[HN Gopher] Tinnitus Seems Linked with Sleep
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Tinnitus Seems Linked with Sleep
        
       Author : pseudolus
       Score  : 129 points
       Date   : 2022-05-21 12:02 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (theconversation.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (theconversation.com)
        
       | lpapez wrote:
       | Seeems very plausible. Anecdotal evidence datapoint: I just woke
       | up from an afternoon nap and my ears were buzzing with high-
       | pitched noise. The nap was exactly an hour long and it was an
       | alarm that woke me up. By the time I read the article, the
       | buzzing went away. Hope they figure it out.
        
         | mannykannot wrote:
         | I came to this article expecting it to be about a potential
         | cause for tinnitus in disturbed sleep, but the claim within it
         | actually seems to be that tinnitus causes sleep disturbance,
         | specifically of slow-wave sleep.
        
       | mcint wrote:
       | I will watch this with great interest.
       | 
       | Beginning to hear tinnitus is one of my backstop signals for
       | tiredness, where I can avoid sleep deprivation inertia on waking,
       | if I go to bed within half-an-hour to 2 hours of onset.
       | 
       | It seems to reliably relate to changes in muscle tension I sense
       | around my ear and upper neck, often some slow twitching as well.
       | It's a related sensation to satisfying yawns, stretching that
       | eustachian tube.
        
       | keeganjw wrote:
       | I never put two and two together but I think this tracks with my
       | experience. I don't get deep sleep like I used to. For the last
       | few years, I dream and wake up multiple times every night. I used
       | to sleep through the night and only dream here and there. I also
       | got tinnitus a few years ago. I couldn't swear that these
       | happened at the same time but it makes sense.
        
         | nosianu wrote:
         | Alternatively, what contributed to your sleep issues also
         | contributed to your tinnitus.
         | 
         | I'm saying that because that was the case for me. A back then
         | undiscovered dose of mercury led to all kinds of back then
         | mostly ignored ("it's not that bad and it'll probably go way" -
         | I was young) issues, and some tinnitus was just a part of it,
         | but also some serious sleep issues.
         | 
         | Any such environmental factors are rarely diagnosed, because
         | that's really hard unless it's so bad that it's severe acute
         | poisoning. But any less than that probably won't ever be
         | discovered and will all be attributed - by the person
         | themselves too (in my case definitely) - to "stress" (even if
         | there is not that much) or aging. You can't detect it with
         | imaging, symptoms are inconclusive at best, and forget blood
         | tests, they are only useful for said acute poisonings.
         | 
         | > _and only dream here and there_
         | 
         | You would not know if you dreamed, normally. Only if you wake
         | up while still dreaming. Even then usually you quickly forget
         | most or all of what it was about. To remember more you have to
         | wake up right in the middle of it.
         | 
         | By the way, speaking about dreams, during the years when I had
         | those issues my dreams often were nightmares, they were full of
         | feelings of helplessness, being unable or barely able to move,
         | and generally very unpleasant. I had more than once during
         | those harder times dreams where parts of my body were very
         | seriously diseased including total tissue disintegration and
         | open holes in my body, inside the dream.
         | 
         | Those dreams came from "below", from the "hardware", not from
         | my (completely unconcerned) consciousness (I hope I kind of get
         | across what I mean, not sure how to formulate this correctly).
         | What I mean is, at the time I had no worries about my health
         | whatsoever. All my problems, even though something like almost-
         | asthma allergy coming out of nowhere and suddenly, seemed
         | normal and manageable and as if it would all go away given some
         | time, so I just coped (for example, hyposensitization
         | treatment) and worked around the issues but didn't think much
         | of it.
         | 
         | Since the problem was actually diagnosed (university clinic,
         | lab tests) and solved (chelators, for years) my dreams have
         | become AMAZING, and super interesting too. I'm so glad I had to
         | wake up during some of them (alarm was set) so that I actually
         | remember some. I never knew what great fantasies,
         | sophistication and city-, house- and landscapes my brain was
         | capable of generating, it was just terrible before.
         | 
         | Given that experience, I think even if it's kind of useless
         | because it's way too vague and probably very dependent on the
         | individual, the contents of dreams might give some indications
         | to a body's health status too.
        
