Apple Hearing Study shares preliminary insights on tinnitus
The Apple Hearing Study, involving over 160,000 participants, found that 77.6% experienced tinnitus, primarily managed through noise machines and nature sounds, with noise trauma and stress as key contributors.
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The Apple Hearing Study, conducted in collaboration with the University of Michigan, has released preliminary findings on tinnitus, based on responses from over 160,000 participants. Tinnitus, characterized by the perception of sound without external stimuli, affects approximately 15% of participants daily. The study revealed that 77.6% of participants have experienced tinnitus at some point, with prevalence increasing with age; those aged 55 and older are three times more likely to experience it daily compared to younger individuals. The primary reported causes include noise trauma (20.3%) and stress (7.7%). Participants primarily manage their tinnitus through noise machines (28%), nature sounds (23.7%), and meditation (12.2%), while cognitive behavioral therapy is less commonly utilized. Most participants describe their tinnitus as a faint sound, with 14.7% experiencing it constantly. The study also highlights the importance of understanding tinnitus across different demographics to improve management strategies and inform future research on potential treatments. The data collected will contribute to broader public health initiatives, including sharing findings with the World Health Organization.
- The Apple Hearing Study involved over 160,000 participants to understand tinnitus.
- 77.6% of participants reported experiencing tinnitus, with higher prevalence in older adults.
- Common management strategies include noise machines and nature sounds.
- Noise trauma and stress are significant contributors to tinnitus.
- The study aims to enhance understanding and management of tinnitus across demographics.
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23 commentsAirPods Pro 2 adds 'clinical grade' hearing aid feature
It turned out to be caused by an improperly filled root canal; some root material remained inside the tooth, the flesh above and around the tooth was inflamed and this was applying pressure inside the skull and bringing tissues which would otherwise not have been into contact, or firmer contact.
I had the root canal re-made, and the tinnitus ended.
- First make sure that the frequency is not dancing around. If it is then probably it is one of those things your brain making up then it is relatively easier to fool yourself back again. Check it when it happens https://audionotch.com/app/tune/ (disclaimer I am not related to website, just first google result).
- If it is constant then try to counter it with noise especially when trying to sleep. Just give yourself one of those nice YouTube colored-noise videos like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SHf6wmX5MU
- Avoid in-ears altogether, especially the bass-boost ones make sure that it does not fit airtight. More bass does not mean you pulsate your ear-canal with an airgun. If you want proper bass sound, invest in hi-fi stereo and listen to it in a good room.
- As mentioned, distract yourself. Even if it is chronic and actually has a pathological cause, the brain finds a way to cope with it, like the glasses on your nose not noticing the weight.
At glance, again I don't see mention about that in this article. Apple has accelerometers on AirPods Pro, I hope they incorporate head position into the study.
Nothing helped until I got serious into fixing my posture. Now it's almost cured.
The AirPod Pro Max also get too loud, they are ok at low to mid volumes, high volumes = extreme tinnitus.
HomePods are similar, I can only have them on at volume levels I appreciate for short periods of time or I get tinnitus.
Compare this with my old sennheisers and audeze headphones, 0 tinnitus even at extreme volumes. Similar for my in ear Mochi headphones.
Or compare the HomePods to my Panasonic Surround Sound Speakers for my TV from 12 years ago that I still use, I can make the walls shake with no tinnitus. If I turn up my homepods to a volume close to that my ears will be ringing for hours or days after. It really bums me out, I wish I understood what is changing about the technology. Like are they going from Analog to Digital and is digital more harsh or something? I don't know.
Its an analoge but digitally programmable hearing aid which needs to be replaced every 3-4 months or so.
It's so subtle that I don't really notice it in my day to day life, and with corrective lenses I experience almost no vision problems.
But God damn it, there was this one ophthalmologist I had. He became convinced that I was at high risk for glaucoma and kept subjecting me to visual field tests to assess my peripheral vision. The machine he used for such tests was so ancient it still took 5 1/4" floppy disks, and it worked by shining lights of various brightness onto a plain canvas. You were supposed to stare at a point and click a button held in the hand (like a Jeopardy! buzzer) when you saw one of these lights.
Well, this exercise presents pretty much the exact conditions for my visual snow to put me at a disadvantage, and that meant I had bizarre, inconsistent test results with strange gaps in my visual field. Of course, that only further convinced my ophthalmologist that I was a glaucoma risk, and when I told him about the visual snow, he just looked at me like I was from space and ordered more tests.
I was so glad to find a nice, 34-year-old ophthalmologist some years later who used the air puff machine during the standard eye exam to measure eyeball pressure and found I was nowhere near having glaucoma. No visual field tests, no visual snow confounding the results.
But at night it's a completely different story. With a quiet house and nothing to distract, it was causing a huge problem in my ability to get rest.
The solution was to play Spotify all night long at a low volume. The music keeps the ringing to a minimum. The genre of music doesn't really seem to matter. It all works.
Supposedly the mind doesn't think while humming, at least the inner monologue tends to cease, similar to meditation, and both can be used simultaneously:
https://www.livestrong.com/article/13771650-bhramari-benefit...
I find that even the act of beginning to hum, by tensing my throat without making a sound, quiets my thoughts.
Some other things you might try:
* tapping practice of the fingertips on temples, eyebrows, shoulders, etc for anxiety relief.
* consciousness brain hemisphere shifting (don't know the name), where you cross your eyes slightly to look at two different images, then concentrate on bringing one image to your attention and then the other, causing focus to move between hemispheres. doing this while meditating on difficult thoughts can help the non-dominant hemisphere solve the problem.
* head to toe relaxation: start with the top of your head and scan down your body, identifying any tense muscles and relaxing them, until fully relaxed. so real the forehead, drop the tongue from the top of the mouth, relax into the chair, etc.
Then COVID did some sh*t to my sinuses which left them changed.
Now I have relatively low tinnitus in one ear and very noticeable tinnitus in the other ear. The pitch is high... reminiscent to the squeal that an old CRT or tube TV would make if it had no signal.
The tinnitus is some function of my blood circulation, because I can clearly hear my pulse in the worst ear... just this constant pulsing squeal. On occasion it is so loud that I wonder if my head is about to blow open. Blood pressure is good when tested though.
Who knows... that's all so complex and interconnected, and then there's the possibility that some of it is imagined or phantom.
2. What tone or tones are typical? What frequency or frequencies? Sine wave? Sawtooth?
3. Can anything shift the tone? Eg, drugs? Attention?
they think airpods cause tinnitus? eh
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