Tinitus/hearing Loss
Join Date: Aug 2002
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Well I finally got my diagnosis! It is TMJ disfunction. Caused by a jaw clenching habit!
Doc is going to put me on "anti-anxiety" drugs to help me relax which is causing me concern in the class 1 medical departament!
Jimmydacraw
Doc is going to put me on "anti-anxiety" drugs to help me relax which is causing me concern in the class 1 medical departament!
Jimmydacraw
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Pressman,
I have moderately severe tinnitus (no idea where it came from) and an M.D.
Try to remember the old saying, "If it looks like a duck, and it walks like a duck, and it sounds like a duck... it's probably a quack!"
Sadly, no profession is immune from the predations of those who would exploit the innate human flaw that we are unable to tell truth from fantasy without careful measurement. Appeal to authority is no help when the authority is compromised by a conflict of interest.
When I find a cure for my tinnitus, I shall post it here. Every reasonable ENT specialist advises conservative treatment: masking, relaxation, ear training and the like. Occam's razor suggests that the reason behind this advice is simple: it's not that the medical profession is ignorant of a miracle cure or part of a conspiracy to suppress access to the same, but that no such treatment exists.
Here is a simple rule that can save you a great deal of unpleasantness: if a medical treatment is expensive and can be performed by only one practitioner - particularly because that person has developed a 'secret' method - it is a scam. There are exceptions to the rule but they require very hard data in support of them before they can be identified as exceptions.
Pilots know this. When one artificial horizon says you're flying upside-down and every other instrument including the windows says you're OK, you look for a piece of cardboard, don't you?
I have moderately severe tinnitus (no idea where it came from) and an M.D.
Try to remember the old saying, "If it looks like a duck, and it walks like a duck, and it sounds like a duck... it's probably a quack!"
Sadly, no profession is immune from the predations of those who would exploit the innate human flaw that we are unable to tell truth from fantasy without careful measurement. Appeal to authority is no help when the authority is compromised by a conflict of interest.
When I find a cure for my tinnitus, I shall post it here. Every reasonable ENT specialist advises conservative treatment: masking, relaxation, ear training and the like. Occam's razor suggests that the reason behind this advice is simple: it's not that the medical profession is ignorant of a miracle cure or part of a conspiracy to suppress access to the same, but that no such treatment exists.
Here is a simple rule that can save you a great deal of unpleasantness: if a medical treatment is expensive and can be performed by only one practitioner - particularly because that person has developed a 'secret' method - it is a scam. There are exceptions to the rule but they require very hard data in support of them before they can be identified as exceptions.
Pilots know this. When one artificial horizon says you're flying upside-down and every other instrument including the windows says you're OK, you look for a piece of cardboard, don't you?
Join Date: Dec 2003
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Don't get your hopes up on this one, maybe it's been debunked or maybe it's worth investigating:
I heard of a gadget designed to combat tinnitus that works by inserting a small transducer into the ear which contains an oscillator. The oscillator is adjusted and tuned to the same frequency as the tinnitus by the practitioner.
The concept behind the theory is sound - if you add 2 signals together that are identical in frequency and amplitude but differ sufficiently in terms of phase relationship you will get perfect cancellation, thus alleviating the high pitch drone.
I believe the theory would be very similar to noise cancelling headphones. Am not sure it would be useful in the cockpit, but it could be handy for sleeping etc.
Classic symptoms of TMJD here, glad I caught this thread, thanks!
I heard of a gadget designed to combat tinnitus that works by inserting a small transducer into the ear which contains an oscillator. The oscillator is adjusted and tuned to the same frequency as the tinnitus by the practitioner.
The concept behind the theory is sound - if you add 2 signals together that are identical in frequency and amplitude but differ sufficiently in terms of phase relationship you will get perfect cancellation, thus alleviating the high pitch drone.
