Constant Faint Hiss in Ears

I've had Tinnitus in my right year for about 8 years due to Eustachian tube dysfunction, fortunately it's much better than it was at the beginning. Best advice I can give anyone is to not focus on it, and do your best not to get stressed out by it. It's not too troublesome when you're busy but as soon as you stop to rest and relax it can be hard to not focus on, though over time you will get use to it. What helps is running a fan in the room, or a noise generator. My noise of choice is to run brown noise on a speaker, I EQ'd the mid and high frequencies of a looping pink noise sample down to make it brown noise and have the ability to tune the pitch and it helps with sleep. Some use white noise, but I find it pretty high pitched and distracting to be comfortable.

 

I am a tinnitus sufferer too. It is worse when I am very tired, unwell or stressed. Or if I am exposed to loud noise. I was at a live band event a few years ago, it was incredibly loud and I had not brought my ear plugs. It didn't seem to bother anybody else, but it made me feel quite ill and I had to leave. It made my tinnitus *really* bad temporarily.

My tinnitus sounds like a couple of fire bells going off at different frequencies. It is just in the right ear. I've had it all investigated and it is nothing serious. I believe it was caused when I used to listen to my personal stereo on the school bus. One of the iems was broken so I was only listening to the right one. I used to sit at the very back of the bus and the engine was very noisy - so I had the volume turned right up but didn't realise how loud it was until I got off the bus 40mins later.

I also find that I have hyperacusis in the same ear and I can hear very quiet sounds with it that I cannot hear with my left ear. Sometimes I cannot tell if I am hearing my tinnitus or if it is a real sound. I am sure the central heating makes a really faint ringing sound or is it my tinnitus? No point asking my mom because she is as deaf as a post!

I am also able to hear the horizontal scan frequency on some CRT televisions. It makes me feel sick and gives me a migraine. I tell other people in the room about the noise and they just look at me as if I'm mad!

At night, I wear earplugs to help me to sleep, but this makes my tinnitus seem worse because I am blocking more ambient noise. I use a rain sound generator on my Android mobile phone which helps mask the sound. I have it close to my head (with the phone in airplane mode) so that I can hear it through my earplugs.

 

I've had a very slight hiss for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid I just assumed that's what silence sounded like for everyone... Few years ago I had a nasty infection and the hiss changed to a louder constant tone around 10k. It drove me absolutely crazy for about a year but these days I can mostly tune it out. Docs say it's here to stay. Oh well.

 

For me it started with noticing a lot of hissing but pretty soon they were shouting vulgar abuse and finally throwing rocks at me whenever I went out. Apparently it was something I said.

 

Does anybody else ever hear voices?

Oh wait. Somebody once warned me never to admit that in case they lock me up. No: I never hear voices.

OK... well just occasionally, sometimes I do. I think it is associate with certain meds. I don't mind it at all. They usually sound like a muffled 1950s BBC drama: that middle-class received-English accent. And I can't make out what they say so no chance of doing anything they tell me!

The voices! The Voices!
The voices are telling me...
I can't resist...
They are telling me to...
Well, actually, I don't know: someone tell them I'm a bit deaf!

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The hiss... the sound of silence (damn: Paul SImon earworm again). I never get the silence to experience it these days. In my early rural childhood, I remember it getting it louder as the surrounding silence got more complete. I wish. Some sort of hiss is there. Working out what is in, and what is out, of my head is impossible. An Indian city suburb, even at 2.00am, is never quiet enough to tell.

And yes, I see an ENT man regularly. In fact, I would advise anybody who thinks their ears are full of wax, especially if they may have compacted it with ear plugs or buds/iems, to get them cleaned by a pro, rather than DIY. The worst time, the guy got what looked like two wax bullets out of my ears!

 

Or for any of those SBAF members who ever pass through Delhi, may I suggest just sitting down on the lawns in the middle of Connaught Place for about three and half seconds? This will be long enough to have been offered a "very clean", "pure", "most hygienic", "deluxe" ear-cleaning by a man with a very dirty vest and some extremely offputting cheap steel implements. What is more, you will be reducing the price at every second due to being in simultaneous negotiations with the two rival ear cleaners who arrived 1 second after the first one. You might also cut a sharp deal on some just only just most recently discounted cotton handkerchiefs. Probably this only holds true for people who are obviously foreign tourists or *gasp* "Persons of Indian Origin" aka Universal Victims.

 

This is totally off topic but... Old roommate of mine had a bit of a break maybe 10 years ago. He recently told me he no longer takes his meds, and instead has simply gotten much better at appearing to be normal. I've witnessed this guy run down the street in his underwear believing he's jesus christ reincarnated, literally. I'm pretty conflicted about the whole thing...

 

He definitely needs his meds. How do I know? I am Jesus Christ reincarnated. Also Buddha, Mohammed, Elijah, Krishna, Cyrus, Alexander, King Arthur, Elvis, Napoleon and Hitler (yes, it was me all along).

Anyhow, tell him to just keep a low profile and not make a big noise because otherwise things could get seriously inconvenient for him.

 

Hey, it's just a sleeping pill that does this to me: no heavy psychological conditions with essential drugs with unpleasant side effects.

@julian67 . I strongly suspected it was all your fault. You were Pontius Pilate, right? and Nero! I knew it! It's the chest hair that gives you away. But it's not all bad: at least you couldn't have been Margaret Thatcher. Not enough chest hair!


edit: first line came out as nonsense.

 

I read the thread title and thought, "married?"

 

I also have tinnitus and the VA prescribed hearing aids with a tinnitus sound program that sounds like ocean waves breaking on a beach. Surprisingly, after a period of time, when the aids are removed, the tinnitus is gone, although it always does eventually return. There are quite a few brands now that have this feature.

 

Yeah, I'm in the tinnitus club as well. For me it's a constant tone at around 10KHz. It comes and goes - some days It's simply not there, others I really have to listen to hear it, and some days it's actually quite irritating. One funny thing I've noticed is that when it's there I hear everything a lot louder than when it's not.

I put it down to my age and some stupidly loud gigs I went to when I was younger.