The way I personally manage my tinnitus is by having fans constantly blowing in various rooms of where I live, for example I have a fan in my bedroom when I’m trying to sleep or in my office when I need to concentrate.
The fans don’t totally block out the tinnitus, but they sorta act as an undistracting distraction.
MyNoise.net is such a great site, consider throwing them a couple bucks, it's basically a pay what you can model. I can't count the number of hours I've spent programming listening to their different soundscapes, rain on a tin roof, and cafe noise are 2 of my favorites.
We played the gregorian chant for about an hour every night when my kid was newborn. Not sure if it had any effect on him but definitely lowered our blood pressure!
The white noise generators were also a lifesaver when working in a busy open plan studio with loud idiots.
I've had tinnitus in my left ear for about six months now. I was hoping it was the result of an earwax impaction or something, but after having several specialists look at my ears, test my hearing, and getting an MRI to check for tumors, the overwhelming medical consensus of the cause appears to be "I dunno", and at this point I have given up on it being temporary.
About 95% of the time, I can fairly easily just tune it out and it's no different than any other background noise. Living in NYC helps, there's a fair amount of constant background noise even in the best of times. I've found that finding 10-hour videos on YouTube of TV static at a low volume can be helpful for the remaining 5%.
Still I would really prefer it wasn't there. The ringing in my left ear is still annoying, and I'm only in my mid 30's, so assuming an average lifespan I have anywhere from 40-60 years left to enjoy this constant ringing.
maybe see "Won-Taek Choe" - he's a legit smart hearing specialist ENT on UES
that said, prob nothing to do other than wait and hope for the best really
when i had tinnitus following an ear infection years ago, it lasted several months and gradually went away but I always had at least white noise around me and some people say "notch" therapy can be helpful...
I first got pretty bad tinnitus about 10 years ago while still fairly young. Didn’t go to concerts, shoot guns, hammer nails, or any activity typically associated with hearing loss.
At one point it was so loud, it would drown out the sound of a dryer when right next to it.
This was party from impacted earwax but still pretty bad after cleaning.
Hearing test showed substantial high frequency loss (well above speech frequencies)
A few suggestions:
1) Listening to light music helped me stop focusing on it.
2) Tried Taurine. Unsure if it helped, didn’t hurt. Make sure you aren’t low on Vitamin D. That alone causes enough other problems too.
3) Make sure you don’t clench teeth or have dental issues. I think that might be able to aggravate the nerves.
It never went fully away but I’m no longer overtly conscious, just faint in the background. Always aware of light pressure/muffled feeling in affected ear. Changes were slow and gradual but did happen. Doesn’t bother me much anymore. Do miss the “sound of silence” but light background music while working is enjoyable .
I have found notch therapy to be quite helpful. It's basically where you tune a note to your exact tinitus pitch and then create white noise that has every khz EXCEPT your pitch. Then you listen to the notched sound at about the same level or slightly higher than your tinnitus. So, basically your "tinnitus" is notched out of the sound. The theory is it can retrain your brain to not produce the fake sound. I also just find it helps to alleviate the symptom.
My own tinnitus is 15khz which is annoyingly high. And I suspect the reason why tools like Tinnitus Neuromodulator don't help much in my case.
Did you have Covid a short while before noticing? One of the not uncommon but under reported side effects is permanent hearing loss, which associated fallout such as tinnitus.
Another message of hope: I'm mid-late thirties and had the exact same. Daily tinnitus from December 2024 through to around August 2025.
I went through MRI etc to no avail.
Then one day I felt something (extremely deep in my ear) just 'release', like a tube unblocking or pressure equalising. And the sound went away and (fingers crossed) hasn't come back since. This was after daily issues for 8-9 months solid.
There are lots of interconnecting bits inside and around the ear, and with that in mind...
Can you try something? Find a very quiet place, one where you do hear the tinnitus.
Move your jaw as far to left, and then to the right, and notice if the tinnitus stops, changes, or alters at all.
Next, get a firm hold of your earlobe of the tinnitus ear, and pull and hold it away and at various angles from your head; you can do this earlobe move separately or in combination with the jaw movements.
I'm on that same journey. 8 months ago, I was sitting at my desk and all of a sudden my left ear just went out. The ringing was there. I figured the same that it was wax. I've always had wax issues with that ear that require a doctor's office visit. (trying the home kits has only made it worse!) But this time the doctor came in, looked in the ear and said, "there's no wax at all in that ear". What followed sounds much like your journey. Visits to ENT, CT Scans - waiting on an MRI to ensure there's no tumor... All the while I went from having great hearing to having to say, "say that again" all the time.
