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I've had tinnitus in my left ear for about six months now. I was hoping it was the result of an earwax impaction or something, but after having several specialists look at my ears, test my hearing, and getting an MRI to check for tumors, the overwhelming medical consensus of the cause appears to be "I dunno", and at this point I have given up on it being temporary.

About 95% of the time, I can fairly easily just tune it out and it's no different than any other background noise. Living in NYC helps, there's a fair amount of constant background noise even in the best of times. I've found that finding 10-hour videos on YouTube of TV static at a low volume can be helpful for the remaining 5%.

Still I would really prefer it wasn't there. The ringing in my left ear is still annoying, and I'm only in my mid 30's, so assuming an average lifespan I have anywhere from 40-60 years left to enjoy this constant ringing.

I'll play with this thing to see if it helps.

My first reaction to this was, "this is dumb and annoying", and then I played with it for a few minutes and found a set of levels that were causing my symptoms to briefly go away. It still isn't perfect, but a combination of Steve Seq and Pulses High creates "gaps" in my tinnitus, where my brain seems to "forget" about it briefly and I don't hear it. But then it comes back a millisecond or so later. I don't think I could get work done with this on all day, but it has more effect on my symptoms than other websites I've tried. It's really interesting, like there are brief (millisecond) periods of no tinnitus. [I've had it in my left ear for probably 35 years (I played in a punk band in the early 80's with no hearing protection but it didn't show up until a decade later).]

Keep at it, I think you're on to something!

I've had tinnitus since 2018. I got used to it. it's not the worst thing for me. I'm 5'2" bald guy LoL

If you're suffering from tinnitus, remember, at least you're not bald and 5'2" tall.

I suddenly lost the hearing in my left ear at the age of 24. One moment I was fine, eating a slice of pizza, the next moment I suddenly could sense something was wrong. I tried to stand up and walk, but my balance was gone. My ear felt full and there was a strange metallic echo. I waited about 24 hours and it hadn't gone away, so I went to the urgent care. By that time, just standing up was enough to cause me to vomit. I've had a pretty healthy life, so everything that was happening was rather disconcerting to me!

The doctors at urgent care erroneously diagnosed the problem as dehydration as a result of my telling them I had played tennis earlier before the incident. They sent me home with instructions to drink lots of water. After waiting another 48 hours completely unable to hear or even stand up, I went back to the urgent care. This time, they diagnosed it as an ear infection and gave me antibiotics. Over the next two weeks, my balance slowly returned, but what little hearing I still had slowly deteriorated further. About a month after it started, I finally was referred to an audiologist that concluded that I was completely deaf in my left ear, possibly due to a viral infection, but there isn't any way to know for sure the cause. Had it been treated with steroids immediately, it might have saved my hearing.

I am now 40 years old and have lived with being single sided deaf for half my life. Initially I didn't think much of it. I've slowly realized it has had a profound impact on my personality and sense of identity. I am much less social due to the difficulty I have hearing in group settings. Conversations are frustrating because it takes so much effort to hear the other person properly. I am reluctant to tell people about my condition because I don't want to be seen as handicapped in any way. Usually by the time I do end up telling someone, they say they had already figured as much.

Tinnitus is a major daily issue as well. I can’t seem to understand how this website helps though.

MyNoise.net is such a great site, consider throwing them a couple bucks, it's basically a pay what you can model. I can't count the number of hours I've spent programming listening to their different soundscapes, rain on a tin roof, and cafe noise are 2 of my favorites.

The way I personally manage my tinnitus is by having fans constantly blowing in various rooms of where I live, for example I have a fan in my bedroom when I’m trying to sleep or in my office when I need to concentrate.

The fans don’t totally block out the tinnitus, but they sorta act as an undistracting distraction.

Have tinnitus 20 years now. Very loud. Can hear it in cinema while watching action movies. First year was depressing. I couldn't believe I will never enjoy silence again. Now I don't care. It's my little friend. Really. Life can be amazing even with extreme tinnitus

The only way to temporarely get rid of my tinnitus (completely gone or at least very reduced for up to 30 seconds) is to listen to this beep tone from 8 to 12 KHZ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNf9nzvnd1k

apparently the phenomenon is called residual inhibition. If only there was a way to make this work permanently...

