I remember reading somewhere a Doctor found a way to 'cure' ringing in the ears temporarily for almost a year in some people by doing something with a tuning-fork.
But after that article I heard nothing more. I just looked it up and seems it may not be a reliable method.
> The Oxford researchers proposed that the large spontaneous waves of brain activity that occur during deep sleep, or non-rapid eye movement sleep (non-REM), might suppress the brain activity that leads to tinnitus.
It's impossible to describe how depressing it is to hear a sound non stop in your ears, night and day, wherever I go or whatever I do, it just never stops.
The brain started filtering it out a bit after months, but it's always there and you're often reminded of it when you're in a slightly more silent environment.
There are days where it becomes especially loud and falling asleep you'd just like to cry or something.
Sorry to hear this. I similarly woke up one day with bi-lateral tinnitus at about an 8/10 in loudness. Thought I was going to lose my mind.
After about 9 days one morning the right ear completely resolved and the left ear was at about a 5/10.
Very, very, very long story short, I did a ton of digging and experimenting and realized it was related to a neck injury (a lot of people with whiplash have short-long term tinnitus). Over a year of physical therapy later, the tinnitus in the left ear is usually gone and only flares up if I lift weights with poor form.
If you've had a neck/shoulder injury in the past 1-2 years, it's something I'd look into.
I'm 35, I very suddenly got tinnitus about a year ago. Like, I remember one day I didn't have it, and when I woke up the next morning I did. I went to an ENT hoping that it would be an earwax impaction or something, but nope. I got a hearing test, thinking maybe I'm getting older and it's a side effect of that, but nope, my hearing was actually slightly better than average for someone my age. I got an MRI thinking it might be a tumor but nope, no tumors in my head that the MRI could see [1]. At this point I think the medical consensus for my tinnitus is "shrug".
Mine fortunately isn't that bad; it's in my left ear, and about 95% of the time I can ignore it. It sounds almost exactly like the high-pitch squeal that CRTs make when you have them on without any input. The biggest thing for me now is that I can't really deal with "silence" anymore. I pretty much always have YouTube running, or some music playing, or some audio of rainstorms of thunderstorms going, because otherwise the squeal can be maddening. Fortunately, in 2026 it's never been easier to find a nearly infinite supply of ambient noise, so I can deal with it.
I'm extremely lucky that it doesn't appear to have disrupted my sleep much. I know some people have had their tinnitus ruin their sleep and I am in the happy few where that isn't an issue. I can go to sleep with the noise in my left ear and it doesn't take much longer than it did before I got the tinnitus.
I'd much rather it not be there, and I was really hoping it would go away after a few months, but after a year I suspect that it's something I am just going to have to live with for the rest of my life. I'm 35 now, and hopefully I got another fifty years or so left, so for the large majority of my life it's just going to be something I'm stuck with. I've just kind of come to terms with it.
[1] I mean, in net it's probably good that there aren't observable tumors in my head. At least I don't think I have brain cancer.
2. rotate your hands so your index fingers are on the base of your skull, middle fingers just above
3. now put your index fingers on your middle fingers and "snap" them down on the muscle at the base of your skull some 10-15 times
4. if your tinnitus goes away or reduces, it's caused by muscle tension instead of nerves
This blew my mind when I first tried it, but looked into it and it makes total sense: we all work on computers all day, necks get fatigued, and the impact forces the muscles to contract until they force-release, alleviating the tension-caused tinnitus.
Yeah, I've never had tinnitus last more than a minute or two thanks to this, however I rarely get it and I imagine those afflicted pathologically will get zero mileage out of it, but I am curious.
Got it a few years ago. In my 30s as well. God how it used to bother me, i’d have the whitest noises to the point where it depressed how loud it all was, white noise included.
Went to the doctor, did all those rounds. Once I saw the endemic existence of CBT and other psychotherapies as treatment it dawned on me that I might have to reconsider my relationship with this.
In reality I just got used to it and live with it. I have a tiny white noise sound that is always on my headphones while i work that is just enough and that covers me most of the day, but honestly even if I sit in an electric car that is fully stopped and it’s as loud as it’s gonna be, I notice it, absolutely, but it doesn’t really cause distress anymore.
That, and you simply hear the sounds in your environment worse and/or selectively depending on how they interact with the tinnitus. It's a massive nuisance.
