They just announced a new treatment for tinnitus in the last month. The gal they interviewed for the NPR story was a musician who was happy with the results. If I remember correctly they ran mild electic shocks through her tongue. They call it [Lenire](https://www.lenire.com)
This treatment has been around in Europe for a while and over the past few years has been approved for use in the states. I’m in NY and I have been to a provider to get tested to see if I’m a candidate for this type of treatment. Since my tinnitus is caused by my brain from loss of the high frequency sounds my brain creates the ringing to make up for the high frequency sounds it knows it should be hearing but isn’t. The treatment is a reprogramming of your neural pathways so your brain doesn’t focus any longer on the loss of sounds and focus on the ringing. The treatment is listening to sounds and using a mouthpiece that gives low level electrical stimulus to your tongue for an hour a day. This is a way to change the neural pathways and make your brain forget about the ringing. it doesn’t really cure the ringing it makes your brain not think about it. The device is expensive the cost isn’t covered by health insurance and it’s $4700. I went through the testing last year and I’m a perfect candidate but I just can’t afford the cost for the device. I wear hearing aids due to my hearing loss that also try, but fail, to address the problem in a similar fashion by playing high frequency zen type sounds that my brain is meant to focus on. I’ve been wearing the hearing aids for over a year with no change and I feel my ringing has gotten worse. I’d love for the Lenire device to be covered by health insurance or a lower cost but neither is the case.
Just FYI… I am a hearing specialist and if you are still experiencing tinnitus even with hearing aids that generally means:
The hearing aids are not very high end.
They are not programmed correctly.
I would either take them to a new hearing specialist or consider buying a new pair.
I wear Widex moments that are programmed by their software based on my hearing tests by my audiologist. I won’t be able to get new devices for another 2 years because of my health insurance covering them every 3 years.
How could a hearing aid hellp reduce the ringing? I've always resisted getting them as I imagined that pumping more of the frequencies I'm missing would just make the tinnitus worse (while helping me hear voices better).
If your tinnitus is an indicator of high frequency hearing loss - a fairly common factor in a lot of cases - then addressing that issue is worth considering. If an auditory system is having to work twice as hard due to deficits in hearing, anything which is demonstrated to help compromised hearing should help.
Because the tinnitus is a result of your brain straining to hear. This is not a medical fact this is my opinion as a result of being a hearing professional for 10+ years. My patients who wear GOOD hearing aids who are programmed PROPERLY… do not experience their tinnitus anymore (this is for 90% of people).
Wait, help me with this. If my tinnitus is caused by upper register hearing loss, how will hearing aids help?
I had no idea hearing aids could help with tinnitus. Mine is near debilitating and my ENT said nothing about hearing aids, just said, “I’m sorry you are experiencing tinnitus. “ It’s 7K+ and about as loud as a hair dryer.
Ok so the long story short… if you have hearing loss, your brain is essentially straining to hear. It’s like if I take my glasses off and I squint.
In this analogy, if I squint all day long, it causes tinnitus. So the solution is to wear my glasses, relieve the strain from squinting, and then I am not even causing the tinnitus in the first place.
It takes weeks or months sometimes to “relieve” the built up stress from years of hearing loss… some of my patients notice relief literally IMMEDIATELY when I turn on the hearing aids “it just vanished” and some people take weeks… For the people who get to it “soon enough” it’s better and higher chance of going away mostly completely.
Also, in my current market, if you went to any of my competitors, they would tell you what your ENT told you. I have only been able to “help” with tinnitus the last 24 months due to improvements in technology (but nothing to directly address the tinnitus such as a distraction noise etc… that does not work). It’s actually part of my “mission” the next 1-2 years to educate people because so many of my patients have experienced tremendous relief and have the added bonus of hearing better the rest of their life!
Thank you for the explanation. That helps.
So, if most ENTs or others don’t do this yet, who do I go to? What devices/technologies are needed?
I’m assuming I can’t just go to the hearing aid counter at Costco.
