I went skiing on early January, and since I’m not exactly a great skier, I took classes.
My teacher was a 69 year old that had a hip replacement five months prior, and he looked in amazing shape. Hip replacements are magic.
I am enjoying a new sensation today: pulsatile tinnitus. It’s in only one ear, and I can only hear it if I’m in a silent room and something is covering my ear (like a pillow when I’m sleeping on that side.)
Freakin’ weird. In the middle of the night I woke up and thought someone was rhythmically scraping ice off their driveway at 3AM.
I expect it’ll go away on it’s own, or I’ll experiment with a little decongestant. Does this break my “I haven’t been sick since then pandemic started” run?
Welcome to the club…a year and half now I have had it. It’s not going away.
Put both your hands over your ears such that your palms are covering them and your fingers rest on the back of your skull just below the boney bit at the topmost part of your neck. Pat yourself on the back of the head rapidly with your fingers without moving your palms; you want a little bit of pressure between your palms and ears but not too much - you’re aiming to hear a sorta ‘ting’ sound as you pat yourself. Do it for 30secs, maybe longer, however much you can be bothered. Your tinnitus will hopefully be gone for awhile; it’s not permanent relief but can be used, I’ve found, to break out of bad ‘spikes’.
If nothing else, that was a sort of amusing 30 seconds! With my hand over my ear, I’m not hearing any distinct whoosh sounds now, so maybe it worked? Now it’s more like a very distant rumbling.
Maybe you’re lucky and it’s just wax? Get yourself some hydrogen peroxide.
In my readings on it, there are so many causes that it’s tough to impossible to determine what is causing it. Outside of it being caused by loud noise of course.
My tinnitus was permanent with no clear cause other than maybe a lifelong history of mild ear infections. The good news it that even though it felt like it would be unbearable at first, eventually I did actually just get used to it. Even though the volume is unchanged.
Reading this thread I’m suddenly aware of it, but 99% of the time I’m only as conscious of the sound as I am the feeling of socks on my feet. If I stop and think I can feel my socks, but otherwise not a thought that crosses my head.
I should read up on recent treatments, there’s at least one newish one involving listening to processed audio to retrain your brain to lower the volume in that frequency range over a period of months.
Same with me. I have tinnitus in both ears, left worse than right. And people are absolutely shocked when I demonstrate to them how loud it is, by playing a ‘peep’-sound on the approximate volume. Despite that, it hardly ever bothers me, doesn’t prevent me from falling asleep et cetera. Thank god for that…
I do admit that at times it was different, and definitely trroublesome. But somehow I found a way to just ignore it, most of the time, or accept it when I can’t ignore it.
Unfortunately, that did not help at all (not that I expected it to :-) ), but it was fun!
Dang, that’s unfortunate. Really works for me! Not necessarily for long, tho.
Oh well, I will try everything anyone suggests on the off-chance that it works, but I am past getting my hopes up, to be honest. The only thing that really works for me is going to France and staying in an area with cicada: their noise drowns out a lot of the ever present noise in my head, making me noticably more relaxed (probably because I don’t actively have to ignore the sound as much as usual: I do that subconsiously but it still takes energy, I guess).
I guess I could try and get some hearing aids that produce some sort of anti-sound. But I’m worried that going that path may lead to me actually focussing more on the sound, making things harder…
Consider this your periodic reminder that if you can modulate the pitch or volume of your tinnitus by moving your jaw around, you may have a mechanical issue that would benefit from treatment. Mine isn’t gone (hard to completely undo decades of terrible posture), but it is MUCH better than when it started.
What kind of treatment? ENT told me to rest my jaw and massage it. Neither helped. Mine also might be neck related (have had a stiff neck for decades) and I have been doing exercises for that, but no help.
Given the stiff neck, if not physical therapy, perhaps a good therapeutic massage therapist could help.
Tried all that, and in my case, no luck. Even tried an acupuncturist, because he claimed on his website that he could get results with tinnitus. Big disappointment… I might try it again in the future, with a better acupuncturist, this guy was a bit of a fraud (he inserted the needles, wiggled them two times, let me lay there for 15 minutes and that was it). My wife went to a Chinese acupuncturist that had a much more intensive approach (which worked wonders for her frozen shoulder), so perhaps he’s worth a go…
I have had multiple people tell me to go to an acupuncturist for tinnitus and my sleeping issues. I am skeptical, but my friends swear by it. I am not sure what my breaking point is, but I don’t think I am there yet. Probably the biggest factor is finding a local one who is good.
I’ve gone from an acuptuncture skeptic to full supporter, and back to mild skepticism. About 10 years ago I had an acupuncture budget in my benefits, and had some knee pain during longer drives. Thought I’d try it out, and it seemed to work. Then had some other muscle pain and kept doing it, also seemed to work. Became a convert. Was I inventing problems and placebo-ing a solution? Maybe, but kind of liked it anyway and it really seemed to help.
But then I had one bad needle that destroyed the left side of my lower body with numbness and reduced mobility. I almost went to the hospital, but fortunatley it went away after a few days. So I ramped down my acupuncture and stopped it. Anyway, YMMV.
The whole needles thing squicks me out, but application of electrical stimulation via TENS to acupuncture points has been hugely beneficial to me for some things (not universally, though. It did nothing for my tinnitus). Where I’ve really had success with that is releasing tight muscles.
When I was a much younger VR, I hung out with a group of rather kinky people. One had a source of sterile acupuncture needles. We would do it to each other. Sometimes the feeling was… weird. Nobody had this reaction. But had we known that it was a possibility, we wouldn’t have done it.
So, a minor issue, but it’s been getting increasing irritating: the inside of my nose itches. But not like the surface, where I can scratch it. It feels like the cartilage itself itches.
Anyone here dealt with this?