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I have tinnitus. I don't recommend it

(blog.greg.technology)
185 points gregsadetsky | 2 comments | 21 May 25 22:50 UTC | HN request time: 0.421s | source
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nozzlegear ◴[22 May 25 02:46 UTC] No.44058300[source]▶
I've got the typical high-pitched ringing kind that I've had for as long as I can remember, along with pulsatile tinnitus that developed several years ago, meaning I can hear a whooshing sound in my ears to the rhythm of my heartbeat. When I tell people about the pulsatile tinnitus, I like to joke and compare it to the heartbeat from Edgar Allen Poe's story "The Tell-Tale Heart."

Luckily neither of these tinnituses bothers me as much as the subject of that story. In fact they don't bother me much at all anymore, although the pulsatile one did cause a great deal of anxiety when it first developed seemingly out of nowhere. My brain has learned to adapt and ignore the sounds pretty easily unless I'm in a quiet room and have nothing else to focus on.

And a tip for anyone suffering: I've found that those "8 hours of brown noise" loops on YouTube work wonders for drowning out the sound of both regular and pulsatile tinnitus.

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1. ehrjfjrjrfjn77 ◴[22 May 25 04:39 UTC] No.44058836[source]▶
I'm embarrassed to say I spent the first week or two with my pulsatile tinnitus fascinated by how rhythmically the wind was gushing through the trees outside my bedroom window. At some point I must have rolled over, the whooshing noise switching sides along with my left ear, and realised the noise was not coming from outside at all.

About 6 months after onset it disappeared as quickly and mysteriously as it first appeared.

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2. nozzlegear ◴[22 May 25 19:58 UTC] No.44066186[source]▶
Glad to hear yours disappeared! From what I understand, the pulsatile variety is usually linked to something physical in the ear, unlike regular tinnitus. It's definitely the case for me, as one of the most interesting things about mine is that I can make the sound completely disappear by pressing on my carotid artery (e.g. if I were to take my pulse). That little detail helped soothe the anxiety by realizing that it's just something funky in the blood vessels around my ear.