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tinnitus, aggravation, defocus and distraction

At around age 17, a loud explosion from a nearby firework left me temporarily deaf in my right ear. Hard of hearing for a day or so. Thereafter I had tinnitus for some time but it was never dreadful, it faded away, and I was not bothered by it for around twenty years.

At around age 38, my tinnitus flared up after a night out at a club. It was not unusual for me to have ringing in the ears after a night out but on this occasion, there was something differrent about the ringing, and it didn't fade away as much as usual.

Reflecting on the cause of the flare-up: I realised that I could go still to this club, and others, with makeshift earplugs (tissue paper, not recommended) and whilst the louder clubs caused no problem, something about the sound system in the *quieter* club continued to aggravate the tinnitus. Like there was a particular low frequency range that aggravated my high-frequency tinnitus.

After the flare-up: I found myself most aggravated by tinnitus whilst *driving*. Since then I drive a different car and I suspect that some (not necessarily the quieter cars) are less problematic. Again, maybe something to do with low frequencies.

Attempts to mask were a miserable failure. The required loudness was excessive; masking actually added to my problem. That said, those tests were around twenty years ago! I guess that techniques will be much better now.

The bright side: instead of masking, I discovered that *distracting* sounds can be a great help. For me:

• monotones such as hums and whistles are least effective;

• running water, the ocean and similar white noise might be relaxing, but it doesn't necessarily help my tinnitus;

• random noises, random frequencies are VERY helpful — particularly at bedtimes. Bird song is great. Twittering and squawks are best. This discovery was a very pleasant surprise.

For yourself, if you have tinnitus:

• experiment with different sounds at different times, the sounds that help may be the ones that you least expect;

• build yourself a playlist (iTunes, iPod, whatever) with various sounds and songs that you find helpful or distracting;

• set the playlist on random;

• if you can, start listening to your playlist before bedtime, before you start driving. Easier said than done —I rarely do this— but it does help.

In a nutshell: before the tinnitus intrudes on what you expect to be peaceful time, treat yourself to some pleasant distraction :-)

I do still have moments of frustration, and the frustration is no less desperate, but these moments are increasingly rare.

The less I think about tinnitus, the less it bothers me. Defocus and distraction are really very effective.

At I'm building my own collection of bookmarks that are useful to me. Within this collection I'll add some links to sounds (streaming MP3s etc.) that may help some listeners.

Graham Perrin's blog on Ourmedia

I was hoping that movies posted to Ourmedia (and/or the Internet Archive) would be playable without downloading.

Viewers must download movies, it seems.

I wonder whether Google video will be more suitable…

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