.
So there are many things I might need to track
I will work on a frequency blocker. I might make an app of sorts - but much to learn.
Keep in touch!

What do you use to track these things Fleegle?

 

[Mister Muso]

Does anyone experience a bothersome sound to change or even disappear depending on how your head is turned?

My tuning fork tones in one ear are multiplied and amplified when I turn over in bed, or when I bend over with my head upside down.

Sometimes they make a nice jazz chord, other times just a noisy mess. At the start it was usually a major chord with gentle arpeggios... Being an amateur musician I probably analyse them far too much.

Luckily they settle back to baseline within a few seconds, and I can make them settle quicker through deep breathing.

 

[Fleegle]

What do you use to track these things Fleegle?

Hi @MattS I use google calendar. I put in a entry at 7AM each day (even weekends) and enter into the heading the following: Noise 4/1 HA3 TMJ4 XXXXX

So this is code for: Noise left ear 4 out of possible 5, right ear 1 (of 5), headache 3 (of 5) and TMJ 4 (of 5), and then notes like "Late sleep/Felt good/Woke up early/etc". I try to keep the codes short.
Google loves to store everything so I let it. Then whenever I feel I can enter into a spreadsheet - like Google Sheets or Excel or whatever. Then I can chart it and see where the good days are and the bad days. Is there a pattern, or is there none? With a sleep tracking watch I can also enter the sleep times in that sheet and then graph that too, and see if there is a correlation. TV viewing times, any mindfullness activities, perhaps positive days doing hobbies or other activities. I feel that more data helps to correlate, but too much might mean taking away enjoyment of life and wrongly focussing on the negatives. Also helps a little bit to diarize in some way.

HOWEVER and BIG WARNING HERE
I once put in one day as "My tinnitus is very bad today", and then I started receiving email and ads for "Have you got tinnitus?" and "Cure your tinnitus" etc. So I knew that Google is watching us. And then I gave these advertisers an extra serving of my "friendliness"
Does this help? Let me know if this helps.

 

[Fleegle]

Hi @Mister Muso - me too (I think). I perform a morning activity which requires one to be in a seated position - an activity that usually follows waking up - let's leave it there.
Well some of that may involve hanging the head down, and for me sometimes the tinnitus goes away (mostly, never completely but from 4/1 to 1/0 = see my response to @MattS above.

See my other posts for further explanation (and surprise) at how my morning routine may "clear" my tinnitus.

 

[Greg Sacramento]

From all the studies that I have read, I think the quotes from attained 'link below' for physical associated 'tinnitus changing' are most common. Extreme forward head bending and hyper extension (lifting) of head is a common trigger that's not fully discussed in this article. As far as any strange sounds being heard, researchers point to brain reactions, but they are still all over the place with this.

"Although passive and active movements of the neck and shoulder modulated the perception of tinnitus in many subjects, forceful maneuvers were clearly more effective. It is unclear why this is the case, but one possible explanation is that forceful maneuvers unconsciously activate other neural networks involved in breath-holding and flexion of the abdominal muscles, similar to what occurs during the Valsalva maneuver, which increases intracranial pressure and venous return to the heart as well as normalizing middle ear pressure by opening the eustachian tube."

"Our results lend support to previous contentions that movements of the jaw and neck (involving the trigeminal nerve, spinal accessory nerve, and cervical nerves 1 and 2) are the most consistent and most efficacious methods of modulating tinnitus."

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

 

[Greg Sacramento]

Well some of that may involve hanging the head down, and for me sometimes the tinnitus goes away (mostly, never completely but from 4/1 to 1/0

I wonder if your C spine straighten and your C1 - C2 is off. I would try outward neck muscle therapy

Yes I would try outward neck therapy ( bending head forward - hanging head down). To answer your question to me on who to see for this - would be a good physical therapist doctor. This method would take pressure off the c spine, veins, arteries and your hearing nerve. This would indicate sternocleidomastoid pressure that I also mentioned to you above and well over a year ago. Your vertebral artery would not have involvement with your situation.

https://www.curejoy.com/content/exercises-for-whiplash-fast-recovery/

 

[MattS]

Yup, very helpful Fleegle. I didn't know there were other people out there as tracking-nerdy as me!

