I potentially have noise-induced tinnitus in my left ear. I don't notice it during the day, but it's about a 5-6/10 when it's quiet at night. I'm hoping it gets better, especially since my audiogram came back fine, but right now there's a lot of uncertainty.

For those in a similar situation, have you found that you've been able to go back to using headphones, earphones or earbuds in any capacity? Music is incredibly important to me and headphones have been a staple all my life, so I'm incredibly worried right now.

$300 appt this morning, just to be told i have better hearing than the doctor, the tinnitus ringing “sucks,” and it’s originating in my brain.
He did emphasize the importance of not focusing on the ringing, and continuing with masking/ matching the frequency to de intensify symptoms.

Hello, something I noticed again minutes ago and have noticed in the past. I think it only happens when I'm lying down. I usually place my phone in my chest and sometimes, if I have the sound high my right ear hears it like someone is speaking to a broken down mic. It feels louder then it is, disturbed and... That's about it. Have tried lowering the audio and after a certain point it stops but when I increase it it happens again. I dont think I have another instance where this has happened. It also feels like some pressure is relieved when I stop the sound, I think, I'm not sure on that lats one. I have tinnitus on my other ear so it aint that either I think

Hello everyone , I had T since i was 15/16 now im 24, at the beginning that T was killing me but past 5 years or even more i couldnt even notice it during the day (only in total silence in bed, but it somehow helped me sleep)... long story short 18 days ago i was mildly slapped by closed hand to the ear , and slap pushed air into my ear and i was dizzy for like 20 seconds and instantly loud ringing sound started... went to specialist he told me my eardrum is fine , hearing is fine i only have mild unsteadiness when i stand i close my eyes , doc said its middle/inner ear trauma ("labrynth const" smt on latin).

First 4 or 5 days ringing was very very loud like 9/10
Day 6 to 9 it was like 5/10
And from 9 to 13 it was 3/10
13 to day 18 (as of today) sometimes i get 1/10 or 2/10 (i can hear my old baseline and new T when i close my ears )
T is getting high and loud for a second when i play loud audio or im near loud audio (like it jumps up in volume while audio is playing but drops down the second after the audio is stopped)
Doc said only time will heal, but im here asking if anyone had similar experience or if they can give me advice! BTW. sound of T is like SHHHHHshhhhhhSHHHHH Like static tv

Thanks everyone

Hey all, long time sufferer here and have gone through the gamut of doctors. (ENT, allergist, hearing specialist, chiropractor, masseus, phyiscal therapy, etc.) The best treatment i have been offered was hearing aids (total BS, i am not losing my hearing, it's just that the little high-pitched noises they use to determine that sound just like my tinnitus!) and lipo flavonoid snake oil pills. Needless to say, none of that worked.

My tinnitus is bilateral but dominant on my right side like 80/20. I feel like the 20% on my left side emanates from the right.

So after years of suffering and zero results i am always trying new things and I feel like my tinnitus comes from ETD on my right side, and I feel my ETD is a result of sinusitis on my right side. In an attempt to ameliorate that I found that humidifiers help a lot apparently. I use a CPAP nightly and lo and behold it has a heated tube built in which essentially is a humidifer strapped to my nostrils for hours! I had no clue it could do that and after 10 minutes of configuring it i have used it with humidity for a week now. Apparently using it without humidity has the opposite effect and i have essentially been drying out my sinuses nightly for years. I started at 8/8 humidity but that was overkill and there was too much water in the line so I dropped down to 6/8 which seems OK. My tinnitus is by no means cured but it does seem to have opened my eustachian tubes somewhat and there has been a slight drop in volume of my T (maybe like 10%). I am going to keep at it and will update in the future, hopefully with more good news of improvement.

TL;DR - heated CPAP tube is great humidifier and appears to lessen ETD induced T

Anyone had any success with getting rid of this? I heard there may be ways to stop this particular type. When i jut out my jaw it gets constant and loud, really loud. If I had to deal with that all the time I would be crazier than I already am.