The more you think about it and the more negatively you think of it, the worse it gets. I know it's easy to say, but the secret is just to not care about it.
have it too. no idea when i got it, probably a very long time ago. having said that i don't really care and mostly don't notice it. but if i think about it, then i hear a constant feeeeeeeee...eeep. but then i just forget about it. and that's coming from somebody who is very noise sensitive.
I've had tinnitus for almost a decade now. It gets better.
The first six months were hell because I kept focusing on how awful it was. Eventually you stop noticing it. It just becomes part of the background – like how the sky is blue, grass is green, etc.
I strongly recommend reading "Living with Tinnitus" by Laura Cole. Tinnitus is a very poorly-understood condition, but hearing about the experiences of others helps a lot. I hope you feel better soon. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37707931-living-with-tin...
Consider using a TRT[1] Tinnitus hearing aid. It was prescribed me by my ENT doctor and it provides me with great relief. My Tinnitus is persistent and extremely loud. Loud enough that I couldn't get use to it even after many years. I'm not sure what would be the procedure for you to get one in your country. It is not a cure, but it made my life immensely better. I wished I had gotten it sooner. Good luck!
In my 20s and 30s, I used to turn on the TV to cover up my tinnitus so I could fall asleep. The TV probably didn't help the quality of my sleep, so maybe that's why my tinnitus got progressively worse (especially in my right ear). Once I got a TV with a sleep timer, I would set it so the TV wouldn't be on all night.
My tinnitus is much worse now, but I don't have a TV in my room anymore, so I just play a podcast on my iPad. That tiny built-in speaker doesn't really cover up the tinnitus, but the voices lull me to sleep (which is probably what the TV was doing all along).
A friend of mine who had it at night and who is not a smoker realized that smoking a cigarette would calm her tinnitus and allow her to sleep. Anyone had a similar experience with cigarette and/or nicotin ?
I first got it in 2015 after playing Fallout 4 almost nonstop for the entire weekend. The game ran poorly and the low stuttery fps caused a massive migraine in my head. I took Tylenol and went to sleep and woke up with it ringing in one of my ears which eventually moved to both. The doctors were pretty useless and said they couldn't see anything wrong and to just live with it.
My brain eventually figured out how to tune it out and now it associates the sound with silence.
Now I've developed it again after feeling depressed and blasting music in my car. The new version crackles and alternates tones in my left ear. I have a doctors appointment coming up to hopefully figure it out.
There is a new expensive treatment for it called Lenore which works by playing sounds and stimulating your tongue at the same time. Those pathways are located close together in the brain and by stimulating both at the same time, it's supposed to train it to filter out the noise.
Sleep is one of the only things I’ve found can actually improve the tinnitus I’ve had for almost 3 years. Every other tactic I have is essentially avoiding making it worse.
I also have been suffering from tinnitus a little over a year now. It definitely has impacted my sleep, especially my mornings. It's the first thing I think about when I wake up.
I've been following the work of Auricle Inc., a company commercializing decades of neuroscience research out of Dr. Susan Shore's lab at the University of Michigan. (Full disclosure: I have spoken to their CEO about potentially helping with their funding, although my primary concern is getting their product to the public).
Instead of just masking the sound, their device targets the root cause using bimodal neuromodulation. It pairs specific audio tones with mild electrical pulses to the jaw/neck to desynchronize hyperactive neurons in the dorsal cochlear nucleus.
Here are the two papers that cover the underlying science, and go over the efficacy:
Dr Shore device has been decades in development. It's been all the rage in r/tinnitus , r/tinnitusresearch and T. Facebook groups. Still according to people that have tried it, it's no silver bullet.
I've had tinnitus for 25+ years and followed a lot of science. At some point some Brasil researchers found a drug that reduced tinnitus volume as a secondary effect. There wrote papers about it, but unfortunately, nothing came of it.
While the Lenire device may appear similar at first glance because it uses comparable stimulation protocols, I believe Susan Shore’s device is superior. Shore’s approach targets the root neurological cause of tinnitus and aims for measurable reductions in loudness, whereas Lenire primarily focuses on reducing how bothersome the ringing feels. Shore’s research also follows a more first‑principles, neuroscience‑driven path—from basic lab work to carefully controlled clinical trials. Additionally, her studies were more rigorous, incorporating proper control groups, something the Lenire trials lacked.
I’ve been using my tinnitus to evaluate whether I got enough sleep or when I’ve become tired for years, so it’s nice to randomly trip over validation here that the link is universal to and not just a hyperlocal mutation. Thanks for posting this.
