It's a problem for many motorcycle riders as well. The suffer either during or after.

It is estimated that as many as 50 million people in the United States suffer from chronic tinnitus (lasting longer than six months) [1]; about a quarter of those have tinnitus that is severe enough to interfere with daily activities. Tinnitus is more common in men than women, and it becomes more common with aging [2,3].

TINNITUS CAUSES

Tinnitus is often caused by damage to the tiny hairs on auditory cells within the inner ear (figure 1). When the cells are damaged or stressed, they change the signal they send to the brain. Sometimes this produces a noise heard only by the patient. Damage to the hair cells can be a result of normal aging, or it can occur after exposure to very loud noise, certain medications, injury, or disease. Sometimes the damage is temporary but the noise is permanent.

there are a number of therapies suggested

http://www.uptodate.com/contents/tinnit ... the-basics

I run low level ocean waves, stream, forest sounds in the backround while I sleep ...not for tinitinitus but for deeper sleep without outside noises distracting ....earplugs at times but that can get too quiet tho the sleep is very deep.

This Amazon Playlist is very nice - many hours. Opens up the space I'm in when working and is masking for sleep.
https://music.amazon.com/playlists/B00R ... _wcp_af_ex

I have tried all that. Masking sounds dont work for me. I can various programmes through my hearing aids which are the latest on the market. I use my phone to control them.

I followed different therapies during the work group last year.

Scot Dutchy wrote:

crank wrote:

Scot Dutchy wrote:

crank wrote:I'm well over 50, and not only have the normal hearing loss of decrepitude, but tinnitus, there's cicadas going at it in my head every waking moment. So you lose some of the high end, it isn't like you've lost all hearing acuity because of that. That's one of the benefits of being a bass freak, you don't lose that side of the spectrum, the hairs are too robust to break off like the ones for the high-end. One other bright spot is that it's likely they'll be able to fix this before too long, we can join the growing ranks of the cyborg class.

A fellow sufferer.

I am over 65 and 40% deaf. My tinnitus is horrendous and also 24/7. I have usually two sounds at about 8000 hertz and 120 decibels when it is really rough. Pleasure in music listening has been taken away from me for years. My tinnitus has nothing to do with hairs but the receptors in my brain which are firing away on their own. If this will ever get fixed is highly improbable.
Anyway one plus point I dont have to worry about exotic sound systems which I was into back in the 70's.

We've discussed this before, but not about the receptors in the brain vs the cochlea hairs, I was wondering about why you said you were not a candidate for some kind of artificial hearing tech. Are the two sounds pure tones? If so, could you try to counter them with an out-of-phase real sound?

There is nothing. Believe me. I was with a work group last year. All had tried various technical options from masking to playing around with other sounds. It is not that simple but also very little research is being done. Not much money to made in curing tinnitus.

But that's got to be shortsighted, there are A LOT of tinnitus sufferers, and with the ubiquity of ear-bud wearers lately, there's an explosion of new sufferers looming.

No honestly. The amount of research is extremely low. If it was possible to develop a drug I think Big Pharma would be onto it like a shot but the reason for developing tinnitus and which part of the audio system is damaged we are still very much in the dark. My own condition is considered to be the result of a traumatic upbringing but for others it can also be the result a physical accident. There are just so many causes.
Psychiatry seams at present the best treatment. Learning how to cope is the only way now along with relaxation and sleeping drugs.
The team of psychologists and psychiatrists that I worked with last year and specially set up to study tinnitus would agree with you on the future of tinnitus sufferers. Those in car sound systems and clubs are going to result in a generation of deaf adults with singing in their ears.