I don't believe that "all in the head thing" ED was all in the head, until it wasn't, peptic ulcers, MS and horrific period cramps.

Whoever figures this out will be king of the world.

Hi! I need to get a filling because of a cavity in my back molar. I have found a dentist that uses laser drill that said its alot more quiet then a traditional drill but there will be alot of suction tools used since it uses alot of water. I informed i had hyperacusis and tinnitus and he recommended i could use earplugs for the filling job with the suction but he said that he still must "grind" down the filling to make it fit. Im a little bit afraid of doing this with the earplugs since im scared of the occulation effect.

Anyone had a similair thing done that can share their experience?

I think it will be hard for me to use earplugs then just suddenly take them out with the grinding since im always alot more "sensitive" when taking out the earplugs for the next 10-15 minutes.

Should i just endure everything without or just use earplugs and "push through" the grinding that takes a couple of minutes?

I am getting desperate. Need to find ppl w similar issues and maybe we can work together to fix this. Or if you figured out the cure, pls share.

Me:
- mild cervical kyphosis per MRI
- constant tinnitus both ears, sometimes pulsatile
- numb hands when I wake up
- stabbing head pain when I look down
- improvement of all symptoms when I lie down and extend my heck
- all started suddenly one day, no injury
- ears feeling like I need to pop them

Currently:
- episodic use of c spine collar helps all simple
- not using a pillow and instead using a rollled up towel under the neck helps
- inadvertent cracking at the base of my skull provides relief (happens if I tilt my head back)

Anyone else??

My tinnitus started after more than 2 weeks of exposure is it typical . Asking becouse i thought i wouldnt get it if after 1 week there was none

hi guys, i am 20 and from india please dont judge! i wanted to say that i have been experiencing tinnitus from the age of 12 that was almost negligible then but recently since the last 1 year i have experienced severe ear hearing loss and increasing tinnitus in both ears along with nasal issues (obstruction while breathing and nose blockage). can anyone out there help me out or atleast provide me a treatment for this? the doctors tell me to wear HA but i think its just an external ear problem causing these things!
please anyone…

Hi guys. 57M here. I've had the big T since I was about 14, and I blame it on continuous loud music through headphones throughout my teen years. Anyway, my tinnitus is the ringing sort, usually most dominant through my left ear. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, it's noticeably louder than normal, or so it seems. And sometimes during the day, for no reason, it'll get louder and more invasive.

I know almost nothing about tinnitus, other than there's no cure for it.

I was wondering if anyone else's experiences with it are similar?

Thanks guys.

Hello everyone,

I have an appointment tomorrow but was hoping to get opinions from other people on my situation. At the end of last month (July) I made a trip with a friend for a Drum corps concert (Think loud outdoor marching band concert with amplification at a football stadium.) and it was 3 days long about 3-4 hours each night. The trip was about 10 hours each way and the car we rode in also had an aftermarket exhaust and was quite loud when the drone was present, it averaged about 75 db cruising and 85-90 with the windows down or when flooring it. (measured with an Apple Watch after the fact). Here's my dilemma, if I woke up any of those days or a day or 2 later and started hearing the ringing in my ears I would suspect hearing damage, or if I heard muffled sounds etc. I had none of that.

What makes this hard to figure out for me is that the morning we started the drive up there, I had a super bad sore throat, and through the trip progressively got a cough, mucus in the back of my head and could hardly breathe etc. Well about a week after the trip, I'm starting to feel better. No breathing issues, just a minor cough which is normal for me when I'm coming out of it. Then about a week after I'm feeling better the Tinnitus comes out of nowhere. by the time that I started obsessing over it I realized I had been hearing it for about 3 days. and after the ringing I my ears start aching, feeling full, I'm noticing my ears pop when I swallow but I can't tell if its like the normal sound that you'd hear or something Eustachian tube related. Since its onset, I went to the urgent care and they said my ear drums looked fine and It was likely due to my upper respiratory illness. Since then my left ear gradually started to feel better and has been for awhile, but my right has slowly started feeling better as well. But I still feel the fullness in both ears on occasion. The ringing has always been the same exact pitch with the occasional 2nd tone that will pop in for a moment and leave maybe once a day.