       | karmakaze wrote:
       | The way I would interpret the article relates to my experience
       | with lucid imaging. Sort of like dreaming but I'm really just
       | seeing a scene rather than experiencing something. I can only do
       | this in similar conditions as lucid dreaming (but I've very
       | rarely experienced that). The thing I found is that you have to
       | have no external perceptions for my imagined ones to form. Once
       | I've seen the real world, it's near impossible to forget it and
       | get back to my imagined one.
       | 
       | I suspect that tinnitus is similar in that the lack of an
       | external signal allows for filling in with imagined sounds. Since
       | there's no external reset the default could be simple tones (at
       | least that's what I hear). For the analogy to hold the pitches of
       | the sounds imagined should match frequencies of hearing loss. I
       | tried to match up what I imagine I hear with recorded tones and
       | it's close to the limit, e.g. I can hear faintly up to about 16
       | kHz and the tone I imagine is about 15 kHz--I don't recall the
       | exact numbers but it was relatively like that.
       | 
       | I suppose with practice one could imagine hearing something while
       | awake in those frequencies to the point it's indistinguishable
       | from actually hearing it. I don't think I'd want to learn how to
       | induce specific sounds or voices in my head that I can't turn off
       | at will. At least you can know that the high-pitched sounds
       | aren't real.
        
       | cptnapalm wrote:
       | I've had tinnitus as long as I can remember. Watching a Bugs
       | Bunny cartoon where Elmer Fudd got hit over the head and he says
       | "somebody answer that phone" or some such, I didn't get the joke
       | so I asked my dad. He told me some people have ringing in their
       | ears. I couldn't have been more than 7 and that was how I learned
       | it was abnormal. I have always had poor hearing too. Don't know
       | why to either of them.
        
       | oifjsidjf wrote:
       | My (relatively mild) tinitus completely dissapeated when I was
       | severely modifying my diet.
       | 
       | I do not know what exactly is that cause of it but I lean in the
       | direction that it's one of these
       | 
       | 1) Blood electrolyte levels
       | 
       | 2)meat
       | 
       | 3) carbs/sugars in large amount
       | 
       | One could experiment with a keto diet for start.
        
       | sepnax wrote:
       | Definitely me. Tinnitus: check, Sleeping disturbances: check,
       | Night terrors: check
        
         | jamamp wrote:
         | Funnily enough, I have mild tinnitus, but sleep very soundly. I
         | have a fan on 24/7 in my bedroom that helps enough for drowning
         | out the tinnitus sound. I rarely if ever wake up in the middle
         | of the night, and wake up fairly refreshed. I even fall asleep
         | relatively fast compared to some other people I know.
         | 
         | Elsewhere in this thread, it's been mentioned that there are
         | several types of tinnitus (it's apparently an umbrella term),
         | and some tinnitus can be caused by a firm pillow and bruxism,
         | which fits my description.
         | 
         | I wonder if the type of tinnitus has more or less effect on
         | sleep than others.
        
       | thrusong wrote:
       | I have this condition called visual snow syndrome, a neurological
       | condition which causes my tinnitus. Symptoms are always there,
       | but luckily, mine are mild. The tinnitus is the most noticeable
       | though unless I'm listening to music.
        
         | PBnFlash wrote:
         | I had never heard of visual snow, it's interesting that the
         | symptoms seem to primarily be the brain not rejecting normal
         | noise sources like floaters and white blood cells.
        
           | thrusong wrote:
           | That's how I understand it, that it's some combination of
           | interference getting into the nerves after the images are
           | merged from the eyes, but also that the brain also doesn't
           | filter out things that it normally does.
        
         | danaos wrote:
         | Did you get diagnosed by a professional? I suspect I suffer
         | from the same rare symptoms but I am too affraid to ask an
         | ophthalmologist on such a rare condition.
        