I've had it for years in one ear as well as measured and diagnosed hearing loss in the same ear. At first it would come and go and then it became permanent.
In my experience, I barely notice it on a day-to-day basis.
What I have noticed is that it's worse/noticeable when after a night of drinking and if I'm tired/stressed.
I am pretty sure I've had it my entire life and for a long time I just thought it was the background noise of the universe. Never bothered me till I figured out that wasn't the case.
First and foremost, ignore it. When you find yourself listening to it, distract yourself and immediately move on.
Secondly, add more white noise into your environment. The best approach I find is just opening a window or adding a little fan or water feature to your desk. White noise generators don’t work as well for me, but they can help in a pinch.
I believe that our modern day indoor environments are honestly just too unnaturally quiet anyway.
I’m not joking when I say that the only time I really get annoyed by my tinnitus is when the monthly “cure” for it gets posted on HN. ;-)
The only way to temporarely get rid of my tinnitus (completely gone or at least very reduced for up to 30 seconds) is to listen to this beep tone from 8 to 12 KHZ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNf9nzvnd1k
apparently the phenomenon is called residual inhibition. If only there was a way to make this work permanently...
One thing that seems to help me with tinnitus is the Airpods Pro when you customize it for your hearing. Like they have a tool on the iPhone/iPad that will (essentially) set up an equalizer in it that matches your (lack of) hearing.
I think actually stimulating the parts of your hearing that match the tinnitus is what helps. That's why this white noise thing works. But, also, listening to music or watching movies with the Airpods Pro (after configuring) -- I assume -- does something similar.
I tried it out but it did absolutely nothing for my tinnitus. All it does is put out a bunch of changing tones (my tinnitus never changes tones, so I'm having trouble figuring out what this is supposed to do?).
Lots of people giving good feedback on it, though. What exactly is it about this site that works for other people?
I've had a low grade (although who knows, it's not like I can hear someone else's tinnitus to compare) tinnitus for as long as I remember. For my childhood I thought it was just normal to hear this noise when there was no external source of other sound.
Honestly, I never felt particularly negative about it.
I guess if you never know what true silence sounds like, you never know what you are missing.
White noise is key here.
Luckily I do not have tinnitus, but I have small children and they sleep great with this on.
And so do their parents, especially handy when going on holiday in noisy hotels etc. I can't go on holiday without it now! :)
I've just downloaded this audio track with yt-dlp, placed it on an sdcard and I play it in a loop on a small speaker.
I'm so happy mine is gone. It came in waves for me and funny it enough, it sounded like ocean waves crashing [0]. I used to play ocean sound for my kids to sleep, so I didn't notice that a good part of the sound wasn't coming from the device, but from me. It was unbearable for several weeks before it just disappeared.
This is pretty cool, but unfortunately I have somatic tinnitus, so this doesn't work as well. The frequency/tone is very dynamic with my version of tinnitus and I can even change it by moving or massaging my neck (especially at the base of my skull) in certain ways. The good news is that also means there are brief windows of time where I have zero tinnitus because my neck and muscles are in a position to temporarily fix whatever underlying issue is causing it.
I assume that I have somatic tinnitus because my tinnitus seems very associated with tension in my jaw, should and head. But every medical practitioner I talk to about this just seems say "uh...huh...what" and makes no effort to understand or investigate the phenomena.
I have found doing the Alexander Technique helps me quite a bit with the tinnitus.
I've had tinnitus since I was a child. It's probably due to a procedure they used to do around here an children with ear infections. Nowadays, I rarely notice it. But I remember in my teens, it sometimes was absolutely excruciating because I had no way of coping or tuning it out.
This is very interesting. I might consider trying it. If there's something I'd really want to experience at least once, it's that "absolute silence" so many mention when being out in the forest it country side.
I too had exactly the same constsnt ringing in my left ear.
I could not get to sleep because the noise was so loud and intense.
It reminded me of those spy films where they torture someone playing loud heavy metalcore all day and night.
I had a X-ray, ultra-sound and two Consultants had a look.
Both said that there was nothing wrong with my ear. No ear wax, no damage, no issues at all.
They both mentioned that tense facial and neck muscles may be a cause.
As well as the constant ringing, there is a sound like a central eating system, thumping and groaning away, in both my ears too. I initially thought the thumping and groaning was the Mrs snoring.
I bought some earloops thinking my ears were too sensitive and I was somehow hearing noises from the houses down the road and the motorway traffic 3 miles away. to no avail, even with the earloops blocking all exterior noise, I still had the high pitched and low piched internal noises.
I found a way to reduce the noise.
