Tinnitus Advice

[Zofo]

I recently developed a quite serious case of this, following illness and ear surgery. The sound is like a cross between the noise when you're on a plane and a lorry engine. It's quite loud most of the time.

I am losing sleep and it also affects my balance and my bike handling. It's dead annoying too.

Any advice ?

I've had it for 25 years now- avery high pitch whistling in my right ear as well as a sensitivity to loud noises-eg car alarms, dogs barking etc. You do -eventually -get used to it as the brain has an amazing ability to 'adapt' to change and filter out non threatening stimuli. you need to get 'friendly' with it first tho.

 

[col]

I've had it mildly for as long as I can remember but in the last 6 months it had become much louder. It seems to be worst when I'm tired. I ignore it for 99.9% of the time. Suffering from tinnitus is a bit like driving a Land Rover - if the noise irritates you, turn up the radio!

Mine is more noticeable when Im tired too, a high pitched hiss sort of?

 

[Globalti]

Yes, it sounds like the very high-pitched hissing ringing sound you used to get from an old TV screen; it's at the very top limit of audibility.

BTW my Mum has it badly and we discovered that tinnitus is a little-publicised side effect of long-term aspirin use.

 

[G-Zero]

Should one discontinue cycling.

It's not stopped any of us from cycling and personally, I find that the wind noise on the bike masks the noise from Tinnitus.

If I was ever told by some expert that stopping cycling would cure the Tinnitus, I would need to go for a long bike ride, to contemplate where my next long bike ride would take me

 

[henshaw11]

Yes, it sounds like the very high-pitched hissing ringing sound you used to get from an old TV screen; it's at the very top limit of audibility.

Sounds a bit like mine - or the sort of high pitch hiss that you get from a PA system - mine's not too bad but it probably from a combination of using an mp3 player a lot (despite having fairly well isolated earpieces and being careful about volume) and a lot of gig-going. A mate with similar listening habits has it worse and he's splashed out on some custom earplugs (ER15s I think) before it gets more severe.

 

[Globalti]

What a bunch of sorry old buggers we are on this forum!

 

[henshaw11]

What a bunch of sorry old buggers we are on this forum!

...and we haven't even got to the subject of knees !

 

[valetillidye]

I've suffered with it for most of my life - I remember watching Blue Peter when I was about 8 (I'm 36 now) and they did a piece on it, at the the time I just assumed that everyone suffered with it, it was a proper life changing moment for me as up until then I'd never really thought about it

I dont even notice it 99% of the time (now I've read this thread its there again!), its mainly when i'm tired. I've had it so long that it doesn't really bother me anymore, although I had an ear infection last year and it seemed to get worse for a few months - its either got better or I'm used to it again.

The strange thing is that despite this my hearing is pretty good.

The only thing that I wonder is what it would be like to lie in bed at night and for it to be absolutely silent, rather than having this high pitched ringing in my left ear!