To make matters worse, I am a stomach sleeper, and have always slept in a way that can cause my neck to be tense in the mornings. I have noticed that sometimes when I look all the way left or right the pitch doesn't change, but the intensity of the sound does. Same for certain times when I move my jaw all the way down or forward. It's driven me crazy enough to where I have been using copilot to bounce ideas off with and the general consensus from there is that I either have a post viral Eustachian tube dysfunction which would fit the timeline about a week after feeling better, or that coupled with the neck/jaw movement means it is somatic tinnitus. I have taken a "hearing test" with my airpod pros and they state I have little to no measurable loss in both ears.

So my question is, how likely is the tinnitus related to an acoustic trauma where damage from all the sound caused a 2 week delayed ringing and ear discomfort, sharp and dull aches, and fullness in the ear. Ive read that delayed ringing CAN happen from hearing damage but that it is rare especially paired with it the other ear symptoms. Should I ask for a prednisone regimen even though I am outside of the "golden window" since the actual exposure at this point happened a month ago. Do any of you have any similar examples of ringing in the ears from ETD issues after getting sick and starting to feel better? Copilot seems to think I did not do any meaningful damage to my hearing that would cause tinnitus and the person that rode with me on this trip has has no ill effects to their hearing and we were exposed to practically the same thing the whole week. So in my madness I'm hoping that I have an ETD condition that will eventually clear up and once the inflammation goes away the tinnitus will subside.

Thank you all that Took the time to read this and gave me advice!

Have anyone heard of him? Or anyone done his program? I come across to him on Instagram and tempted to buy his programs but I would like to check if anyone heard of him?
Thanks

I am 50 and have had tinnitus pretty much all of my life. Sometimes it’s as loud as a jet engine but I recently started Duloxetine for neuropathy pain and my tinnitus has gone. I can’t tell you how much I am enjoying peace and quiet.

YOU GUYS!!

Simple thing that worked for me: instead of trying to analyze my T when it gets super loud, I try focusing really hard on the outside noises and it worked, it feels like I have not been hearing minimal sound (like the sound of road, example) and my brain just replaces it with T sound, like my ears are not giving a proper feedback and saying "I hear something but I am translating it to ringing", does that make sense? I'm only saying its a slight progress because I am able to focus as much on it during the day, it requires for me to be 100% present and focused.

Long story short: I had cancer in 2021, then 1 year after I finished the treatment, my mom passed and it crashed me; after the funeral I can't remember how and what I have been taking to be able to sleep but it was a mix of herbs, melatonin and benzos, I'd just rotate them irresponsibly as I was in a state of shock - that's when lound buzzing woke me up and been hearing it ever since. I have a condition that is super complex to cure - hypochondria and it gets me strangled in my own head instead of focusing on the outside reality, and it makes me keep on checking the slightest bodily sensations so it would take ages to explain my own case... but I am a firm believer that its psychological

Hey guys I have sereve tinnitus that fluctuates from ear to ear then both ears it’s very sereve I have noticed that’s it’s obviously nervous system induced it’s very sereve reactive, when I tapper my tinnitus goes crazy singing high frequency’s it’s very debilitating but I’ve noticed whenever I tape but even though it hasn’t been as long as I’d like to I’ve lasted about 10 days when I reinstate olanzapine 1.25 I get about a honeymoon stage that lasts about two weeks of my tinnitus being very low and pretty much nonexistence, but then I’m dealing with severe fluctuations still after the two weeks which will be like four or five days of severe singing really badly and then I might get some windows or a day where it’s very low and it really shakes me up. Does anyone know what I should do? Like is the point to get off the medication at taper very slowly and hopefully my nervous system will just stabilise.?

Hello all,

I’ve been desperately wandering around this subreddit for a while. I hardly post anything on Reddit, but this time I felt I needed to explain something and possibly get some weight off my shoulders. Half a year ago I found out I had some sort of tinnitus in my ear, and it caught me off guard to say the least. I am a 22 year old male for your information.