I was laying in bed one night and I was relaxing my jaw when I noticed that if I opened my mouth and let my jaw hang loose all the noises stopped.
So over a month or so I tried to train my jaw to be less tense and more relaxed.
I started hearing tinnitus a decade ago in a quiet room at night when I came back home after two years traveling the world at around 30 yo. Over the following months it became louder and noticed it more, then after maybe a year I could hear it all the time. During the day I could live with it but in the middle of the night I could not get back to sleep after waking up. It was causing a lot of anxiety because I was afraid of how much louder it may become.
I was thinking that maybe I cough something during my travels so I went to see a few specialists but they found nothing.
What I understand now is that the cause is probably all the vipassana meditation I did and some psychedelics I experimented with during my travel which opened some filters I had in my mind blocking sensor noise. It's the most plausible explanation for me.
The noise was probably always there, or maybe it got louder when I become older, but I never noticed it until it became disturbing.
A decade later the noise is still there, all the time, but it's not an issue at all anymore. It's not louder than before, and I have no negative feelings associated with it. I made peace with it and I can now easily ignore it, or to be more accurate, I can live with it and it'll disappear on its own after a short time until I put my attention back to it (voluntary or not).
As I'm writing this in a quiet room it's very loud, but that's fine, it just sensor noise. Soon enough I'll stop hearing it if I don't focus on it.
I hope reading this can help. I wish I had someone back then telling me that it would turn out okay to just accept it after doing some medical checks.
Do the sounds actually need to match in pitch? My understanding is these sounds attempt to stop your brain noticing or perhaps generating the tinnitus, rather than masking the noise with something louder (like people do with a fan or noise generators)
Most tinnitus is neurological, and not sound but the perception of sound. Reverse waveform would just make it louder. At least for tinnitus from partial hearing loss, sound therapy seems to be about training or resetting neurons so they don't perceive sound when they are not receiving normal input.
First kid had colic and measured crying at close to 100db, basically two months exposure to a jackhammer… Always held on right side — maybe a coincidence…
Lots of people posting in here about how they can’t figure out the cause of their tinnitus.
Mine was ear wax. I went to an ENT doctor for an unrelated issue, he pulled a big plug of wax out of my ear, and my tinnitus (which was quite bad and had a very sudden onset) totally disappeared.
If you have it, go get a doctor to look in your ear before you give up and decide to try to live with it.
36yrs with tinnitus, but this website looks like what happens when chatgpt and a tinnitus sufferer vibe codes better than nothing I suppose ... Or is it?
80 comments
[ 275 ms ] story [ 1821 ms ] threadThe fans don’t totally block out the tinnitus, but they sorta act as an undistracting distraction.
The white noise generators were also a lifesaver when working in a busy open plan studio with loud idiots.
About 95% of the time, I can fairly easily just tune it out and it's no different than any other background noise. Living in NYC helps, there's a fair amount of constant background noise even in the best of times. I've found that finding 10-hour videos on YouTube of TV static at a low volume can be helpful for the remaining 5%.
Still I would really prefer it wasn't there. The ringing in my left ear is still annoying, and I'm only in my mid 30's, so assuming an average lifespan I have anywhere from 40-60 years left to enjoy this constant ringing.
I'll play with this thing to see if it helps.
that said, prob nothing to do other than wait and hope for the best really
when i had tinnitus following an ear infection years ago, it lasted several months and gradually went away but I always had at least white noise around me and some people say "notch" therapy can be helpful...
At one point it was so loud, it would drown out the sound of a dryer when right next to it.
This was party from impacted earwax but still pretty bad after cleaning.
Hearing test showed substantial high frequency loss (well above speech frequencies)
A few suggestions:
1) Listening to light music helped me stop focusing on it.
2) Tried Taurine. Unsure if it helped, didn’t hurt. Make sure you aren’t low on Vitamin D. That alone causes enough other problems too.
3) Make sure you don’t clench teeth or have dental issues. I think that might be able to aggravate the nerves.
It never went fully away but I’m no longer overtly conscious, just faint in the background. Always aware of light pressure/muffled feeling in affected ear. Changes were slow and gradual but did happen. Doesn’t bother me much anymore. Do miss the “sound of silence” but light background music while working is enjoyable .
My own tinnitus is 15khz which is annoyingly high. And I suspect the reason why tools like Tinnitus Neuromodulator don't help much in my case.
Please consider a local noise generator. Static is incompressible so you're using quite a lot of data.
I went through MRI etc to no avail.
Then one day I felt something (extremely deep in my ear) just 'release', like a tube unblocking or pressure equalising. And the sound went away and (fingers crossed) hasn't come back since. This was after daily issues for 8-9 months solid.