I believe the theory would be very similar to noise cancelling headphones. Am not sure it would be useful in the cockpit, but it could be handy for sleeping etc.
Classic symptoms of TMJD here, glad I caught this thread, thanks!
Psychophysiological entity
The concept behind the theory is sound - if you add 2 signals together that are identical in frequency and amplitude but differ sufficiently in terms of phase relationship you will get perfect cancellation, thus alleviating the high pitch drone.
It is notoriously difficult to detect the tinnitus signal, and therefore impossible to initiate the feedback loop.
Join Date: May 2000
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Very interesting indeed, I am also suffering from quite severe tinnuitis and mild hearing loss in the left ear.
I was wondering if your audiogram is worse than required by JAR-FCL limits, would you loose your CLASS 1 Medical immediately, or is there an escape by doing a line check with a TRE or so in order to prove that you are not missing radio-calls....
How does it work, are there airman who fly with hearing aids and is it working??
Greetz, and Merry X-mass to all of you.
QTA
I was wondering if your audiogram is worse than required by JAR-FCL limits, would you loose your CLASS 1 Medical immediately, or is there an escape by doing a line check with a TRE or so in order to prove that you are not missing radio-calls....
How does it work, are there airman who fly with hearing aids and is it working??
Greetz, and Merry X-mass to all of you.
QTA
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Try this phrase in Google: tinnitus phase cancellation
It doesn't look as if an immediate panacea is on the horizon, as currently the only successful trials have ocurred in people with "fixed frequency" tinnitus, but future implementation of the technique may well lead to positive results in people with other variants of the condition.
Taken from a link Google came up with:
It doesn't look as if an immediate panacea is on the horizon, as currently the only successful trials have ocurred in people with "fixed frequency" tinnitus, but future implementation of the technique may well lead to positive results in people with other variants of the condition.
Taken from a link Google came up with:
During a preliminary experiment, our researcher subjected a tinnitus sufferer to a puretone which had previously been matched to the subject's Tinnitus frequency and intensity. The phase of the puretone was then adjusted over a -360 to +360 degree range. As the phase was adjusted, the subjects observed a beating phenomenon. This is the first time a mechanically induced auditory signal has ever been noted to interact with a phantom neurological signal (perceived Tinnitus) to produce a beat.
The first clinical research subjects to observe the beating phenomenon were licensed clinical audiologists that were also Tinnitus sufferers. The phenomenon was then observed in a number of regular clinical patients where the patient was subjected to a pitch shifting test. Subsequent work found that by fine-tuning the amplitude and frequency match, patients could reduce the perceived intensity of the beat. Hence patients are claiming partial cancellation of their perceived Tinnitus.
The first clinical research subjects to observe the beating phenomenon were licensed clinical audiologists that were also Tinnitus sufferers. The phenomenon was then observed in a number of regular clinical patients where the patient was subjected to a pitch shifting test. Subsequent work found that by fine-tuning the amplitude and frequency match, patients could reduce the perceived intensity of the beat. Hence patients are claiming partial cancellation of their perceived Tinnitus.
Psychophysiological entity
Very interesting...but. If the anti-phase signal is successful, and this is a big if, the target frequency range will be eliminated from the sufferer's hearing. To a pilot, this is not altogether a serious problem career-wise, because their main concern is reliable use of the radio, and in most tinnitus cases this will be ok.
However, there are many folk, like me, who value the upper tones while away from their noisy flying machines. I spent thousands of hours learning to play classical piano, and to my dismay found that the higher end frequencies were beginning to sound very wooden. On a happier note, (ouch) this was stable over the next 20 years, and I just had to learn to put up with it.
Strangely, I often make a comment about a soprano or mezzo soprano which is then substantiated by an accredited critic. I have no idea how I am able to make subjective judgements about sounds that the CAA say I should not be able to hear. The holographic modeling of hearing is fascinating, and I gather, at the limits of understanding.
