Originally published at: Apple Hearing Study Shares Early Findings on Tinnitus - TidBITS
Results from the crowd-sourced Apple Hearing Study shed light on the prevalence, causes, and impact of tinnitus, with over 160,000 participants sharing their experiences.
I’m one of the people who have tinnitus and participated in the study. In my case, it’s constant but high pitched tones (different in each ear) so it rarely interferes with hearing. So at this point I’m not doing anything about it. Interesting to see the results.
I am not part of the study, but have had Tinnitus for over 30 years. I noticed symptoms after having the flu or a virus. The sound is centralized, and more noticable in a quiet room. Wearing headphones or a cap that covers my ears does make it more noticable. I’ve been to ENTs, had hearing checked, and a visit to a Neurologist over the years, no cause or treatment for it could be determined. I usually sleep with a fan for white noise which helps significantly. Not sure I’ll ever find complete relief.
I have “enjoyed” tinnitus for probably 30 or more years. Fortunately, my brain tunes it out except when I think about it. It is fairly loud but usually is not a problem for me. Mine is a high frequency hiss, not a single tone. I would guess about 6 to 8 kHz but I’ve not measured it against a tone generator. Sure is a lot of phony stuff on The Internet about how to combat it but I’m sure doctors who treat sufferers are not hiding the real cure.
Mine is always in the background and I can hear it but have learned not to pay attention to it. When it first came on, it drove me crazy and I had difficulty sleeping. I have tried some of the noise generators that are supposed to help, but they just mask it a little. I am surprised that modern medicine has not come up with something to help, and I appreciate that Apple is exploring that area.
For me I found that if I cut off all caffeine, sugar and bread, it goes away (at least it did the time I tried this). But even a little bit of these brings it back and I don’t think I could stay away from all of that for something I don’t really pay attention to.
And I like my music “present”, but not loud. Maybe it was that one Led Zeppelin concert I went to as a teen. My ears rang for a day after. Or maybe the theater movie trailers and commercials are exacerbating it. I think the hardest thing about it for people is not knowing the variables that cause it.
There is some progress. Here’s a recent (paywalled) New Scientist article about it. Nothing you can go down to the drug store and buy yet, but people are working on the problem and making some progress.
That New Scientist article (behind a paywall?) is interesting because it talks about a loss of function of elements of the hearing system that respond to loud noises. This loss cannot be readily identified in normal hearing tests that measure frequency thresholds.
Anyway, hopefully new understanding and treatments will come from the research…
The NS article in Archive — A new understanding of tinnitus and deafness could help reverse both | New Scientist
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I’ve had it since 1988. Likely caused by migraine disease damaging the inner ear nerves (migraine is not a headache but a spectrum of neurological symptoms and a headache may or may not be one of them, it is inherited). It can be quite severe and tends to be worse in the evening before bed.
There have been some interesting tinnitus (pronounced tin-it-tus not tin-i-tus) treatments that have come out. One places a device on the tongue. Another on the wrist.
I had to retype the i in tin-i-tus 10 times to get it to be lower case. 
Here too! How do we stop autocorrect on Mac OS from this problem?
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