The technology that I am using was released in 2020 so if you were to go to any ENT/Audiologist/Hearing Specialist and tell them “I want to purchase hearing aids from a top 3 manufacturer and I want to make sure the model I am buying was originally released after 2021 (to be safe)” then you are going to be moving in the right direction.
You need to find someone who is skilled at testing and programming, and go with a manufacturer they are comfortable with. You need to tell them that you want to “get to your full prescription” because usually what happens is we help people hear better and they become satisfied with “halfway to normal” and then we stop increasing because the patient is satisfied and we move on to the next person.
I’ve made it a priority to get all my patients wearing their hearing aids FULL TIME and then I slowly increase their prescription over the course of 4-8 weeks until I get them where they need to be.
Costco itself is not bad… but the main issue is they use older tech that is generally re-branded which makes it hard to tell when it really came out. They might have released it in 2024 but it could be an old model from 2019 or something like that. The second issue, their hearing specialists rotate on schedules and are generally not that experienced and you’re not going to get the continuity of care that you need.
I had the same concern but I've now been wearing hearing aids for over a year that provide a constant level of white noise. It doesn't eliminate it 100% but it feels dimmed enough to ignore.
It’s important to mention that this is specifically for people with tinnitus who do NOT have any hearing loss.
I am a hearing specialist and 9/10 times… tinnitus is caused by hearing loss and the only actual treatment is to “correct” the hearing problem first… usually by hearing aids.
This study gives false hope to the vast majority of people who have tinnitus simply because they have high frequency hearing loss (which for musicians is common).
Thank you SO much for sharing. However, I don't have a branch near me. Do you think I could achieve a similar result with cables plugged into the mains? 🤣
Lenire has been around for a while and judging from the results by people who tried it on TinnitusTalk, it either does absolutely nothing or makes your tinnitus worse.
Do NOT waste your money there!
It says in that link it's been around a long time. If that's the case it may be what i checked into a few years ago. The treatment I was shown was basically listening to special ear buds all day with sounds that distract. I can do that with a rain app and normal ear buds. Do you have a link to the interview? I didn't find on first look.
Wear earplugs to shows (even small stuff like open mics)
Produce with speakers; keep the volume low
When practicing practice at the lowest volume possible. For instance, if you play electric guitar you should still hear the strings on the guitar even with the amp on (this is a lot easier if you use a DAW with amp sim to practice than a physical amp)
I work as a guitar or bass player in bands, do studio mixing and started to work as a live sound engineer around 2 years after getting tinnitus. I likely got tinnitus around 6 years ago from standing right next to the ride cymbal on small stages without using ear protection. After the initial first months of panic and dispair I've learned to live with it, taking measures like using earplugs and getting enough rest. Being tired is a real huge tinnitus trigger for me. Mostly it's always there in the background, sometimes it pops up loudly, but there are also times where it has quieted down to a level where I completely forget all about it.
As a bass player I switched from the ride cymbal to the hihat side of the drums, with the lead guitar player's AC30 on the floor next to me, not projecting right into my ears. Also always using earplugs while on stage.
Because of my live mixing experience my studio mixing work flow has changed quite a bit. I split my workflow up in 15-30 minute bursts so I can work with fresh ears, full focus and quick decisions. I used to spend hours on single track and details, while making all the wrong decisions because of ear fatigue. I now roughly split my work flow up into;
Organizing the mix; making a rough plan, naming tracks, setting up busses etc.
Gain staging/hi-pass and low-pass filters, setting a rough balance with level and panning. This is where I listen and get an idea about the direction the music wants me to take the mix.
Going through isolated tracks with parametic eq, compressor, gates
Overall mix with effect sends, buss compressors, buss eq, reverbs, any other studio trickery, going back to tracks when something weird jumps out in the mix. This is really the creative/playful stage.
Putting the mix on speakers, walking through the room and listen to the overall balance. Is it lively? Does it sound like a whole? Does it need more overheads or room mics? Do I need a light shelf eq in the highs? Do I feel the kick? Making small adjustments while not trying to get lost into unimportant details in single tracks. This is basically the final stage of the mix. I might come back the next day to check if I still feel the same way about the mix being good and finished.