           | thrusong wrote:
           | I don't have an official diagnosis, but I did see an
           | optometrist because I was afraid I was going blind who said
           | "I know exactly what you're describing." I then saw my GP who
           | ordered an MRI to make sure it wasn't MS.
           | 
           | The MRI found absolutely nothing. My eye doctor says my eyes
           | are extremely healthy.
           | 
           | My symptoms line up exactly with VSS and I had a lot of peace
           | of mind knowing what I was experiencing and that I wasn't
           | going blind, so I didn't pursue the proper further test (PET
           | scan, I think).
           | 
           | Honestly, the peace of mind was worth it, but be armed with
           | research on it.
        
         | shafyy wrote:
         | After reading your comment, I looked up visual snow syndrome,
         | and I think I have it, too. I guess not much one can do about
         | it?
        
           | garganzol wrote:
           | Search for Beriberi. This is a condition caused by a
           | malnutrition. The end result is onset of an acquired
           | mitochondrial dysfunction which leads to some degree of a
           | neurological damage.
           | 
           | There are various possible causes for acquiring a
           | mitochondrial dysfunction beyond the malnutrition. The good
           | news is that it can treated if it is not caused by a genetic
           | defect.
           | 
           | The treatment is similar to treating Beriberi, regardless of
           | the original cause. The unpleasant part is that it takes some
           | time and patience ranging from months to years.
        
         | jdr23bc wrote:
         | I have this too. Is there some study showing it is the same
         | underlying problem causing both symptoms? I only knew that you
         | are more likely to have tinnitus and migraines if you have
         | visual snow.
         | 
         | There are some treatments for both symptoms. The ones I've
         | tried involve listening or looking at static. Neither had much
         | effect on me.
         | 
         | The best way I've found to deal with it is to ignore it.
         | focusing on treatments preversly makes me more aware of the
         | annoyance.
        
           | garganzol wrote:
           | There may be the same underlying problem for both tinnitus
           | and visual snow. The problem can be characterised as a
           | systemic neurological damage. For example, it can be caused
           | by the loss of myelin in nerve fibres.
           | 
           | In turn, that condition is commonly caused by the underlying
           | metabolic problems, which can be caused by genetic mutations
           | in mitochondria, toxins, episodes of hypoxia, unhealthy
           | lifestyles, oxidative stress.
           | 
           | When this happens, the other symptoms may include chronic
           | fatigue, acquired insulin resistance, T2DM, sometimes various
           | neurological manifestations in different parts of the body,
           | and even dementia. Personal mileage may vary, it really goes
           | from 1 to 11.
        
           | thrusong wrote:
           | After seeking medical help, my doctor did discover I had a
           | critical B12 deficiency, but AFAIK there is no connection
           | even though I had nerve damage from the B12 issues.
           | 
           | Apparently a healthy number is 500+, most people will present
           | with issues in the 250-300 range, and I was at 166 when
           | critical is 144ish.
           | 
           | I have to take a daily pill for the rest of my life and
           | things have improved, but the VSS is still the same.
        
       | blenderdt wrote:
       | Unfortunately I have 3 types of tinnitus: caused by hearing loss,
       | caused by neck muscles, caused by too much stimulus (stress, a
       | long drive, too much caffeine, and so on).
       | 
       | Hearing loss can not be healed but the other two types always go
       | away after good sleep.
       | 
       | If you got tinnitus it is good to figure out if there is a cause
       | that can be taken away. Sometimes you are in luck and a good deep
       | sleep can improve things.
        
         | dahart wrote:
         | How do you isolate and identify the different causes? I think I
         | have all three of these at times, and I suspect neck muscles
         | because cervical traction seems to help sometimes. But it's
         | _really_ hard to pin anything down concretely, tinnitus seems
         | so evasive. Sometimes I can't even match tones I can hear loud
         | and clear when using a tone generator.
        
           | blenderdt wrote:
           | This is just experience over the years. I started to notice
           | what caused it.
        
         | garganzol wrote:
         | >the other two types always go away after good sleep
         | 
         | In other words, it seems the other two types of tinnitus are
         | sensitive to the amount of reactive oxygen species (ROS).
         | 
         | When you sleep, the ROS are suppressed by glutathione. Then,
         | you feel fresh and rested when you wake up.
         | 
         | When you go through your day, the amount of ROS slowly but
         | steadily increases until you sleep and allow glutathione to do
         | its job again. The cycle repeats.
         | 
         | Given that your tinnitus seems to depend on ROS, I would
         | suggest to experiment with NAC 600 mg and see whether it
         | improves the symptoms. NAC is a glutathione precursor and
         | causes the immediate suppression of ROS.
         | 
         | If there is a correlation then the condition can be treated and
         | improved.
        
