doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com OT: Tinnitus and hearing.

Tom: No, haven't started anything new here. Am on a number of interesting potions to help recover from my Lyme's years but really, nothing other than that. The Lyme's treatments included many months (42) of hard-core antibiotics and anti-malarials that were known for inducing tinnitus. Besides my family's now-regular complaints, have resumed work and find myself in enough meetings where I'm at a significant disadvantage because of background noise. I will probably do the Costco thing in the near term. I'm also sensitive to protecting what I have left and will start to wear hearing protection more regularly.

I want to interject here that tinnitus and hearing loss are really 2 different things. I had tinnitus for 20-25 years before I had any significant hearing loss.
Go to Costco and get a hearing test and yes, if you have hearing loss by all means look into hearing aids. But you may not have the loss you think and hearing aids may not help much with tinnitus.

Hearing aids cannot help with Tinnitus. Tinnitus is the irreplaceable loss of those nerve endings that recognize high frequency sounds. The ringing you hear in the ears is the brain looking for those missing nerves to send signals. (My interpretation). Nothing will stop it or improve on it. Recoil Rob is correct, Tinnitus and hearing loss is not related. I have both and so far have avoided hearing aids. But conversations with any background noise are very difficult. Just that friends who buy the high dollar aids say they really don�t help that much in those environments. Tv shows with action scenes or background noise, which most have, are very difficult for me. I do wear a wireless headset to hear them. I also lip read a lot as many people do anyhow.

That�s my interpretation too, Joe.

I can remember being a kid 12 to 16 years old, free to finally pursue small game with a shotgun, and marveling over how our ears rang after a box or so of shells chasing rabbits squirrels pheasants blackbirds whatever.

Now, half a century later, that I can�t hear as well, and I have constant ringing in my ears, disappoints me. It is my own fault.

I could have avoided all of it with any kind of reasonable hearing protection, and in my line of work, PPE for hearing loss has been available for the last 30 years. I just chose to use it less frequently than I should have, having spent my entire career in noisy places, papermills being the worst.

Now, wearing independently adjustable pro ears headphones, I can hear the whistle of a Woodcock�s wings, the gabbling of a flock of mallards, the whistle of a Drake, and the bell stopping five seconds before my Astro alerts my watch.

So I�m making up with technology what I wasted in my wayward youth.

I am 79 years old and I began to have Tinnitus in my late 30's and by 10 years later it was terrible and constant 24 hours/day and remained that way until 3 years ago when an event occurred that reduced the ringing in my ears to almost nil--I would say it is about 5% at most of what I had in the past. When the event occurred it was so painful to me that I thought my hearing was completely damaged beyond ever returning--I had pain and a headache for days afterward.

I was at the rifle range 3 years ago and was preparing to shoot under one of the roof covered shooting benches next to a long haired redneck that I had seen at the range before and decided upon observing him that I should try to avoid being around him. Just as I was setting up and standing next to him 3 feet away without any warning to the others (to install hearing protection) preparing to shoot (and to me), he fired off a round the blast of which caused extreme pain in both of my ears for nearly one-month during which time I was barely able to hear.

Slowly after that event my "ringing" began to lessen and my hearing began to return to what it was before the idiot violated the rules of the rifle range. Now some days I have Zero ringing noise in my ears and the other days nearly nothing. I can now hear frequencies that I could not for 40 years.

Joe, I cannot recommend anyone try what happened to me to delete Tinnitus, but in my case there was something that would stop it or improve it, that even my Doctor was amazed about.

Before this event I was nearly completely deaf in my right ear and only about 30-40 hearing in my left ear; and I am still the same in that regard.

Just saw an ad for a product called Calmer by Flare Audio, that comments suggested was helpful.

I try not to think of the ringing and sleep with a fan running even in the wintertime. Bobby