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First hearing aids and tinnitus

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I have finally decided to try some hearing aids (Phonak Paradise) as although my loss is not that bad I felt I was missing a lot! Overall I’m very pleased and feel they are beneficial.

I have one issue though that I wondered if anyone else had come across which is that my tinnitus seems to have got worse. Is it just because I am concentrating on sounds more as I test the hearing aids? Previously the tinnitus was not severe enough for me to notice much in normal situations, but at the moment I am conscious of it at most times.

Thanks for the great forum!

Paul

8 people in this conversation14 min readJump to latest

@dclholly It’s the stress of hearing a lot more.

Your brain is working on hearing and understanding the new sound. Not just the sounds you haven’t heard for a while and a relearning to identify, but all sounds are different.They might be clearer and better to understand, however after getting used to it, a.k.a. trained, you won’t have to understand most of it: You already hear it.

So the good news is: They’re working, you’re working and they don’t get tired, they just get recharged. They’ll learn to cope with you. :wink:

My tinnitus dramatically reduced after wearing aids for a few months. Still got it of course, but it doesn’t keep me awake anymore. A rather important step in the right direction.

An viable approach to reduce tinnitus seems to be to listen to 7Hz theta waves for half an hour a day. Some hearing aids have Zen programs that generate them for you. Otherwise you can stream them from your phone. Here are the white noise audiofiles80 I used.

I’ve been wearing my first ’s (Phonak Marvels) for about a year and a half now and I’ve had tinnitus for many years. Wearing the aids does make every sound seem louder, but I think that I have become more used to that. Now when I’m not using the HA’s my tinnitus sounds louder. So maybe you just need to get used to the amplification you HA’s provide and noticing the tinnitus will diminish.

Thanks for the responses - hopefully it’ll settle back down to what it was previously. I’m seeing my audi next week so will also talk to her about it.

My experience is the same - after I started wearing aids (marvel and later switched to paradise) my tinnitus when I remove aids is insanely loud.

Before starting this trial I always answered that I don’t hear any tinnitus.

But I guess that getting the cochlea more excited during the day makes it loud party when I pull them out.

I wear aid on normal ear or of the convenience, and I definitely now have tinnitus in that ear as well.

I hope my brain will learn to ignore it after some time, but 6 months in it’s very much alive and kicking. Currently I’m listening some water and bird sounda and as I’ve started typing this, it’s getting louder than those birds :joy:

Push your thoughts away from it. And hope it will work. That’s my mantra.

It takes years of practice to ignore Tinnitus, stress is a major trigger… for me also a sign I have some other health issues, at the moment my Tinnitus is about 7 outa 10, 10 being almost unbearable, that’s because I have focused on it and my stress levels are high, it will gradually dissipate shortly (fingers crossed) it takes much practice to train your thoughts to totally ignore the white noise (I am now down to about 4 and levelling off) Tis a very difficult ailment to deal with and trying to relax your mind is challenging to say the least (I am now down to about 2) it is almost gone, that’s the first time I have consciously tried that and I am in all truth hovering between 1and 2 now… Weird! Cheers Kev.

Any tips to share how you train? Since my post, mine just kept blaring :confused:

Hi Blacky, I know the feeling and I empathise… over the years I have tried to be philosophical about Tinnitus and I have gradually relaxed with myself about my reaction to it, I am acutely aware it will sometimes be loud and other times quiet and I think the key is excepting Tinnitus as a fact of life… Today is the first day I have ever consciously switched it off as I wrote my last message, quite amazing! You are aware it can get loud and excessively so, in the same vain you know it will eventually subside, I focus on it subsiding and I mentally gradually relax… seems to work for me, my apologies for not being specific and my poor explanation not being exactly accurate, I am not a psychiatrist by any stretch of the imagination, it has taken many years for me to get to this stage… Good luck, cheers Kev.

@kevels55 said:

quite amazing

Indeed :open_mouth:

There are definitely days when I notice it only after pulling out my aids and lying down in bed, but then I don’t notice it if I start reading something. Lay few days it’s having a rave party in my head and I’m not sure if it caused the insomnia + sleeping in chunks of 3h with similarly long pauses in between, was it the other way around or they just came independently. I assume I’m under stress (hubby has a shitstorm in a workplace, to put it mildly) and it hits everywhere it can.

So I don’t expect much of the improvement now, but it’s nice to hear that it’s possible not just get used to it and indirectly ignore but actually actively subside it, whoa just whoa :slight_smile:

Hi Blacky, I believe “Stress” is the biggest trigger for Tinnitus, especially if the route cause is the stress of the actual white noise, tis a vicious circle and I recall being so down after my SHL 30 odd years ago, between the Sudden Hearing Loss, Tinnitus and sleep deprivation I was downright practically suicidal and prayed to be absolutely and profoundly Deaf, falsely thinking if I was Deaf then surely this noise would go away… Little did I know “Worse” was to come a few years down the line with Meniers, the great Scottish Poet Sorley MacLean said once; “Fate always loads 2 bullets in his gun… Just in case the first one misses”. I think once you reach rock bottom then the only way is up! I have bottomed out on a few occasions :flushed: but I survived :smile: I tend to treat Tinnitus like a an overbearing and very unwelcome visiting relative, if I ignore them long enough then hopefully they will just go away… The gift of “Understanding”and the ability to except Tinnitus is part of you, will lead you becoming more relaxed about its outcome and just like that relative, if you can ignore it, it will also go away… Like everything that’s mentally challenging, it takes time to get the correct mindset. Apologies for the long winded analogy. Cheers Kev :smile:

i have meniere’s and tinnitus in my right ear mow for 26 years … i found that ha’s really helped after i got used to them, they help you hear the world around you better and that often competes against the internally generated tinnitus

i bought widex’s because of the zen tone fractals which i thought i would really like having tested them online, turns out that i don’t like them much (though i like the widex ha’s a lot)

so if my tinnitus is bothering i just loop a nature sound track (cicadas, crickets and critters on a pond) and that does a good job of diverting my attention and calming my tinnitus down

maybe experiment with different sounds to see which ones make your brain happy

the track i like was on apple music and i liked it so much i bought the cd just to make sure i would always have it because it really works for me

i would stick with your ha’s, you will likely find that they start to help your tinnitus i bet