My experience with tinnitus

I have been extremely cautious to my hearing since 2024, making sure not to expose my ears to more than 80dB, and I think I averaged around 65 dB when listening to music (if I have to trust Apple’s built-in dB-meter :P). Approximately half a year ago I started hearing a very soft beep. It was so soft I had to concentrate right before sleeping to be able to hear it. Fast forward 1.5 weeks later and the sound got louder. It got louder again a week later and that’s when I went to the doctor to sort the problem out.

I also told the doctor that the frequency of the sound changes as soon as I open and close my mouth. The doctor found out I had a lot of earwax (I have some sort of earwax problem/condition), and after getting rid of it the sound in my ear suddenly disappeared. However, three days later the sound returned, although very soft again. Now, 4 months later, the noise is still there and it got intensified. My ear is only half full of earwax, so that’s probably not the cause.

What could this mean? I thought tinnitus would appear after exposing the ears to loud noise. I quickly found out the brain is able to block tinnitus making it less noticeable until you become aware of it.

Some essential information:

- Back when I was little my parents used to take me to loud weddings every 5–7 months or so. These places were as loud as concerts - I believe reaching to 100-110 dB for 5/6 hours. To this day, I’m still mad at them for exposing children to that kind of noise without providing basic hearing protection.

- When opening my mouth the frequency of the sound changes. I read somewhere that this is usually not common to happen to people with tinnitus, but I’m not sure.

- I have done a hearing test and the results showed that I have near-perfect hearing. There is no hearing loss.

- I’m not really a concert person but I gave it a go 1.5 weeks ago (I’m still not a concert person, it seems :D). I brought ear protection with me, but ended up just plugging my airpods in (very stupid, I know). I probably got exposed to loud noise, though it never exceeded 100 dB, I think it averaged somewhere around 85-90 dB for 1 hour. That night I did not hear louder tinnitus, but the evening later I suddenly started hearing louder noise than usual (I also had an extremely stressful day, if that’s relevant).

My biggest question

The biggest question I have is: how did this noise start all of a sudden? What are the chances I had tinnitus and my brain was actually blocking the noise all along? Are the stories here about making tinnitus disappear real and does treatment like massaging the jaw or avoiding certain nutrients make it disappear?

I’m currently trying to get some sort of diagnose (going to the GP, doing hearing test, going to an ear doctor). In the meantime I decided to make this post, maybe someone would have something to say. I don’t want to sound even more desperate, but the last two years have been very stressful to me. I genuinely hope this problem of mine is temporary, however I’m ready to accept the truth and make the best out of this situation. Anyone who’s been stuck with tinnitus, mad respect to you, this is not easy at all…

TLDR

TL/DR: I developed a very soft beep in one ear about six months ago, which gradually became louder. A doctor found a lot of earwax, and removing it made the tinnitus disappear temporarily, but it returned three days later. The pitch also changes when I open and close my mouth. My hearing test showed near-perfect hearing, and I’ve generally been very careful with loud sounds. I also had significant noise exposure as a child and recently went to a concert where I was exposed to around 85–90 dB for an hour. I’m wondering what could have caused the tinnitus, whether it could have been present without me noticing it, and whether jaw-related treatment, stress reduction, or other treatments can actually make it disappear.

The 3 months following an acoustic trauma is so, so awful. Because every fluctuation has the potential to be permanent, every ring or buzz or tone is a threat to the rest of your life. And every external noise is like an extra little kick in the shin.

Tonight’s contribution is high shrill squealing brought on by my dad’s dog barking while standing beside my leg.

god I am so fucking tired

Obligatory ‘don’t ask what the acoustic trauma was’ because I’m sick to death of repeating myself over and over again. It was really, really bad and it came out of nowhere.

Howdy yall. I had a ~40min exposure a week ago (band practice with loud room sound and thus increased in-ear monitor sound to compensate) that likely is the cause of T, altho I'm surprised as it wasn't excessively loud genre/session and IEMs acted as decent earpro when I was muted.