Just a mention. One of the leaders in anti-phase sound processing was the electronics dept. at Essex Uni. Near Colchester. I went to see them c 1979 to see if there was a possibility of quieting the horrible noise in the turbo-prop that I was training a succession of new pilots on. At that stage they held out little hope of it working. After 800 hours of circuit and line, I was introduced to the whistle that I can here at this moment.
However, there are many folk, like me, who value the upper tones while away from their noisy flying machines. I spent thousands of hours learning to play classical piano, and to my dismay found that the higher end frequencies were beginning to sound very wooden. On a happier note, (ouch) this was stable over the next 20 years, and I just had to learn to put up with it.
Strangely, I often make a comment about a soprano or mezzo soprano which is then substantiated by an accredited critic. I have no idea how I am able to make subjective judgements about sounds that the CAA say I should not be able to hear. The holographic modeling of hearing is fascinating, and I gather, at the limits of understanding.
Just a mention. One of the leaders in anti-phase sound processing was the electronics dept. at Essex Uni. Near Colchester. I went to see them c 1979 to see if there was a possibility of quieting the horrible noise in the turbo-prop that I was training a succession of new pilots on. At that stage they held out little hope of it working. After 800 hours of circuit and line, I was introduced to the whistle that I can here at this moment.
Per Ardua ad Astraeus
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Loose - I cannot see this will be a problem for musical folk as the anti-phase signal is only anti-phase to a particular 'sound' at a 'tuned' frequency and should not affect 'random' ie musical notes - or have I misunderstood your concerns?
Psychophysiological entity
The complex nature of hearing has me baffled, so I’m clutching at straws here a bit. I agree that it would seem, that to cut out a very narrow frequency band would be analogous to zapping a small area of the retina with a laser, leaving almost all the field/range unaffected. I have a feeling that the loss to hearing would be a little more holistic in nature than a small glitch in a digital circuit.
Firstly, the eye, however miraculous, has a massive cluster of nerves leading to vast processing areas. Hearing however, seems to function more simply...until its true functionality is assessed. In short, it seems to perform its own miracles, but with less kit. One of the times that this is displayed, is when a person who has been blind from birth, and has only one functioning ear, can construct three dimensional models from this seemingly limited input.
At a more simple level, I am astonished by the improvement that I get by cupping my hand behind my ear when listening to hi-fi...it sounds a good as I can ever remember. What process is taking place I do not know; it isn’t just forcing more pressure waves into tunnel, that’s for sure.
I have a gut feeling that the only way forward–at least to good recovery from the tinnitus, will be to revive the compromised hairs/cells that are still recoverable. Anything else will be a compromise, and not just a gap in the hearing range, but a difficult to assess degrading of the whole holistic image that the brain constructs.
Firstly, the eye, however miraculous, has a massive cluster of nerves leading to vast processing areas. Hearing however, seems to function more simply...until its true functionality is assessed. In short, it seems to perform its own miracles, but with less kit. One of the times that this is displayed, is when a person who has been blind from birth, and has only one functioning ear, can construct three dimensional models from this seemingly limited input.
At a more simple level, I am astonished by the improvement that I get by cupping my hand behind my ear when listening to hi-fi...it sounds a good as I can ever remember. What process is taking place I do not know; it isn’t just forcing more pressure waves into tunnel, that’s for sure.
I have a gut feeling that the only way forward–at least to good recovery from the tinnitus, will be to revive the compromised hairs/cells that are still recoverable. Anything else will be a compromise, and not just a gap in the hearing range, but a difficult to assess degrading of the whole holistic image that the brain constructs.
Thread Starter
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Thanks for the millions of replies guys.
I suffer occasionally from tension in my neck - god knows why, think its something to do with my nervous system.
Anyone know if there could be a connection.
Cheers.
I suffer occasionally from tension in my neck - god knows why, think its something to do with my nervous system.
Anyone know if there could be a connection.
Cheers.