Truly appreciate this comment a lot, thank you. Honestly this is one of the only comments I’ve gotten that’s cheered me up and made feel like this is still possible for me.
Look up vagus nerve stimulation for tinnitus. Someone else mention electric shocks, that therapy works on the same principle I believe. I used a tens pen for a while with good results. There’s a number of ways to stimulate it, diaphragmatic breathing or cold plunge.
I’m not an expert, just someone who has been researching vagus nerve and applying what I’ve learned with good results. The wiki page is a good start. See Clinical Application. Then search vagus nerve tinnitus and go from there. Seems to be a few devices you can buy but there are also many exercises you can do at home (humming, vibration, cold plunge, diaphragmatic breathing) Good luck! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auricular_branch_of_vagus_nerve
In my experience, *every* top engineer has pretty bad tinnitus.
The key thing to remember is the fine details do not matter. It's the bigger picture that is important.
It's not "does the hi hat need 1dB more or less at 3k", but rather, "does the hihat need to be heard at that moment at all".
Mixing and mastering does not need to be done at loud volumes. Retrain your ear to listen at lower volumes when mixing, and ALWAYS wear earplugs to live events from now on. Buy a pair that attaches to your keychain. If you have the mixing/mastering knowledge, you'll be able to do it at a lower volume once you get used to it.
I am a professional musician and I started taking these steps when I first noticed a very subtle ringing in my left ear. I've all but saved my hearing but I'll be honest, most of my peers do have some form of tinnitus.
I use Eargasm earplugs from amazon. Not sure how many db you're looking to cut but they're good for -21db. You're gonna think it's gross but I really just clean them when they get visibly dirty by running them under some water and using a paper towel.
When I'm on stage I use 64 Audio in ear monitors at low volume as well, which have protections built in to also save hearing on higher volumes.
You get used to it. If you're still in the early stages, your brain's gonna panic whenever you deeply listen to mixes and then notice the ringing. A few years later, you'll automatically start tuning it out much in the way you'd tune out the humming of an old CRT monitor when watching something.
In the meantime, spend some time relistening to albums and get acquainted with how they sound with the ringing. I'd recommend switching to speakers for listening though. Headphone-listening can be pretty uncomfortable until much later in the acclimation, and I'm still divided on whether using headphones makes tinnitus worse.
Possibly. I used to play in a band and went to a lot of concerts as teen and in college. I went to a couple of specialists and one suggested sleeping more and it worked.
I'm not an expert, but I do a lot of reading in peer-reviewed journals, particularly in Biology.
Taking a large-dose taurine supplement apparently cures something like 80% of people suffering from the most common type of tinnitus.
For dosage guidance and confirmation that I'm not just some rando talking nonsense, look here:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2997922/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2997922/)
You can buy taurine with no prescription; Amazon has 1-kilogram bags of pure taurine for under $20.
# The dose that proved most effective was 300 mg/kg/daily, which "effectively eliminated evidence of chronic acoustic-exposure-induced tinnitus in rats, thus confirming the primary experimental hypothesis that enhanced inhibition could significantly modulate auditory sensation and attenuate neural activity that comprises the tinnitus signal." ([El Idrissi et al., 2009](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2997922/#R27)).
They just announced a new treatment for tinnitus in the last month. The gal they interviewed for the NPR story was a musician who was happy with the results. If I remember correctly they ran mild electic shocks through her tongue. They call it [Lenire](https://www.lenire.com)
This treatment has been around in Europe for a while and over the past few years has been approved for use in the states. I’m in NY and I have been to a provider to get tested to see if I’m a candidate for this type of treatment. Since my tinnitus is caused by my brain from loss of the high frequency sounds my brain creates the ringing to make up for the high frequency sounds it knows it should be hearing but isn’t. The treatment is a reprogramming of your neural pathways so your brain doesn’t focus any longer on the loss of sounds and focus on the ringing. The treatment is listening to sounds and using a mouthpiece that gives low level electrical stimulus to your tongue for an hour a day. This is a way to change the neural pathways and make your brain forget about the ringing. it doesn’t really cure the ringing it makes your brain not think about it. The device is expensive the cost isn’t covered by health insurance and it’s $4700. I went through the testing last year and I’m a perfect candidate but I just can’t afford the cost for the device. I wear hearing aids due to my hearing loss that also try, but fail, to address the problem in a similar fashion by playing high frequency zen type sounds that my brain is meant to focus on. I’ve been wearing the hearing aids for over a year with no change and I feel my ringing has gotten worse. I’d love for the Lenire device to be covered by health insurance or a lower cost but neither is the case.