           | mdaniel wrote:
           | Is there a medical specialist that one can go talk to about
           | this approach? I am open to trying it, but would rather do so
           | using someone with a medical license versus Internet wisdom
        
         | chinathrow wrote:
         | > Hearing loss can not be healed
         | 
         | My friend had a tinnitus for a while and later found out it's
         | due to hearing problems on both ears. He then got hearing aids
         | and the tinnitus went away.
         | 
         | So it looks like, _some_ form of hearing loss induced tinnitus
         | can be treated.
        
         | d23 wrote:
         | Where do you even find a doctor who can tell you? I haven't
         | been able to get past: "well your hearing looks fine, good
         | luck" (even though I've done independent tests to see that I
         | have significant loss in the tinnitus side above 10khz; they
         | just didn't test that high).
        
           | riffraff wrote:
           | I had the same thought, to be fair, the doctors did get me to
           | make a few exams, but the end result was still "well your
           | hearing looks fine, good luck".
           | 
           | It's been a few years now. I'm lucky since the noise in my
           | ear is not too strong and often I don't think about it unless
           | I'm alone in silence, but it somewhat sad to think of never
           | being able to hear silence again.
        
       | dahart wrote:
       | Anyone have good coping resources or tips to share?
       | 
       | If my tinnitus is bad during the day, I use these pages, and they
       | do often help in varying degrees.
       | 
       | https://generalfuzz.net/acrn/
       | 
       | https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/whiteBurstsNoiseGenerator....
       | 
       | https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/neuromodulationTonesGenera...
        
         | Mizza wrote:
         | I have tinnitus so badly that some days I am incapacitated.
         | It's bad. I use white noise machines to get through the day -
         | it masks it but doesn't make it go away.
         | 
         | The thing that I've discovered that actually makes it go away:
         | extreme bass. Massive, 18" speaker cabinets and kilowatt
         | amplifiers for long periods of time, the kind that makes your
         | whole body vibrate, while wearing ear protection. I discovered
         | my first this after DJ'ing a club with a proper bass
         | soundsystem and have confirmed it since. The effect lasts from
         | weeks to months.
         | 
         | I found a few things in the medical literature which support
         | this as a real possibility and emailed a researchers about it
         | who said the same thing. I am seriously considering opening up
         | a crackpot bass-therapy clinic to help other sufferers, but
         | need to have other people confirm it works for them first.
        
           | orzig wrote:
           | The world needs more people boldly experimenting, I commend
           | you! (And be careful)
        
           | cpeterso wrote:
           | I've read about a proposed treatment of listening to
           | _notched_ white noise. The theory is that, by listening to
           | white noise with a notch filter at the frequency that matches
           | your tinnitus frequency, your ears or brain will become less
           | sensitive to your tinnitus frequency. There are websites with
           | reference tones to help find your tinnitus frequency and
           | YouTube videos of white noise notched at different
           | frequencies (supposedly, I haven't verified).
           | 
           | I have tinnitus and listen to white, brown, and pink noise
           | throughout the day. I tried notched white noise for a couple
           | months, but didn't notice any change compared to regular
           | white noise. My favorite noise these days is "space ship
           | engine noise" videos on YouTube. I get to pretend I'm working
           | on the Enterprise. :)
        
           | dahart wrote:
           | Whoa never heard this before! Thanks for sharing, will
           | definitely be trying it. I'll report back here when I do.
           | 
           | Btw, how long do you listen to bass sounds? And do you have
           | thoughts/opinions on what frequencies and how much variation
           | is needed? Just wondering if I should use a tone generator or
           | put on some EDM, and whether I should try at home or it'll
           | take long enough that I should go somewhere that the
           | neighbors won't hear it for hours.
        