By the next morning a consistent tonal ringing T in right ear and sensitivity to sounds, with no real change since, and much different than sickness-related T (I've had intermittent very mild T in the past, usually when sick, esp with Covid) that goes away within a day or so, and only noticed if really focusing.)

ENT found mild-to-moderate hearing loss in that ear (low freq only) at both +3 and +7 days since exposure with no change between tests. Beyond a very expensive CT scan, they just said "steroids are the only option" as I'm in that 1-2 week window. I can't do take oral steroids as Type 1 diabetic (would be BAD for glucose mgmt), so it'd be in-ear dexamethasone injections.

I've read some dex stories on here, but wondering if any recent experience with this immediately after the (presumed) cause of acute damage and if it helps. I'm stuck in the dice roll of waiting for T to subside with healing, or waiting for dex as it decreases effectiveness past 2 weeks, maybe 4-6 max, and has its own risks.

(I’m really sorry in advance, I’m sure posts like this happen all the time)

It’s been 37 hours after this concert I went to, my ears are still ringing. I stood next to the speaker for the first set which was really loud, I then left for a little bit and came back not as close. It actually wasn’t bad or even noticeable right after the concert but the next 2 days I’ve been noticing it non stop. After the concert I went to my friends house to listen to his new subs, not really thinking about tinnitus because I didn’t hear ringing yet. I think it has slightly faded since last night when it was really loud. I think I provoked it by drinking and smoking with friends and then proceeding to get really stressed and nervous about the ringing. Just give it to me straight and tell me my percent chance of it being permanent.

I got tinnitus in November of 2025 from listening to loud music.

The first months (up until March, I'd say) I was coping so badly, severely suicidal, I even was in the psych ward.

Then in March I visited another ENT, recommended to me by one of the uses of this forum (had already seen two useless ones before.

I had a 15 db drop at 8000 hz in my right ear, which is the one who sometimes had an extra sound on top of my central tinnitus.

She prescribed to me Piracetam, which actually made a huge difference to me and it kick-started my way to recovery.

All the while, I became kind of a hermit. I wasn't very outgoing before anyway, so I didn't mind much the social isolation. I only went to the supermarket, to doctor's appointments, and for walks every now and then.

In rest, was content to sit at home, write ajd watch videos at low volume.

This Thursday, I had to go at the mall and while I was there, I didn't immediately put my ear plugs in.

I was there for 10-15 minute before I got the ear plugs in.

As a result, on Friday , I got a spike in my right ear, the one of the extra noise.

I have pain and ear fullness and can't see my ENT until October, and going to the ER would get me nowhere.

I got mini-spikes before, but this is lasting.

My central tinnitus went down, but there is the spike in the right ear which is upsetting.

It sounds louder, and during the day I can ignore it, but at night it makes sleep hard and I'm scared it will be bad forever.

My question is, could it go back down?

Do I have a chance?

I was doing so well with my tinnitus, even started to read books again, and now I'm so scared I ruined my progress and I'm back to how I used to be.

I’m a long time sufferer and tried all the snake oil. But recently I’ve been taking zrytec and it’s had a remarkable effect on my tinnitus. Several days noise free sone days with reduced noise. I’m not a physician but if you ca n meds like Zyrtec you might find some relief

Dear community, I am looking for some answers that I hope some of you might help me with. English is not my 1st language so please bear with me!

Last saturday (9 days ago) I was in a row outside of a theatre, waiting to get in. There was a guy right behind me, who suddenly decided to do a two-finger whistle very loudly- right in my right ear. I felt some sort of pressure and it felt almost painful and I heard a beeping sound right away. The first two days I also had earpain. That pain is gone away now, but I am still hearing this sound and it's making me worried. I went to my GP and she said my ear looked intact but I suffered from an acoustic trauma and should take some time to heal.

Now, as I was mopping the floor and had to pick something up from the ground, I heard the sound getting 5x louder. It settled back to the 'original' beeping sound rather quickly but it really scared me. I am wondering if it can still fully heal? Can I do anything to help the recovery process? Any tips or stories arr welcome.