The drumming technique works for me for a few minutes if I need some temporary relief

https://treblehealth.com/tapping-technique-for-temporary-tin...

I thought I was alone but there is so many comments I wonder how much people is there and if it’s really random or if there is common sources like some stress, airpods or some kind of psychoacoustic event. I have like 3 different frequencies and it « exploded » in a stressful event at work. I always thought it was music all day with AirPods but it might be stress actually because everytime I’m tired and stressed it’s unbearable. A nightmare that we learn to live with. I often ask myself what the sound would look like if demodulated and de-pitched if that makes sense. It might seem weird but a voice modulated at a very high frequency and pitch might look like those kind of noises or I am wrong ?

I've had tinnitus since I was a child. It's probably due to a procedure they used to do around here an children with ear infections. Nowadays, I rarely notice it. But I remember in my teens, it sometimes was absolutely excruciating because I had no way of coping or tuning it out. This is very interesting. I might consider trying it. If there's something I'd really want to experience at least once, it's that "absolute silence" so many mention when being out in the forest it country side.

This is pretty cool, but unfortunately I have somatic tinnitus, so this doesn't work as well. The frequency/tone is very dynamic with my version of tinnitus and I can even change it by moving or massaging my neck (especially at the base of my skull) in certain ways. The good news is that also means there are brief windows of time where I have zero tinnitus because my neck and muscles are in a position to temporarily fix whatever underlying issue is causing it.

For me personally, looking for solutions like this and researching tinnitus makes it more noticeable and worse. The best approach for me has been to pretend it doesn't exist and is insignificant, and even though it's still there after 7 years, it doesn't bother me as much anymore.

Lots of people posting in here about how they can’t figure out the cause of their tinnitus.

Mine was ear wax. I went to an ENT doctor for an unrelated issue, he pulled a big plug of wax out of my ear, and my tinnitus (which was quite bad and had a very sudden onset) totally disappeared.

If you have it, go get a doctor to look in your ear before you give up and decide to try to live with it.

I’m confused. What if none of the tones or sliders match the sound of my tinnitus? Mine is a very low frequency hum or buzz. I find all the sliders on this page to be a high frequency sound.

Here’s my hot take on tinnitus:

First and foremost, ignore it. When you find yourself listening to it, distract yourself and immediately move on.

Secondly, add more white noise into your environment. The best approach I find is just opening a window or adding a little fan or water feature to your desk. White noise generators don’t work as well for me, but they can help in a pinch.

I believe that our modern day indoor environments are honestly just too unnaturally quiet anyway.

I’m not joking when I say that the only time I really get annoyed by my tinnitus is when the monthly “cure” for it gets posted on HN. ;-)

For me, getting tinnitus was most likely me being dumb and standing right in front of a massive wall of speakers without earplugs, when I went to see The Bug performing. It was somewhere around 2010 and I wasn't nearly as aware of what it could've caused as I am now. I got this ringing in my right ear ever since, and just learned to live with it.

I started having tinnitus right after a COVID infection.

it's not too bad, only one ear and it comes and goes pretty quickly.

For me the COVID correlation is 100%, but I haven't found too much literature about it and wonder if anyone experienced it as well

I like that they chose sending an email newsletter over having a social media channel - avoiding another type of unwanted noise.

Bit off topic but anyone here use white noise with their young kids, as a sleep aid?

I'm really paranoid about giving them tinnitus. I am just back from holiday with extended family, I mentioned to my brother that the white noise he is using with his kids is extremely loud, he's using a phone app. To the point my daughter moved rooms out of his kids room. Google ai agrees with me that hearing damage is definitely a risk. I mentioned this to him and it went down really badly. I'll not mention it again.

Periodically my tinnitus will disappear. When it does, it often takes a bit of time to consciously figure out what’s different and then I realize my constant buzzing companion has gone away. The last time it disappeared I had a head cold and congestion and that was enough to provide glorious, complete silence.