             | Mizza wrote:
             | The point is that it is _tactile subbass_, bordering on
             | infrasound. It is a type of bass that most people probably
             | haven't experienced unless they are going to real reggae or
             | club events, and most clubs in the US don't have real
             | soundsystems, just PAs pushed to the red.
             | 
             | I've tried, I can't just listen to a low sin note on
             | headphones to fix it (in fact maybe this makes it worse). I
             | actually don't think the ears are important, it is being
             | physically vibrated that does it. I tried with a SubPac
             | transduction woofer and it maybe worked? But not to the
             | degree I'm really talking about here. A strange phenomena.
             | I don't even like reggae that much but I got to the monthly
             | reggae dance here just to get vibrated.
        
               | daggersandscars wrote:
               | I wonder if going to a top fuel drag race would have a
               | similar effect[0]. The sound pressure levels are intense,
               | to the level of moving one's internal organs around if
               | one is close to the cars. It is something that has to be
               | experienced.
               | 
               | If one is going for the first time, I'd recommend going
               | to the qualifying rounds. It's often cheaper and usually
               | less crowded. Make sure top fuel funny cars or dragsters
               | are racing -- the lower classes are significantly
               | quieter.
               | 
               | [0] Wearing hearing protection. I'd recommend the kind
               | that go in the ear, covered by the kind that go over the
               | ear.
        
               | [deleted]
        
           | hnfong wrote:
           | That explains the (literally, no exaggeration) deafening
           | music especially the subwoofers from the bars a couple
           | streets below...
        
       | treeman79 wrote:
       | Laying down increases cranial pressure. A symptom of high cranial
       | pressure is tinnitus.
       | 
       | On support forums people often wonder why head pain is worse
       | after laying down for awhile.
       | 
       | See "Idiopathic intracranial hypertension" Also called:
       | pseudotumor cerebri
        
       | kordlessagain wrote:
       | I have had periodic tinnitus in my left ear for maybe 10 years
       | and I'm 55. I would say that it "comes and goes" after sleeping.
       | Rarely have I noted it going away or coming back while I'm awake.
       | 
       | I have some high frequency hearing loss in this ear, probably due
       | to using noisy machinery in my 20s without proper hearing
       | protection. Anytime I do loud things nowadays, I wear hearing
       | protection.
       | 
       | I have noticed my tinnitus seems less frequent if I stay properly
       | hydrated. I have a tendency to forget to drink water and making a
       | point of it seems to help.
        
         | daanlo wrote:
         | When I was in the army, during training, my room mate had
         | tinnitus, from stress and a loud noise. He was asked to drink a
         | LOT of water by the medics. This was almost 20y ago, so I don't
         | remember the details, but hydration seems to be a treatment. I
         | only remember since it seemed weird to me at the time.
        
       | PainfullyNormal wrote:
       | After a good night's sleep, your blood pressure also goes down.
       | I've been monitoring my blood pressure for a few months and I've
       | noticed that my tinnitus gets better or worse depending on how
       | high my blood pressure is.
        
         | dazc wrote:
         | I worked on lowering my blood pressure and for certain my
         | tinnutus has become a lot milder, and my life a lot more
         | liveable as a consequence.
        
         | garganzol wrote:
         | It would be cool to additionally match this with blood glucose
         | levels. It may give some good hints.
         | 
         | For example, if tinnitus gets worse while blood pressure and
         | glucose both go up (without eating) then it may be a hint of an
         | underlying metabolic problem.
         | 
         | To confirm this further, you can then eat 15 g of sugar and see
         | what happens next. If tinnitus improves then the hypothesis of
         | metabolic underlying problem becomes very, very probable.
        
           | dazc wrote:
           | Sugar and spicy food without doubt aggrevate my symptoms.
        
             | garganzol wrote:
             | What if you stay hungry for several hours? Is there an
             | improvement of symptoms?
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | The link might be through sleep bruxism. The ear is very close to
       | the jaw and I suppose that jaw tension might have an effect in
       | the ear. TMD sufferers also frequently complain about tinnitus.
        
         | chadcmulligan wrote:
         | I had vague problems in that area and changed pillows - I had a
         | harder latex sort of pillow that was moulded, moved to a cheapo
         | supermarket pillow and seems to have gone away.
        