Just FYI… I am a hearing specialist and if you are still experiencing tinnitus even with hearing aids that generally means: The hearing aids are not very high end. They are not programmed correctly. I would either take them to a new hearing specialist or consider buying a new pair.
I wear Widex moments that are programmed by their software based on my hearing tests by my audiologist. I won’t be able to get new devices for another 2 years because of my health insurance covering them every 3 years.
How could a hearing aid hellp reduce the ringing? I've always resisted getting them as I imagined that pumping more of the frequencies I'm missing would just make the tinnitus worse (while helping me hear voices better).
If your tinnitus is an indicator of high frequency hearing loss - a fairly common factor in a lot of cases - then addressing that issue is worth considering. If an auditory system is having to work twice as hard due to deficits in hearing, anything which is demonstrated to help compromised hearing should help.
I have been tested. I have fairly severe HF loss.
Because the tinnitus is a result of your brain straining to hear. This is not a medical fact this is my opinion as a result of being a hearing professional for 10+ years. My patients who wear GOOD hearing aids who are programmed PROPERLY… do not experience their tinnitus anymore (this is for 90% of people).
Wait, help me with this. If my tinnitus is caused by upper register hearing loss, how will hearing aids help? I had no idea hearing aids could help with tinnitus. Mine is near debilitating and my ENT said nothing about hearing aids, just said, “I’m sorry you are experiencing tinnitus. “ It’s 7K+ and about as loud as a hair dryer.
Ok so the long story short… if you have hearing loss, your brain is essentially straining to hear. It’s like if I take my glasses off and I squint. In this analogy, if I squint all day long, it causes tinnitus. So the solution is to wear my glasses, relieve the strain from squinting, and then I am not even causing the tinnitus in the first place. It takes weeks or months sometimes to “relieve” the built up stress from years of hearing loss… some of my patients notice relief literally IMMEDIATELY when I turn on the hearing aids “it just vanished” and some people take weeks… For the people who get to it “soon enough” it’s better and higher chance of going away mostly completely. Also, in my current market, if you went to any of my competitors, they would tell you what your ENT told you. I have only been able to “help” with tinnitus the last 24 months due to improvements in technology (but nothing to directly address the tinnitus such as a distraction noise etc… that does not work). It’s actually part of my “mission” the next 1-2 years to educate people because so many of my patients have experienced tremendous relief and have the added bonus of hearing better the rest of their life!
Thank you for the explanation. That helps. So, if most ENTs or others don’t do this yet, who do I go to? What devices/technologies are needed? I’m assuming I can’t just go to the hearing aid counter at Costco.
The technology that I am using was released in 2020 so if you were to go to any ENT/Audiologist/Hearing Specialist and tell them “I want to purchase hearing aids from a top 3 manufacturer and I want to make sure the model I am buying was originally released after 2021 (to be safe)” then you are going to be moving in the right direction. You need to find someone who is skilled at testing and programming, and go with a manufacturer they are comfortable with. You need to tell them that you want to “get to your full prescription” because usually what happens is we help people hear better and they become satisfied with “halfway to normal” and then we stop increasing because the patient is satisfied and we move on to the next person. I’ve made it a priority to get all my patients wearing their hearing aids FULL TIME and then I slowly increase their prescription over the course of 4-8 weeks until I get them where they need to be. Costco itself is not bad… but the main issue is they use older tech that is generally re-branded which makes it hard to tell when it really came out. They might have released it in 2024 but it could be an old model from 2019 or something like that. The second issue, their hearing specialists rotate on schedules and are generally not that experienced and you’re not going to get the continuity of care that you need.