How long have you been doing this for? Have you actually identified any patterns from it?

I've been doing a very similar thing, tracking as much as possible: tinnitus level, tinnitus pitch, sleep, foods eaten, activities, etc. But I've only been doing it for 4 months, so not enough data for really reliable patterns yet.

I use an app called Nomie, which a) makes tracking crazy easy, b) let's you track via your phone any time of day, and c) is off-the-grid so no ads. In 20 seconds I can tap, tap, tap and track volume, pitch and what I just ate. It's fantastic. Sadly, the developer just took the app down from the Apple/Android stores (was tough to monetize off-the-grid), but my guess is he would still be willing to make it available upon special request.

We should compare notes at some point.

 

[Fleegle]

I guess I could make an app to help track tinnitus and other data, but I haven't done an app for a while. I might look for one.
@MattS ... I have been tracking since 2015.
I have not collected much range of data and definitely I track tinnitus daily. But food, sleep, other data I have not.
Is anyone really interested in a tracking app? Take this offline if you like

 

[MattS]

I guess I could make an app to help track tinnitus and other data, but I haven't done an app for a while. I might look for one.
@MattS ... I have been tracking since 2015.
I have not collected much range of data and definitely I track tinnitus daily. But food, sleep, other data I have not.
Is anyone really interested in a tracking app? Take this offline if you like

There are a bunch of tracking apps out there - most of them in either the habit tracking or migraine tracking domains. But most of them offer the ability to track specific things, and do not have the flexibility to track whatever you want/need (e.g. right ear, left ear, etc.).

The only thing I found was this app Nomie, which is actually pretty fantastic. But as I said, because of difficulties monetizing, the developer has just taken it out of the app stores. So there could be a market there, were someone enterprising enough.

 

[Fleegle]

@MattS - Matt I found a ton of apps on Google. I looked for "habit tracking apps" and got a few results. "Habit Tracker" is the first one, but a few others look like it could track whatever you needed.
A feature I would like to see is a graph representation of the tracked item. Then we could start to see if there were correlations. If I wasn't so busy then I would pitch it to the forum and take a list of app requirements - and build it.

 

[MattS]

@MattS - Matt I found a ton of apps on Google. I looked for "habit tracking apps" and got a few results. "Habit Tracker" is the first one, but a few others look like it could track whatever you needed.
A feature I would like to see is a graph representation of the tracked item. Then we could start to see if there were correlations. If I wasn't so busy then I would pitch it to the forum and take a list of app requirements - and build it.

Most of the habit trackers I've seen allow for yes/no, done/not done type things, but aren't so good at allowing for ratings. But maybe there are some available now. Wouldn't be surprised.

Attached is what Nomie will do re charting. Also allows for exporting of .csv files for analysis in Excel, SPSS, whatever.

 

[Yuuls]

Thank God I'm not the only one, I've been thinking what the hell is going on with me.
I too pick on sounds, very faint sounds sometimes, that nobody else can hear.
It's mainly things like fridges, lights and electronics!

Does anyone experience a bothersome sound to change or even disappear depending on how your head is turned?

Like I hear a sound and if I turn my head only slightly the sound sometimes disappears, if I turn my head back it's there again.

Sometimes I look as if I have Tourette's

Hello. Just wanted to say I experience the same exact thing. I think I've always had hyperactive hearing, even before I had tinnitus so maybe this is why I've been affected so much?

Things like people smacking their gum always irritated me way more than others, when people popped in their retainer up and down with their tongues and it made that clicking sound it drove me nuts. Loud neighbors seemed to bother me significantly more than my roommates.

My old room had this weird whirring noise coming from the walls that I never really figured out, it was almost like an electrical groan (coming from the power lines attached to the house I think).

Now that I have tinnitus, I notice this super quiet wiring/electrical sound that comes from my TV, same with the microwave.
My space heater at work produces almost the same sound as my baseline tinnitus, and if I turn my head a certain way it almost disappears (work was driving me crazy because the whole time I thought my tinnitus was spiking but it was actually the heater - I say spiking because the ambient noise in our office usually does a fairly good job of masking my tinnitus).