Can you try something? Find a very quiet place, one where you do hear the tinnitus.
Move your jaw as far to left, and then to the right, and notice if the tinnitus stops, changes, or alters at all.
Next, get a firm hold of your earlobe of the tinnitus ear, and pull and hold it away and at various angles from your head; you can do this earlobe move separately or in combination with the jaw movements.
Do any positions improve the tinnitus?
In my experience, I barely notice it on a day-to-day basis.
What I have noticed is that it's worse/noticeable when after a night of drinking and if I'm tired/stressed.
First and foremost, ignore it. When you find yourself listening to it, distract yourself and immediately move on.
Secondly, add more white noise into your environment. The best approach I find is just opening a window or adding a little fan or water feature to your desk. White noise generators don’t work as well for me, but they can help in a pinch.
I believe that our modern day indoor environments are honestly just too unnaturally quiet anyway.
I’m not joking when I say that the only time I really get annoyed by my tinnitus is when the monthly “cure” for it gets posted on HN. ;-)
apparently the phenomenon is called residual inhibition. If only there was a way to make this work permanently...
I think actually stimulating the parts of your hearing that match the tinnitus is what helps. That's why this white noise thing works. But, also, listening to music or watching movies with the Airpods Pro (after configuring) -- I assume -- does something similar.
Lots of people giving good feedback on it, though. What exactly is it about this site that works for other people?
Honestly, I never felt particularly negative about it.
I guess if you never know what true silence sounds like, you never know what you are missing.
I'm half convinced it's something like blood vessels too close to sound receptor thingies in my ear. Or something similar.
I had a hearing test done a few years ago and my hearing is actually slightly above average for my age.
It would be nice to not have it, but whatever.
I've just downloaded this audio track with yt-dlp, placed it on an sdcard and I play it in a loop on a small speaker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMfPqeZjc2c
[0]:https://idiallo.com/byte-size/nightmare-on-ocean-street
https://treblehealth.com/tapping-technique-for-temporary-tin...
I have found doing the Alexander Technique helps me quite a bit with the tinnitus.
I could not get to sleep because the noise was so loud and intense.
It reminded me of those spy films where they torture someone playing loud heavy metalcore all day and night.
I had a X-ray, ultra-sound and two Consultants had a look.
Both said that there was nothing wrong with my ear. No ear wax, no damage, no issues at all.
They both mentioned that tense facial and neck muscles may be a cause.
As well as the constant ringing, there is a sound like a central eating system, thumping and groaning away, in both my ears too. I initially thought the thumping and groaning was the Mrs snoring.
I bought some earloops thinking my ears were too sensitive and I was somehow hearing noises from the houses down the road and the motorway traffic 3 miles away. to no avail, even with the earloops blocking all exterior noise, I still had the high pitched and low piched internal noises.
I found a way to reduce the noise.
I was laying in bed one night and I was relaxing my jaw when I noticed that if I opened my mouth and let my jaw hang loose all the noises stopped.
So over a month or so I tried to train my jaw to be less tense and more relaxed.
For me it worked.
it was my jaw.
I was thinking that maybe I cough something during my travels so I went to see a few specialists but they found nothing.
What I understand now is that the cause is probably all the vipassana meditation I did and some psychedelics I experimented with during my travel which opened some filters I had in my mind blocking sensor noise. It's the most plausible explanation for me.
The noise was probably always there, or maybe it got louder when I become older, but I never noticed it until it became disturbing.
A decade later the noise is still there, all the time, but it's not an issue at all anymore. It's not louder than before, and I have no negative feelings associated with it. I made peace with it and I can now easily ignore it, or to be more accurate, I can live with it and it'll disappear on its own after a short time until I put my attention back to it (voluntary or not).
As I'm writing this in a quiet room it's very loud, but that's fine, it just sensor noise. Soon enough I'll stop hearing it if I don't focus on it.
I hope reading this can help. I wish I had someone back then telling me that it would turn out okay to just accept it after doing some medical checks.
Anyone with tinnitus only in their right ear?
And yeah, I've had it since the early 90's and it mostly only bothers me now when someone brings it up. Thanks Hacker News!
First kid had colic and measured crying at close to 100db, basically two months exposure to a jackhammer… Always held on right side — maybe a coincidence…
Mine was ear wax. I went to an ENT doctor for an unrelated issue, he pulled a big plug of wax out of my ear, and my tinnitus (which was quite bad and had a very sudden onset) totally disappeared.
If you have it, go get a doctor to look in your ear before you give up and decide to try to live with it.