           | orzig wrote:
           | I will just note I went to physical therapy for shoulder pain
           | for a few months until I realized I just needed a less-firm
           | pillow.
           | 
           | Meta lesson: just try things!
        
         | cmarschner wrote:
         | Generally stress often manifests in tight jaw muscles. And the
         | jaw is close to the nerves that cause one form of tinnitus. And
         | the jaw muscles are also connected to the muscles in neck and
         | shoulders. And these muscles are often strained with people
         | that spend their days hunched over computer screens.
         | 
         | So, jaw relaxation, posture, sports does it for me.
        
         | jamamp wrote:
         | This is very interesting to me. I have bruxism (extra bone
         | growth on the top of my jaw by my back teeth) as well as mild
         | tinnitus, and I have firm pillows I sleep on. I will do some
         | research on TMJ/bruxism-specific or just softer pillows. I'm
         | sure it'll be a very long-term fix and not see immediate
         | results, but the link between TMJ/bruxism and tinnitus is an
         | interesting area, and might be my own cause. Thank you for the
         | comment!
        
       | PragmaticPulp wrote:
       | Tinnitus is a difficult topic because it's a catch-all term for
       | several different conditions that cause ear noise. There's even a
       | category of tinnitus for sounds within the ear that can be
       | objectively heard by someone other than the sufferer - This is
       | known as "objective tinnitus".
        
         | bitL wrote:
         | So it's like "anxiety" - a catch-all term when doctors have no
         | clue.
        
           | kirubakaran wrote:
           | If I were a doctor and I had no clue, I'd definitely have
           | anxiety.
        
           | jrace wrote:
           | Kind of, Tinnitus refers to the symptom not the cause.
        
         | starkd wrote:
         | >> There's even a category of tinnitus for sounds within the
         | ear that can be objectively heard by someone other than the
         | sufferer - This is known as "objective tinnitus".
         | 
         | This doesn't make sense. If it can be heard by someone else,
         | its by definition an aural stimulus event and not tinnitis.
        
           | robwwilliams wrote:
           | The ears are capable of generating sound. See:
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otoacoustic_emission
           | 
           | The main function of this system is to protect the ear from
           | loud sounds--noise canceling and/or modulate sensitivity as a
           | function of spectrum.
        
           | dahart wrote:
           | That was my first thought as well, but it's a thing. One of
           | those times I learned the definition of a word wasn't exactly
           | what I thought it was (or, more precisely that the commonly
           | used definition of a word actually needs a technical/clinical
           | qualifier to be complete, such as "subjective" in this case,
           | because other qualified definitions exist).
           | https://www.medlink.com/articles/objective-tinnitus
           | 
           | "Objective tinnitus is a perceived sensation of sound that
           | occurs in the absence of external acoustic stimulation, but
           | it can also be heard by the examiner (eg, by placing a
           | stethoscope over the patient's external auditory canal).
           | Objective tinnitus can occur either from perception of an
           | abnormal somatosound or abnormal perception of a normal
           | somatosound. Objective tinnitus is much less common than
           | subjective tinnitus, but it often has an identifiable cause
           | and may be curable, whereas subjective tinnitus is often
           | idiopathic and is seldom curable."
        
         | karmakaze wrote:
         | I have both. I can hear blood rushing around my ears where the
         | sound varies from windy/water rushy sounds to faint very high-
         | pitched sounds. Then when I exert myself physically (e.g. get
         | up suddenly after not moving a long while) there can be a kind
         | of thud followed by very loud high (but not very high)
         | frequency ringing. Once that happens regardless of how idle I
         | am it doesn't go away for hours. Sometimes it just creeps up
         | slowly from nothing in particular. The first kind mostly don't
         | notice and forget it's there, the other is very distracting so
         | play music or white-noise.
         | 
         | Strangely I don't know that either of them interfere with
         | falling asleep. It may very well be that I just don't even try
         | to sleep unless tired and quiet, can't tell--I don't do it
         | consciously. Lately I usually start something on Netflix or
         | YouTube without autoplay so perhaps that's what I accidentally
         | found to work.
        