I suppose I wouldn’t have noticed this if I was trying to tune out tinnitus, but I’m just used to it? Not like anything is every quiet (my hearing is hyperactive), but, like, the tone and volume of it right now is “insufficient sleep but circadian forced us awake” so I need to be particularly measured and chill if I drive while it’s this loud.
I've had it for nearly 20 years, and I know it came from an incident shooting firearms with not enough (none) protection. Most days I don't think about it anymore. However if I am tired or stressed, it seems to turn up to 11. I've read many people get depressed or they can't get over it, luckily I seem to deal with it alright, but wouldn't wish it on anyone. Protect your hearing!
It's interesting that worked. It reminds me of Scott Adams' story where he lost his voice due to spasming and got it back through surgery that cut one of the nerves involved.
As somebody with tinnitus, forgive me, this seemed instinctively obvious. A very bad night of sleep raises the volume of the tinnitus substantially. Stress does the same.
Also, in the fleeting moments between waking and full consciousness, I can hear all sounds coming back to me (ringing included), exactly as if they had been turned off by my brain during sleep and are now being turned on again.
I got tinnitus from a failing Toshiba notebook hard drive. I can not sleep without masking noises. A real washing machine or dishwasher is S-tier, but more often than not the C-tier fallback has to be monotone Youtube autoplay lectures.
For people suffering from tinnitus, here is a technique that greatly helped me:
1. Place your hands over your ears such that your fingers are on the back of your skull - thumbs should be on your neck and middle fingers at the base of your skull.
2. Tap your middle fingers on the base of your skull repeatedly for ~30 seconds
It apparently doesn’t work for everyone, and it’s not permanent, but for me it greatly reduces the “volume” or stops it entirely.
I have no idea what the explanation is, but it’s free, safe, and you can try it right now.
Mine started whilst I was skateboarding with in ear headphones in listening to slayer full volume, had a big slam with headphones in, left side of head hit the floor and had a loud ringing in my ears ever since.
Always had trouble falling asleep though, ever since I was a young sperm.
The best thing I did to help with my tinnitus what Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. If you perceive the sound as something dangerous than it bothers you way more.
Like others pointed a bad night sleep definitely increases the perceived sound.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 76.3 ms ] threadBut after that article I heard nothing more. I just looked it up and seems it may not be a reliable method.
> The Oxford researchers proposed that the large spontaneous waves of brain activity that occur during deep sleep, or non-rapid eye movement sleep (non-REM), might suppress the brain activity that leads to tinnitus.
Got it randomly one day this summer.
It's impossible to describe how depressing it is to hear a sound non stop in your ears, night and day, wherever I go or whatever I do, it just never stops.
The brain started filtering it out a bit after months, but it's always there and you're often reminded of it when you're in a slightly more silent environment.
There are days where it becomes especially loud and falling asleep you'd just like to cry or something.
Don't wish it on anybody.
Terrible first 2 weeks, then just kind of faded into the background. Humans are very resilient. Well, I am, I guess :)
After about 9 days one morning the right ear completely resolved and the left ear was at about a 5/10.
Very, very, very long story short, I did a ton of digging and experimenting and realized it was related to a neck injury (a lot of people with whiplash have short-long term tinnitus). Over a year of physical therapy later, the tinnitus in the left ear is usually gone and only flares up if I lift weights with poor form.
If you've had a neck/shoulder injury in the past 1-2 years, it's something I'd look into.
Mine fortunately isn't that bad; it's in my left ear, and about 95% of the time I can ignore it. It sounds almost exactly like the high-pitch squeal that CRTs make when you have them on without any input. The biggest thing for me now is that I can't really deal with "silence" anymore. I pretty much always have YouTube running, or some music playing, or some audio of rainstorms of thunderstorms going, because otherwise the squeal can be maddening. Fortunately, in 2026 it's never been easier to find a nearly infinite supply of ambient noise, so I can deal with it.
I'm extremely lucky that it doesn't appear to have disrupted my sleep much. I know some people have had their tinnitus ruin their sleep and I am in the happy few where that isn't an issue. I can go to sleep with the noise in my left ear and it doesn't take much longer than it did before I got the tinnitus.
I'd much rather it not be there, and I was really hoping it would go away after a few months, but after a year I suspect that it's something I am just going to have to live with for the rest of my life. I'm 35 now, and hopefully I got another fifty years or so left, so for the large majority of my life it's just going to be something I'm stuck with. I've just kind of come to terms with it.
[1] I mean, in net it's probably good that there aren't observable tumors in my head. At least I don't think I have brain cancer.
