Silence Versus Noise

[MountainCreek]

The biggest challenge in carrying out this experiment is the construction of the sound isolating patient hotel. This has to be like a prison, walls covered with mattressses with no possibility to make a phone call or escape the room for two weeks. Food has to be served through a hole in the door on rubber plates with rubber forks. It certainly requires a very excentric scientist with very good economical conditions (to build the hotel and recruit test persons with tinnitus) to carry out such an experiment. Hence this will likely take a very long time despite the idea is so simple. Probably it will not be done before 2098.

 

[MountainCreek]

I don't mean to be rude but there is literally 0 evidence to support that, and your high pitched tinnitus that doesn't heal with silence is a perfect counterexample.

And btw, if you actually developed Hyperacusis you will regret it. H is no fun, much more disabling than T.

It doesn't make you 'careful' it makes you suffer.

Is hyperacusis a problem if you can remain in perfect silence too? Can people WITHOUT tinnitus develop hyperacusis by exposing themselves to too much silence?

 

[Foncky]

What's the deal with this soundproofed hotel thing ? How do you isolate the patient from his own noises ?

 

[MountainCreek]

It is an experiment. Maybe everybody's tinnitus gets lower by perfect silence for two weeks, and then my idea is correct. Or else it does not apply to everyone, and then my idea is not quite correct. It works for me. Problem is I can not go to my employer and say that my doctor recommended me to stay at home in silence to cure my tinnitus, since no doctor today would recommend such a thing as far as I have seen. That makes me upset.

 

[maltese]

Is hyperacusis a problem if you can remain in perfect silence too? Can people WITHOUT tinnitus develop hyperacusis by exposing themselves to too much silence?

One day you will have to leave your soundproof house, and that's where H starts causing trouble.

 

[Foncky]

It is an experiment. Maybe everybody's tinnitus gets lower by perfect silence for two weeks, and then my idea is correct. Or else it does not apply to everyone, and then my idea is not quite correct. It works for me. Problem is I can not go to my employer and say that my doctor recommended me to stay at home in silence to cure my tinnitus, since no doctor today would recommend such a thing as far as I have seen. That makes me upset.

I'm working at home with as less noise as possible. I can tell you it doesn't lower tinnitus.

 

[MountainCreek]

If I remain in silence 24/7 where no external noise I hear is louder than my own breathing sound, then after one week my tinnitus level is decreased from 100 percent to 99 percent. If I continue a second week it is reduced further to 98 percent. Then there are gaps, and one or more days more it is gone. That is my experience from three tinnitus episodes I had in the past. It is not like that tinnitus decreases linearly with time. It is suddenly gone. So nobody can expect silence decreases tinnitus sound just like that. It doesn't work that way.

This is very similar to the way that an armwatch stops ticking when the battery is low. It ticks at the same rate for years. One day it suddenly shows the wrong time, the next day it has stopped. The fuel to the armwatch is the battery. The fuel to tinnitus is the brain plus external sounds. With external sounds cut off, the only fuel comes from noise inside our brain. This fuel might be limited and waiting it out it may stop producing tinnitus sound. Just my thoughts.