Paul, I have the same experience as you. Even though I’ve been wearing hearing aids for years, I still get an increase in the amount of tinnitus I perceive after I wear them. I say that as compared to days where I go mostly without , when my work is visual with minimal phone/zoom. The increased tinnitus after a day of HA use can carry over into the next morning. It doesn’t really bother me. Even though it shows up very reliably after a day of using HAs, it doesn’t deter me from wearing them. I wish you the best as you manage what you are experiencing with your tinnitus.

Thank you Cohen for the very kind words as they are much appreciated :grinning: Cheers Kev.

Thanks for all your help. I go back to my audi today for a first check and will discuss with her, but I am sure I will keep the as overall I think they are working for me.

It’s normal for tinnitus to seem louder when you take your hearing aids out. It’s the contrast to it being quieter when the hearing aids are in, and it’s your brain searching for the sound it’s missing, and it’s fatigue.

Kevels is right on point. If you’re effective at engaging in a sort of ‘active ignoring’, tinnitus will typically calm down (in contrast, if you focus on it and think about it and worry about it, it is normal for it to be louder). Ignoring it away takes a lot more time and effort than we’d like. Plus, the tinnitus will always come back now and then, and then you have to actively ignore it all over again. But the second time you manage it is faster, and the third times is faster yet. And eventually you get to the point that you don’t mind too much even focussing on it on purpose and thereby increasing the volume, because you know how to push it down again.

Background music is your friend.

Thank you for the kind words and your input Neville… I think your explanation is far easier to understand :grinning: “Actively Ignoring Tinnitus” is an eloquent way to put it, I am much obliged… Tinnitus is part of you and excepting it for what it is, is very important, being able to relax about Tinnitus is also very helpful to alleviate your symptoms. Once you can “Actively Ignore” you will not worry about it again, simply because you are now able to put it down to acceptable levels, unfortunately you will never eradicate Tinnitus totally, it will always be there with you in the background. Neville is 100% correct, I sometimes let it run by actually focusing on it to check and hear if the tones have changed, it has over the years, at one time I had a washing machine on full spin in one ear and white noise in the other, nowadays I am all white noise with the occasional tone in both. Cheers Kev :grinning:

In reply to @Neville

@Neville said:

It’s normal for tinnitus to seem louder when you take your hearing aids out. It’s the contrast to it being quieter when the hearing aids are in, and it’s your brain searching for the sound it’s missing, and it’s fatigue.

I’m wondering, reading here and listening to the party in my head, is it possible that my aids are somehow too loud and that what I hear isn’t ordinary tinnitus but something similar to the ringing people have when they were at the concert too close to the speakers?

Because I definitely have this now in both ears since I’ve started wearing aid in my normal ear. On gain curve I don’t think I go over 3db or so (to basically mitigate the effect of the domes), but before this I never heard anything in my left/normal ear.
And tinnitus I had before was tonal sounds. But this thing now is more like woom woom type of woosh woosh noise, some humming a bit higher pitch, but not too much, I’d say around 2kHz, and I have a feeling it slightly pulsates with heartbeat.

In quiet, maximum insertion gain I have is 35db for G50 at 1-2 kHz zone for bad ear, and 3-4 for good ear, but also in mid freq range, bass and so I have at -4 :rofl: for G50

For streaming I’ve put a bit louder, so g50 is at maximum 4-6db insertion gain for good ear, and around 40 on bad ear.

That gives output of around max 60db for g50, and max 80db for g80, while good ear stays below 66db on everything, even for loud noises eg g80.

That doesn’t seem too high, so I guess I should’t cause ‘tinnitus of loud noise’, but I might be wrong?

So question is - can really CAUSE us tinnitus or similar noises, or it’s just perception?
My good ear showing symptoms got me thinking, so maybe you know more?

Why are you wearing a hearing aid in your normal ear? Are you noticing benefit?

No, I wouldn’t worry about it causing damage with such low gain. It’s very, very normal for tinnitus to walk from one ear to another. Typically, there is . . . let’s call it disordered neural firing in both ears (or further up in the auditory system) to some extent, but its perceived location will be lateralized to whichever ear is “louder”. This can fluctuate.

But regarding this new tinnitus: Just there when the hearing aids are out? Just there when the hearing aids are in? There all the time since adding the second hearing aid? Goes away when you STOP wearing the new hearing aid?

In reply to @Blacky

@Blacky said:

So question is - can HAs really CAUSE us tinnitus or similar noises, or it’s just perception?
My good ear showing symptoms got me thinking, so maybe you know more?

I dont think so Blacky going by personal experience, I had Tinnitus from the off, strait after SHL and before I had ’s… Maybe one of the hearing pro’s will chip in with their opinion. Cheers Kev.

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