Opera tinnitus

[beeps1410]

I hesitate to ask about this for fear everyone will think I am crazy!  And, maybe I am.  I have almost constant tinnitus which sounds like male opera singers.  No, I am not kidding!  Occasionally, it changes to a clicking sound.  I do like opera, but not all day and all night.  I am 75 years old and have worn hearing aids for about 10 years, and they have been of no help for the tinnitus.  I have had many ear infections throughout my life, and my 46 year old son is already wearing them.  I have taken 100 mg of Zoloft for about 15 years and 1 mg of lorazapam at night for about 15 years.  I had a high-stress job until I retired 11 years ago, and the lorazapam literally saved my sanity, and I have not needed to increase the dosage so I continue to take it.  I love music and have always listened to it for hours at a time at a relatively high volume. I believe the combination of ear infections, medications and loud music have contributed to my hearing loss and tinnitus, but why the opera?????

[ArcticShivers]

Hm. I'm presuming that this problem is something that you experience even when you take your hearing aids out. However, do you notice any pattern to the tinnitus? For instance, if you wake up, put in your aids, and the ringing is mild or nonexistant; but worsens as the day progresses, there may be a small imbalance in your hearing aids.

[beeps1410]

Thank you for your response.  Yes, the tinnitus is much worse at night - especially after I go to bed.  I am seeing my audiologist on the 26th and will ask her if the hearing aids could have anything to do with the tinnitus.                                                                                                                                                                                                            

[Nancy T]

I think there is something called musical hallucinations. Search on that and see what you find.

[beeps1410]

Thanks very much.  I googled "musical hallucinations" and found lots of information.  I am not crazy after all....just old, hearing-impaired and probably have a few kinks in my brain.  I bought a Conair sound therapy machine.  I focus on that (the running stream setting), and it does help when trying to fall asleep.

[margypops]

I wondered if the sound therapy machines worked for anyone , I have been doing visualisation to fall asleep I imagine a nice desert Island with Sand and the Ocean, only works if I am relaxed though ,,if my little Pea Brain gets active I am done for and have to put the Old TV on for an hour.I get Tinnitus in the mornings when I wake they are low sounding with a whooshing noise!!   I think its me who has a few Kinks LOL

[Nancy T]

As my neurologist used to say, "The brain is a strange thing!" :)

Neuroscience is finding and describing absolutely astounding things about the brain. Tinnitus and various types of hallucinations are just part of an unbelievably huge range of odd things that can go on in our brain due to disease, age, injury, and simply individual variations.

For example, I have just been comparing notes on synesthesia with my co-workers and family. I recently found out I have number-form synesthesia, in which I see (and have seen, since childhood) the number line, centuries and decades, the months of the year, and the days of the week in specific, fixed spatial locations. Most people don't do this (which I was very surprised to find out--I'd always assumed everyone saw numbers, etc. the same way I do, because that's the way they ARE).

One brother and a sister-in-law see only months in specific spatial locations, but none of my other close relatives have any form of synethesia. Why MY brain? Who knows?

One of my co-workers has an odd form of synesthesia in which she will get a sudden feeling of an object, such as a book or dish, as having a particular age, gender, and mood (say, a dish appears to her to be an angry teenage girl). And this woman isn't crazy.

So... NOW do you think that hearing opera is all that strange? :)

Nancy T.

[beeps1410]

Hey, I'm really getting an education here.  Nancy's mentioning the possibility of injury being involved rang a bell with me.  I have hit my head on an oak table, cement (twice) and gravel - all pretty hard falls.  Maybe I scrambled my brains in those falls.  

Indeed the brain is a strange and complicated thing.  I read yesterday that 41% of a group in a research project in musical hallucinations had OCD, which I don't believe I have.

Margy - visualization doesn't work for me - my mind just flips to something else.  That whooshing sound you hear in the morning is the ocean you visualized from the night before. Just kiddin'.

Sounds like I am just one of millions of people who have brain oddities.  Guess I should be thankful it is opera and not blue grass - which I don't like.