Tinnitus

Beer w/Straw

Beer w/Straw

Transcendental Ignorance!
Valued Senior Member
Ever experience hearing things that aren't there? Music? Conversations? Car engines? I swear I had voices inside my head. Everything I could almost make an association with in my thoughts turned into a sound that didn't actually come from the external world.

I was due for surgery in two days and that could be indirectly causing it. So I could just wait. Yet, watching some old TV episodes before bed, or trying to get to bed was a chore. I woke up in a fright thinking someone was masturbating or doing crack beside my bed. It took me a good thirty seconds to come back to reality. And I didn't get to sleep again for my racing thoughts turned into noises in my head anyway.

I was told to tell my family doctor and take it from there so he could refer me to a specialist. However, the drugs helped me sleep in the hospital and it subsided.

No, I didn't have a head injury, but I'm never drinking that stuff again. The word "tinnitus" was new to me. Has anyone else experienced something like it?
 
I sometimes get a ringing noise in my left ear when subjected to loud noises.
Most likely it's from the countless hours standing next to my drummers' crash cymbal.
 
Got some tinnitus from the usual stuff...lawn mowers, skill saws etc. I started wearing ear protection early on though, so it never got real bad.

Our minds try to form patterns all of the time, even when there isn't a pattern to discern. Those unreal half - heard conversations or distant music are examples of that. It is part of how we are built.
 
I hear a constant high high-pitched ringing. It doesn't bother me unless I think about it. Thanks for reminding me. :tongue:
 
Well, I more referring too an extreme subjective tinnitus. Like I was walking through a parking lot and I could hear the engines of cars turn on as I'd walk by them in one ear and knowing that it wasn't real. Also, a pulsating tinnitus, translating into musical thoughts as my heart heat would randomly give my mind ideas for a tune. The white noise of my computer fan made it impossible to sleep as my mind would jump from tune to tune with it. Fortunately, this didn't last and it arose under factors of insomnia and alcohol as well. The prescription of oxycodone from surgery helped me get to sleep and rid me of a scary thought of dealing with the bullshit constantly.

I started to thread as a wonder. Like what, if anything, do I tell my doctor?

:EDIT:

Wow, these drugs are really nice. No wonder the prescription raised some eyeballs. I live near Universities and colleges but there is a large crack smoking homeless population too... (Also know someone who died buying another persons prescription drugs and taking them with alcohol.)
 
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My tinnitus is also the high whine type, only got audio hallucinations when I took some STP back in the late 1960's. :oops: Opiates give me nausea, nightmares and constipation so I avoid those.
 
Stoniphi said:
My tinnitus is also the high whine type, only got audio hallucinations when I took some STP back in the late 1960's. :oops: Opiates give me nausea, nightmares and constipation so I avoid those.
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I have something I'd describe as a bit like the almost imperceptible and high pitched whistle of an old fashioned (CRT technology) TV set). Maybe the same sort of thing as your experience. It does not seem to interfere with my hearing and does not bother me. I notice it most when driving a car, for some reason.

What BwS describes sounds far more sinister - like hallucinations. I worry a bit about her actually - wonder if she's getting "the horrors" from too much booze, or something.
 
Beer w/Straw said:
The word "tinnitus" was new to me. Has anyone else experienced something like it?
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Yes. Unfortunately it's common among rock musicians because we spend so much time surrounded by loud sound. Among the general population, roughly 15% have tinnitus, which can range from a slight annoyance to a major problem that greatly reduces quality of life. The most common cause is repetitive exposure to loud noise, but it can be due to other causes.

There is no treatment or cure, but it is possible to mitigate it by keeping blood pressure down. In fact I can use the severity of my tinnitus (which ranges from almost totally absent to annoying but not yet a quality-of-life issue) to determine whether my blood pressure is at a satisfactory level at a given moment.

Many rock'n'roll stars wear earplugs when performing, but, sadly, in many cases it's because they already have tinnitus and just don't want it to get worse.
 
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The notes that make up the whine are the notes that you have lost the capacity to hear due to damage. You are 'hallucinating' those missing wavelengths when other sounds do not take attentive precedence.