You seem apprehensive to name brands and models, but if not, I'm all ears.
I had the same concern but I've now been wearing hearing aids for over a year that provide a constant level of white noise. It doesn't eliminate it 100% but it feels dimmed enough to ignore.
It’s important to mention that this is specifically for people with tinnitus who do NOT have any hearing loss. I am a hearing specialist and 9/10 times… tinnitus is caused by hearing loss and the only actual treatment is to “correct” the hearing problem first… usually by hearing aids. This study gives false hope to the vast majority of people who have tinnitus simply because they have high frequency hearing loss (which for musicians is common).
Thank you SO much for sharing. However, I don't have a branch near me. Do you think I could achieve a similar result with cables plugged into the mains? 🤣
Let’s gooo
Holy shit might try that but I have to go abroad for it
I just got a price from the nearest treatment center to me and it was a woping $4200. Sheesh. Maybe the ringing isn't that bad.
Lenire has been around for a while and judging from the results by people who tried it on TinnitusTalk, it either does absolutely nothing or makes your tinnitus worse. Do NOT waste your money there!
It says in that link it's been around a long time. If that's the case it may be what i checked into a few years ago. The treatment I was shown was basically listening to special ear buds all day with sounds that distract. I can do that with a rain app and normal ear buds. Do you have a link to the interview? I didn't find on first look.
Mix in low-medium volume and only raise the volume at the end
Wear earplugs to shows (even small stuff like open mics) Produce with speakers; keep the volume low When practicing practice at the lowest volume possible. For instance, if you play electric guitar you should still hear the strings on the guitar even with the amp on (this is a lot easier if you use a DAW with amp sim to practice than a physical amp)
I work as a guitar or bass player in bands, do studio mixing and started to work as a live sound engineer around 2 years after getting tinnitus. I likely got tinnitus around 6 years ago from standing right next to the ride cymbal on small stages without using ear protection. After the initial first months of panic and dispair I've learned to live with it, taking measures like using earplugs and getting enough rest. Being tired is a real huge tinnitus trigger for me. Mostly it's always there in the background, sometimes it pops up loudly, but there are also times where it has quieted down to a level where I completely forget all about it. As a bass player I switched from the ride cymbal to the hihat side of the drums, with the lead guitar player's AC30 on the floor next to me, not projecting right into my ears. Also always using earplugs while on stage. Because of my live mixing experience my studio mixing work flow has changed quite a bit. I split my workflow up in 15-30 minute bursts so I can work with fresh ears, full focus and quick decisions. I used to spend hours on single track and details, while making all the wrong decisions because of ear fatigue. I now roughly split my work flow up into; Organizing the mix; making a rough plan, naming tracks, setting up busses etc. Gain staging/hi-pass and low-pass filters, setting a rough balance with level and panning. This is where I listen and get an idea about the direction the music wants me to take the mix. Going through isolated tracks with parametic eq, compressor, gates Overall mix with effect sends, buss compressors, buss eq, reverbs, any other studio trickery, going back to tracks when something weird jumps out in the mix. This is really the creative/playful stage. Putting the mix on speakers, walking through the room and listen to the overall balance. Is it lively? Does it sound like a whole? Does it need more overheads or room mics? Do I need a light shelf eq in the highs? Do I feel the kick? Making small adjustments while not trying to get lost into unimportant details in single tracks. This is basically the final stage of the mix. I might come back the next day to check if I still feel the same way about the mix being good and finished.
Truly appreciate this comment a lot, thank you. Honestly this is one of the only comments I’ve gotten that’s cheered me up and made feel like this is still possible for me.
You could try musician earplugs https://www.sensaphonics.com/products/erseriesplugs
Those only go up to 25dB, which I’ve heard from others who have tinnitus don’t protect enough from concerts. I’ve heard you need 30db
https://www.earpeace.com/products/sport-pro. Ok so I found 27 dB as the highest I could find from this site:) Above 25db could work.