       | mickdarling wrote:
       | Since I haven't seen this mentioned. It has been remarkable for a
       | temporary solution to let me sleep when my tinnitus is
       | particularly loud.
       | 
       | Basically cover your ears with your palms and snap your index
       | fingers loudly on the back of your skull. 40 or 50 times and when
       | I remove my hands, it is blessed silence for at least a few
       | minutes and often long enough to fall asleep.
       | 
       | https://lifehacker.com/this-weird-trick-might-give-you-brief...
        
         | rolleiflex wrote:
         | Here's something better I've found to improve on it: you can
         | get a $30 massage gun from Amazon with one of those round soft
         | heads, gently put it to the back of your head where doing the
         | manual exercise above hits with your fingers and run it at the
         | slowest setting. It's exactly the same thing, and it's very
         | effective for shutting off tinnitus. I do this when mine gets
         | bad.
         | 
         | I've also noticed my tinnitus is inversely proportional to the
         | last night's sleep quality for me, so the article bears out on
         | an anecdotal standpoint.
        
         | ASalazarMX wrote:
         | WTF tried this and my tinnitus diminished for half a minute.
         | It's back now, but that was interesting.
         | 
         | I think it has to do with how quiet is the environment, as the
         | finger snaps are very loud and drown the tinnitus, but putting
         | on my noise-cancelling headphones without music make it feel
         | louder. Maybe a fan/rain/white noise generator would help
         | people who have trouble sleeping because of tinnitus.
        
           | aaaaaaaaata wrote:
           | Isn't tinnitus part of your inner ear vibrating itself
           | dysfunctionally (normally only moves sound-dependent for
           | protection), and by giving it one large vibration, you're
           | making it do the "protection" thing, stopping the vibrating?
        
       | PheonixPharts wrote:
       | > Around 15% of the world's population suffers from tinnitus
       | 
       | As someone who has had chronic and constant tinnitus for nearly
       | two decades I find this claim pretty questionable, or at least
       | not clearly articulated (following through to the linked Lancet
       | article didn't help much). Whenever I mention this fact in
       | conversation people seem horrified, and in the sample "nearly
       | everyone I have known for years" never encountered anyone who
       | replies with "oh yea, same here".
       | 
       | I'm assuming that 15% of the world's population does not suffer
       | from _constant /chronic_ tinnitus, but I would also expect far
       | greater than 15% has _ever_ had tinnitus, so I 'm not sure what
       | this number means. The linked Lancet article didn't offer much
       | help and mostly references a handbook that doesn't appear to be
       | trivially findable online.
       | 
       | Curious if anyone has discovered some clarification around this?
        
         | hotpotamus wrote:
         | I'd say there are tons of weird semi-medical things that people
         | have that are basically benign that they just live with. I've
         | had bouts with tinnitus; I went to the gun range with my cousin
         | who I've known my whole life and mentioned the importance of
         | hearing protection and to try and keep my tinnitus minimized.
         | He mentioned he has the same issue.
         | 
         | I also had what has been called "Alice in Wonderland Syndrome"
         | as a child where I had strange sensations of my body feeling
         | larger or smaller when going to sleep. I never thought much of
         | it, but eventually I heard that it happens to other people too.
        
         | dahart wrote:
         | The link does clarify a bit about what they mean.
         | 
         | "the scatter of prevalence estimates is wide, although most
         | study results have shown rates of between 10% and 15% of the
         | adult population. The largest and most scientifically reliable
         | study was undertaken as part of the National Study of Hearing
         | in England (n=48 313).3 The results of the study showed a
         | prevalence of 10*1% among adults, with the tinnitus described
         | as moderately annoying by 2*8% of respondents, severely
         | annoying by 1*6%, and at a level that severely affected ability
         | to lead a normal life by 0*5%. Results from studies in Egypt,4
         | Japan,5 and Nigeria,6 indicate tinnitus prevalence is broadly
         | similar in these countries to in Europe and the USA."
        
         | dazc wrote:
         | I have tinnitus, nobody ever asked me though. Any figure quoted
         | is likley bullshit.
        
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