The Drawbacks of Having Tinnitus

[tinnitussufferer]

We generally dont play loud music when we need to concentrate our mind on something like reading or studying. A lack of silence tends to distract us and makes us less able to concentrate. So could it be possible that tinnitus prevents you from using your mind as effectively as if you had silence?

could it be true that tinnitus prevents us from getting deep sleep?

does tinnitus prevent you from hearing the silences in music?

does tinnitus keep the mind in a heightened state of activity?

what does a lack of silence really do to our bodies? its impossible to know because nobody has studied it. Nobody could subject a person to a lifetime of noise and study the effects on them It would be too cruel.

If the body is controlled by an autonomic nervous system then does that not mean TRT should not be able to work, since we cannot control our autonomic system?

 

[linearb]

We generally dont play loud music when we need to concentrate our mind on something like reading or studying. A lack of silence tends to distract us and makes us less able to concentrate. So could it be possible that tinnitus prevents you from using your mind as effectively as if you had silence?

I think these are personal questions; for me, the most technical thing I do is make software, and I'm much better at it now than I was when I got my worse ringing in 2009, simply because I have 6 years of experience doing it that I didn't then. I have also developed pretty regular meditative practice as a direct result of having tinnitus, so I'd have to say that in my case, my brain works better in general than it did before I had T.

could it be true that tinnitus prevents us from getting deep sleep?

for me, this isn't a problem, the thing that keeps me from getting deep sleep is being in a state of unresolved anxiety. As long as I have my anxiety in check, I sleep as well as I ever have, plenty of dreams and REM sleep.

does tinnitus prevent you from hearing the silences in music?

Sure, though when I am listening to music actively that usually shifts the tinnitus into the background, so I will perceive "silence" in the gaps in music because my brain doesn't treat the tinnitus as part of the music. Hard to explain.

what does a lack of silence really do to our bodies? its impossible to know because nobody has studied it. Nobody could subject a person to a lifetime of noise and study the effects on them It would be too cruel.

I don't know because I've never experienced actual silence; however my suspicion is that anything which loads stress onto you, has deleterious long-term effects on health. Since the tinnitus signal is not something that we yet have a medical solution to, I think the only sane way to approach this is do whatever you can to keep your stress level down and keep your feel-good chemicals flowing, and then not worry about it too much, because that's just more anxiety dumped on.

However, I have never seen any kind of longitudinal large-sample study (or even small sample study) that found any kind of correlation between tinnitus and shortened life-span, and I've known a lot of old geezers who have had tinnitus for a long time.

If the body is controlled by an autonomic nervous system then does that not mean TRT should not be able to work, since we cannot control our autonomic system?

If we couldn't change the way our autonomic nervous systems worked through conscious behavior, it wouldn't just be TRT that wouldn't work.... exercises to improve reflexes, meditation, CBT, and a whole ton of other things are built on that same basic premise. My experience is that all that shit works, but, you might have had a different experience that has led you to a different conclusion.