1. put your thumbs on your ears
2. rotate your hands so your index fingers are on the base of your skull, middle fingers just above
3. now put your index fingers on your middle fingers and "snap" them down on the muscle at the base of your skull some 10-15 times
4. if your tinnitus goes away or reduces, it's caused by muscle tension instead of nerves
This blew my mind when I first tried it, but looked into it and it makes total sense: we all work on computers all day, necks get fatigued, and the impact forces the muscles to contract until they force-release, alleviating the tension-caused tinnitus.
Went to the doctor, did all those rounds. Once I saw the endemic existence of CBT and other psychotherapies as treatment it dawned on me that I might have to reconsider my relationship with this.
In reality I just got used to it and live with it. I have a tiny white noise sound that is always on my headphones while i work that is just enough and that covers me most of the day, but honestly even if I sit in an electric car that is fully stopped and it’s as loud as it’s gonna be, I notice it, absolutely, but it doesn’t really cause distress anymore.
The first six months were hell because I kept focusing on how awful it was. Eventually you stop noticing it. It just becomes part of the background – like how the sky is blue, grass is green, etc.
I strongly recommend reading "Living with Tinnitus" by Laura Cole. Tinnitus is a very poorly-understood condition, but hearing about the experiences of others helps a lot. I hope you feel better soon. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37707931-living-with-tin...
---
[1] Tinnitus Retraining Therapy
Source: have tinnitus for 2.5 years. Got used to it after 1.5.
Hold up. How do we know when ferrets have tinnitus???
My tinnitus is much worse now, but I don't have a TV in my room anymore, so I just play a podcast on my iPad. That tiny built-in speaker doesn't really cover up the tinnitus, but the voices lull me to sleep (which is probably what the TV was doing all along).
My brain eventually figured out how to tune it out and now it associates the sound with silence.
Now I've developed it again after feeling depressed and blasting music in my car. The new version crackles and alternates tones in my left ear. I have a doctors appointment coming up to hopefully figure it out.
There is a new expensive treatment for it called Lenore which works by playing sounds and stimulating your tongue at the same time. Those pathways are located close together in the brain and by stimulating both at the same time, it's supposed to train it to filter out the noise.
https://x.com/t_blom/status/1810459463725588861
I've been following the work of Auricle Inc., a company commercializing decades of neuroscience research out of Dr. Susan Shore's lab at the University of Michigan. (Full disclosure: I have spoken to their CEO about potentially helping with their funding, although my primary concern is getting their product to the public).
Instead of just masking the sound, their device targets the root cause using bimodal neuromodulation. It pairs specific audio tones with mild electrical pulses to the jaw/neck to desynchronize hyperactive neurons in the dorsal cochlear nucleus.
Here are the two papers that cover the underlying science, and go over the efficacy:
The foundational mechanism and Phase 1 trial showing how it induces long-term depression (LTD) in the brain circuitry: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.aal3175
The Phase 2 double-blind, randomized clinical trial results showing significant reductions in tinnitus loudness and burden: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
I've had tinnitus for 25+ years and followed a lot of science. At some point some Brasil researchers found a drug that reduced tinnitus volume as a secondary effect. There wrote papers about it, but unfortunately, nothing came of it.
I suppose I wouldn’t have noticed this if I was trying to tune out tinnitus, but I’m just used to it? Not like anything is every quiet (my hearing is hyperactive), but, like, the tone and volume of it right now is “insufficient sleep but circadian forced us awake” so I need to be particularly measured and chill if I drive while it’s this loud.
The surgeon dentist was really surprised by this and could not evoke any similar cases in their practice before mine.
(https://www.brainandlife.org/articles/spasmodic-dysphonia-re...)
And this I can sometimes use to pinpoint my tinnitus tone(s): https://generalfuzz.net/acrn/
1. Place your hands over your ears such that your fingers are on the back of your skull - thumbs should be on your neck and middle fingers at the base of your skull.
2. Tap your middle fingers on the base of your skull repeatedly for ~30 seconds
It apparently doesn’t work for everyone, and it’s not permanent, but for me it greatly reduces the “volume” or stops it entirely.
I have no idea what the explanation is, but it’s free, safe, and you can try it right now.
Hope that helps! Tinnitus sucks.
Always had trouble falling asleep though, ever since I was a young sperm.
Like others pointed a bad night sleep definitely increases the perceived sound.
Also the stress in the shoulders doesn't help.
Unfortunately I don’t live near a coast so this is something I can regularly tryout.