Why is everyone here having tinnitus in their left ear? Including myself.

I'm so happy mine is gone. It came in waves for me and funny it enough, it sounded like ocean waves crashing [0]. I used to play ocean sound for my kids to sleep, so I didn't notice that a good part of the sound wasn't coming from the device, but from me. It was unbearable for several weeks before it just disappeared.

[0]:https://idiallo.com/byte-size/nightmare-on-ocean-street

One thing that seems to help me with tinnitus is the Airpods Pro when you customize it for your hearing. Like they have a tool on the iPhone/iPad that will (essentially) set up an equalizer in it that matches your (lack of) hearing.

I think actually stimulating the parts of your hearing that match the tinnitus is what helps. That's why this white noise thing works. But, also, listening to music or watching movies with the Airpods Pro (after configuring) -- I assume -- does something similar.

I got tinnitus from a wornout hardisk bearing in a Toshiba laptop over 20 years ago. You don't realize how loud and close they are to your ear until it is too late.

Whoever is suffering with tinnitus, try this - firmly press on your jaw muscles - if your tinnitus amplifies then it is related to your clenched jaw muscles! A therapy on these muscles will either reduce the tinnitus or will completely make it go away! Wish my doctor told me that years ago instead of doing useless ct scans and hearing checks. Wish you all silent nights!

None of the sliders sound anything at all like my tinnitus, which is a very high complex hiss, maybe up around 6-9Khz? and steady, or varying slowly in volume. But no beeps or boops like this system.

I wish this would have more upper range sounds; it barely touches on the >15khz range at all and is at least two octaves below my tinnitus across the board.

White noise is key here. Luckily I do not have tinnitus, but I have small children and they sleep great with this on. And so do their parents, especially handy when going on holiday in noisy hotels etc. I can't go on holiday without it now! :)

I've just downloaded this audio track with yt-dlp, placed it on an sdcard and I play it in a loop on a small speaker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMfPqeZjc2c

It is striking that it sounds like Brian Eno - An Ending (Ascent)

My tinnitus is at 14khz, so every tone in this generator is too low.

I have mine since 2007 in both ears. Simply accept it.

My AirPod pros gave me or really exacerbated my tinnitus

If you are on iOS seems you need to unmute your phone.

Suggest trying Brown Noise for a bit of relief.

I too had exactly the same constsnt ringing in my left ear.

I could not get to sleep because the noise was so loud and intense.

It reminded me of those spy films where they torture someone playing loud heavy metalcore all day and night.

I had a X-ray, ultra-sound and two Consultants had a look.

Both said that there was nothing wrong with my ear. No ear wax, no damage, no issues at all.

They both mentioned that tense facial and neck muscles may be a cause.

As well as the constant ringing, there is a sound like a central eating system, thumping and groaning away, in both my ears too. I initially thought the thumping and groaning was the Mrs snoring.

I bought some earloops thinking my ears were too sensitive and I was somehow hearing noises from the houses down the road and the motorway traffic 3 miles away. to no avail, even with the earloops blocking all exterior noise, I still had the high pitched and low piched internal noises.

I found a way to reduce the noise.

I was laying in bed one night and I was relaxing my jaw when I noticed that if I opened my mouth and let my jaw hang loose all the noises stopped.

So over a month or so I tried to train my jaw to be less tense and more relaxed.

For me it worked.

it was my jaw.

See also: https://audionotch.com/app/tune/

A bunch of people with tinnitus in their left ear. That's kind of weird. That's what I have.

Anyone with tinnitus only in their right ear?

And yeah, I've had it since the early 90's and it mostly only bothers me now when someone brings it up. Thanks Hacker News!

I've had a low grade (although who knows, it's not like I can hear someone else's tinnitus to compare) tinnitus for as long as I remember. For my childhood I thought it was just normal to hear this noise when there was no external source of other sound.

Honestly, I never felt particularly negative about it.

I guess if you never know what true silence sounds like, you never know what you are missing.

