ear buds that don't fall out

[Catrin]

I have ringing in my ears, so unfortunately noise cancelling head phones only make me more aware of the squeel.

I would give almost anything if someone could quiet the ring.

Please?

Nothing helps I am afraid to say I WILL say, however, this. I've tinnitus related to nerve damage in both ears. For the past 18 years both of my ears have been making at least 3 different sounds for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. You DO adjust to it! Am I still aware of it? Yes. Does it drive me batty like it once did? Nope. It used to affect my sleep and I just hated it. My hearing is still good, as long as the sound isn't in the same register/range as the noise in my years. I have noted that if I get a head cold then the range/tone/loudness changes. I do get my hearing tested more often than some to keep an eye on my overall hearing.

If you find a way to quiet the ring please let me know, but I thought it might help to hear that eventually it becomes ignorable.

[OakLeaf]

As I understand it there are different hypotheses about tinnitus, and none of them have been proved, but one is that it's not the ear at all, it's the brain misinterpreting signals, and so you can train yourself not to have tinnitus.

I've actually had reasonable success with an app called Tinnitus Tamer. I do have to be diligent about using it, and it hasn't been a permanent cure, but when I devote the time (10 minutes a day) my tinnitus is much better and often absent. Basically it plays tones intermittently, and you set it up so that some of the tones are the same frequency as your tinnitus sounds, so it teaches you to distinguish between the tones and the silence in between.

Another hypothesis is that tinnitus is caused by inflammation, but no treatment I've tried that's targeted inflammation (acupuncture, herbs, pharmaceuticals) has helped at all.

[Catrin]

I am sure there are different causes, I remember several lengthy discussions with specialists when this all came up. Mine came from a VERY bad ear infection that caused nerve damage in both ears. That app sounds interesting.