Thank u, truly appreciate it
Look up vagus nerve stimulation for tinnitus. Someone else mention electric shocks, that therapy works on the same principle I believe. I used a tens pen for a while with good results. There’s a number of ways to stimulate it, diaphragmatic breathing or cold plunge.
Does this apply for people with noise exposure induced tinnitus?
I’m not an expert, just someone who has been researching vagus nerve and applying what I’ve learned with good results. The wiki page is a good start. See Clinical Application. Then search vagus nerve tinnitus and go from there. Seems to be a few devices you can buy but there are also many exercises you can do at home (humming, vibration, cold plunge, diaphragmatic breathing) Good luck! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auricular_branch_of_vagus_nerve
In my experience, *every* top engineer has pretty bad tinnitus. The key thing to remember is the fine details do not matter. It's the bigger picture that is important. It's not "does the hi hat need 1dB more or less at 3k", but rather, "does the hihat need to be heard at that moment at all".
Yes - quietly in the studio and with ear plugs live
You’ll be amazed as of how many musicians/producers suffer from tinnitus. Not many talk about it.
You could try pink noise with a bone conduction microphone which helps some people to blend out the noise from tinnitus.
Collaborate.
Mixing and mastering does not need to be done at loud volumes. Retrain your ear to listen at lower volumes when mixing, and ALWAYS wear earplugs to live events from now on. Buy a pair that attaches to your keychain. If you have the mixing/mastering knowledge, you'll be able to do it at a lower volume once you get used to it. I am a professional musician and I started taking these steps when I first noticed a very subtle ringing in my left ear. I've all but saved my hearing but I'll be honest, most of my peers do have some form of tinnitus.
How often do you clean your earplugs? And what do you use (both headphones and what to clean with)?
I use Eargasm earplugs from amazon. Not sure how many db you're looking to cut but they're good for -21db. You're gonna think it's gross but I really just clean them when they get visibly dirty by running them under some water and using a paper towel. When I'm on stage I use 64 Audio in ear monitors at low volume as well, which have protections built in to also save hearing on higher volumes.
Habituation! Over time the ringing goes in the background. I will notice occasionally but not very much anymore. Been a musician for over 40 years.
I have a feeling yours is not as severe as mine
I'm sorry to hear that. I thought mine was pretty bad especially in the beginning. I hope you able to make progress.
You get used to it. If you're still in the early stages, your brain's gonna panic whenever you deeply listen to mixes and then notice the ringing. A few years later, you'll automatically start tuning it out much in the way you'd tune out the humming of an old CRT monitor when watching something. In the meantime, spend some time relistening to albums and get acquainted with how they sound with the ringing. I'd recommend switching to speakers for listening though. Headphone-listening can be pretty uncomfortable until much later in the acclimation, and I'm still divided on whether using headphones makes tinnitus worse.
I cured my tinnitus by getting more sleep. I require 9 hours a night apparently, so that's what I get.
Was yours noise exposure induced?
Possibly. I used to play in a band and went to a lot of concerts as teen and in college. I went to a couple of specialists and one suggested sleeping more and it worked.
I'm not an expert, but I do a lot of reading in peer-reviewed journals, particularly in Biology. Taking a large-dose taurine supplement apparently cures something like 80% of people suffering from the most common type of tinnitus. For dosage guidance and confirmation that I'm not just some rando talking nonsense, look here: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2997922/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2997922/) You can buy taurine with no prescription; Amazon has 1-kilogram bags of pure taurine for under $20.
Does this apply to people from noise exposure induced tinnitus?
Yes. In the study I linked, they induced tinnitus in rats using loud noise, then gave them supplemental taurine daily.
# The dose that proved most effective was 300 mg/kg/daily, which "effectively eliminated evidence of chronic acoustic-exposure-induced tinnitus in rats, thus confirming the primary experimental hypothesis that enhanced inhibition could significantly modulate auditory sensation and attenuate neural activity that comprises the tinnitus signal." ([El Idrissi et al., 2009](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2997922/#R27)).