The white burst generator reduces my tinnitus for a while. It’s less effective than it used to be, but when the silence part of the cycle starts, I can hear my tinnitus drop in volume. https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/whiteBurstsNoiseGenerator....

Neuromodulator certainly masks my tinnitus, but doesn’t reduce it. Sometimes I feel like it’s a little worse when I turn off the sound.

Mynoise.net is great though. The speech jammer is awesome in noisy places, and layering noise and thunderstorms helps me work. I’m a happy subscriber.

I started hearing tinnitus a decade ago in a quiet room at night when I came back home after two years traveling the world at around 30 yo. Over the following months it became louder and noticed it more, then after maybe a year I could hear it all the time. During the day I could live with it but in the middle of the night I could not get back to sleep after waking up. It was causing a lot of anxiety because I was afraid of how much louder it may become.

I was thinking that maybe I cough something during my travels so I went to see a few specialists but they found nothing.

What I understand now is that the cause is probably all the vipassana meditation I did and some psychedelics I experimented with during my travel which opened some filters I had in my mind blocking sensor noise. It's the most plausible explanation for me.

The noise was probably always there, or maybe it got louder when I become older, but I never noticed it until it became disturbing.

A decade later the noise is still there, all the time, but it's not an issue at all anymore. It's not louder than before, and I have no negative feelings associated with it. I made peace with it and I can now easily ignore it, or to be more accurate, I can live with it and it'll disappear on its own after a short time until I put my attention back to it (voluntary or not).

As I'm writing this in a quiet room it's very loud, but that's fine, it just sensor noise. Soon enough I'll stop hearing it if I don't focus on it.

I hope reading this can help. I wish I had someone back then telling me that it would turn out okay to just accept it after doing some medical checks.

I still want to try one of the ones with the cyberpunk pacifier that shocks your tongue to stimulate neuroplasticity.

I’ve noticed that my tinnitus increases significantly with intense exercise, specifically exercises that affect the neck/shoulder area like pull ups.

If you have tinnitus, it’s worth a try to massage or work on relaxing those areas.

I tried it out but it did absolutely nothing for my tinnitus. All it does is put out a bunch of changing tones (my tinnitus never changes tones, so I'm having trouble figuring out what this is supposed to do?).

Lots of people giving good feedback on it, though. What exactly is it about this site that works for other people?

How would replacing a buzzing sound problem with a synthetic buzzing solve the problem of... not hearing any buzzing?

It's like trying to put out fire by lighting more fire, what am I missing?

I have low pitch rumbling in my right ear. MRI was useless. Hearing test "perfect". Its hard to sleep without background noise. I think its a damaged blood vessel in my brain or neck: veinous stenosis.

There is a company called Auricle that is working on releasing their tinnitus treatment device. To my knowledge, they are the only tinnitus treatment device company with a properly blinded study showing efficacy. They have started taking outside (accredited) investors for those interested:

https://www.auricleinc.com/joinourmission

36yrs with tinnitus, but this website looks like what happens when chatgpt and a tinnitus sufferer vibe codes better than nothing I suppose ... Or is it?

Like others I have tinnitus that only now really rears its head in extremely quiet environments or when I see the word "tinnitus" or someone says it. Then I am reminded I have it.

I think I have always had it; I became more aware it was abnormal and unusual in my twenties when I realised that TV dramas use a similar high pitch sound to indicate someone who has had sudden hearing damage (after an explosion etc.) and then it really bothered me for a while because I was living in a very quiet area.

About six years ago now I was at a gig at a local venue when I experienced hearing loss due to a freakish bit of bass feedback. I was in a particular corner of the room and clearly experienced an overtone that almost nobody else heard at all, and at a volume nobody else experienced; pure bad luck. The sound made me run away automatically. I was thirty yards away before I even really comprehended that I was leaving.

I experienced considerable hearing loss — muffled, incomplete hearing — for several days. Nearly complete for the first day.

But when my tinnitus came back I realised I felt sure I was going to get my hearing back essentially entirely. It was curiously reassuring. I've never really been stressed by it since.

So I have what I expect to be lifelong tinnitus. But also earplugs now.