Tinnitus

Rebbi,

Actually, the cause of tinnitus has nothing to do with hearing, although is seems that way. This is a neurological condition. Do you have a history of silver amalgam fillings?

I often wonder how musicians, rock and classical alike, cope with their daily exposure to high decibels. One would assume that they all have tinnitus to some degree.

I developed tinnitus about seven years ago, gets worse in the late autumn when barometric pressure starts fluctuating ahead of cold fronts. Like Roxy54 says, you learn to live with it and listen through it. Getting older with a healthy mental attitude means accepting that we can't do things at as high a level as we did when younger but still taking pleasure in doing them as well as we can. I can't lift as much weight in the weight room or run as fast as I did thirty years ago, but I still look forward to exercise every day. Same with listening to music in spite of tinnitus.

The audiologist told me that because this is a brain thing as much as an ear thing, the more you attend to it the more you train your brain to focus on it. So yoga, meditation and other mindfulness practices can be helpful.

~

Tinnitus is made worse by caffeine and alcohol... dammitall.

Timrhu mentioned driving with earplugs. Working past my aversion to most things Bose, I recently bought some Bose QuietComfort 20i noise-canceling headphones. They are, in a word, outstanding!

When driving (or on an airplane, or when the neighbors are mowing the lawn, etc...), you can plug these into an iPod, or else just activate them without listening to music.

The moment I hit the switch, I usually say, "Ahhhh...." You rarely realize how noisy the world is until you pop these in.

Over the long run, they can really save the ears, and I've noticed that engine noise and background sounds don't fire up the tinnitus nearly as badly.

Had I known that this technology would be so useful, I would have bought them much earlier.