Comment by prirun | Hacker News Reader

Comment by prirun | Hacker News Reader

Have had it for decades, caused by working in computer rooms with hard/raised flooring and loud power cabinet blowers and air handlers.

I manage it with these earplugs:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0051U7W32

I sleep in them, mostly so noises like the furnace coming on or the cats getting rowdy outside my bedroom don't wake me up. But also wear them anytime the tinnitus is bothering me. Things like road noise while driving, fan noise, vacuum cleaners, etc seem to aggravate mine, and the earplugs generally help lower the high-frequency noise in our environment. I've gotten so used to them that sometimes I don't realize they're in my ears. For me, it seems the less noise I have to process, the less tinnitus bothers me. So I've never used things like noise generators to mask the high-pitched ringing.

I cut about 1/4" off the tip of these earplugs before using them. If I don't, they puff out in my ear and will make it sore if worn for long periods of time. I wash them with soap and water and use them for months at a time, so that one jar of plugs has lasted me almost 10 years.

> For me, it seems the less noise I have to process, the less tinnitus bothers me.

I'm the opposite. The less noise there is, the more noticeable the Tinnitus is, and harder to ignore.

I've had the best luck just being outside (especially hiking in forests, but doesn't have to be), actually. Something about the natural ambiance seems to almost 'soothe' my ears, somehow. It can be more effective than a noise machine at times.

I'm confused as to how earplugs help with Tinnitus. The sound is coming from within your ears. At least in my case, the external world has no significance in the volume of the tinnitus. In fact, cutting out noises makes Tinnitus more apparent. Something like a white noise machine helps marginally, as it gives the brain something else to focus on.

I typically rely on keeping background noise going to drown out the tinnitus, but I’ve also found that earplugs can work.

I don’t use them as much, but in my case, yeah, they’ll increase the volume of the tinnitus. In a weird way though, I’ve found that if that’s all you’re hearing then you can kind of get used to it and your mind starts to kind of drown out the noise. You can also meditate and focus on the tinnitus with the same effect, and there too the earplugs can help.

I don’t tend to wear them for more than an hour or two since even the soft ear plugs seem to make my ear ache.

Putting the earplugs in doesn't make tinnitus go away. But overstimulating my ears seems to aggravate tinnitus. For example, I worked for 9 months mixing my sister's CD, 6-8 hours/day. I liked the work, but there's no way I could do it for a career because it caused my ears to ring even more when I wasn't mixing. Earplugs give my ears a respite from high-frequency noise, which for me, over time, seems to calm down the tinnitus a bit; it lowers the volume if you will. It doesn't ever go away though.

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