Percussive sounds like close gun fire, skill saws, cheap gasoline lawn mowers, air hammers and the like are the source for many folks tinnitus. It generally takes your ear sphincter muscles about an hour or so to fatigue enough to allow constant loud noise to enter unrestricted and serious damage to occur.

I wear ear protection most days to do certain tasks, have sets all over the place as well as earplugs.
 
Beer w/Straw said:
I started to thread as a wonder. Like what, if anything, do I tell my doctor?
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You should tell your doctor everything that you talked about here. That is what they are for; to answer our questions concerning our health.

Good luck.
 
Beer w/Straw said:
Well, I more referring too an extreme subjective tinnitus. Like I was walking through a parking lot and I could hear the engines of cars turn on as I'd walk by them in one ear and knowing that it wasn't real. Also, a pulsating tinnitus, translating into musical thoughts as my heart heat would randomly give my mind ideas for a tune. The white noise of my computer fan made it impossible to sleep as my mind would jump from tune to tune with it.
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Although you may have tinnitus, much of what you describe is more akin to hallucinations.
http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/understanding-tinnitus-basics said:
Tinnitus (pronounced ti-ni-tis), or ringing in the ears, is the sensation of hearing ringing, buzzing, hissing, chirping, whistling, or other sounds. The noise can be intermittent or continuous, and can vary in loudness. It is often worse when background noise is low, so you may be most aware of it at night when you're trying to fall asleep in a quiet room. In rare cases, the sound beats in sync with your heart (pulsatile tinnitus).
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Note the part near end I made bold. The ringing, buzzing, hissing, chirping, whistling, sounds not tunes, can in rare cases, pulse with the rythm of the heart. Hearing car motors turn on as you walk past them is not tinnitus, just an active imagination - a hallucination.

Generally speaking, tinnitus is not caused by extrenal events, but is an ear problem.
 
Nope. Occasionally people with tinnitus hear music or singing. This is different from someone who has a mental illness and is experiencing hallucinations. Tinnitus is not a 'phantom sound'. There is real neural activity in your brain that you are hearing as your tinnitus.

http://www.betterhearing.org/hearingpedia/hearing-loss-prevention/tinnitus

I did, however, fail to mention that I had previously crashed for a prolonged amount of time with one side of my face on my pillow. Woke up screaming that rabid bunnies and squirrels were after me. Then started playing with my ear to get the blood flow back.
 
Beer w/Straw said:
Occasionally people with tinnitus hear music or singing. ...
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Yes they do, but that is in addition to their tinnitus, which is basically a noise, not music. People also hear non-existing musics, singing, re-hear speach they have heard, etc. without the tinnitus noise. Please re-read the definition I quoted (or any medically based one). Reconizable sound patterns that can be hear from a real external source, like car motor runing, musical instrument patterns, singing, etc. are NOT tinnitus - not included in the definition - they are called hallucinations, if only generated by neural acitivity.

If you want to be well understood, you must use the standard definitions of the terms you use, not make up your own, that disagree with the accepted definitions.
 
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There may be a physical dimension to tinnitus. The Wikipedia article says that in a few cases (but not the majority), tiny microphones implanted in the ears of tinnitus patients recorded the sounds that the patients had described.
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
There may be a physical dimension to tinnitus. The Wikipedia article says that in a few cases (but not the majority), tiny microphones implanted in the ears of tinnitus patients recorded the sounds that the patients had described.
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Please give link. I think in very rare cases, there is actual noise produced in the ear - by turbulnce in the blood flow. Is that what the Wikipedia article says?
 
Billy T said:
Please give link. I think in very rare cases, there is actual noise produced in the ear - by turbulnce in the blood flow. Is that what the Wikipedia article says?
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This, I could say, has been ever present in my life.

A condition called tinnitus causes unusual sounds in the ears: high-pitched hisses, lower-pitched buzzing sounds, clicking. This is a remarkably common problem; an estimated 50 million people in the United States have it to some degree.

Is it unhealthy that I can hear my pulse in my ear?

But I have never heard Abraham Lincoln and no longer have a problem to a annoying degree as I recently experienced.
 
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