Diving Keeps Re-Aggravating my TINNITUS!!

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It played a masking noise customized to my own hearing loss along with a musical track. I had a complete remission of symptoms while using it. The second time around it has not helped.

I have tinnitus that seems to be related to exposure to active sonar when I was in the Navy. (As a sonar tech, I knew that we could not activate sonar when there were divers down; but I discovered that it can be just as painful from certain locations inside the ship). In my case, there is no detectable hearing loss, probably as an artifact of the testing method: a series of tones at different frequencies. If none of the tones used in the test happen to match the frequency of my tinnitus, any hearing loss at that frequency would not be detected.

I am glad this thread was revived, so that I know to be watchful for this once I get into going deeper than snorkel depth.
 
I have tinnitus that seems to be related to exposure to active sonar when I was in the Navy. (As a sonar tech, I knew that we could not activate sonar when there were divers down; but I discovered that it can be just as painful from certain locations inside the ship). In my case, there is no detectable hearing loss, probably as an artifact of the testing method: a series of tones at different frequencies. If none of the tones used in the test happen to match the frequency of my tinnitus, any hearing loss at that frequency would not be detected.

I am glad this thread was revived, so that I know to be watchful for this once I get into going deeper than snorkel depth.

Try not to think of it as painful. I've found acceptance of it being part of me, is more interesting. Sometimes I listen for the different buzz and tones and wonder why my left ear is more "interesting" than my right. Lol and yes, as soon as I read the word ",tinnitus" the tones do seem to ramp up. :p
 
Seeing as this thread has been raised from the dead, and certainly pops up when I search for more info on my own recent problem - I figure I'll add my voice to the noise. I first got tinnitus from a water skiing session in mid-winter (~5C air temp, 5C water temp) with no hood. Got back in to shore and noticed it. It got progressively worse for a few years then leveled off. Of course I had the usual student bouts of noise from music venues, but since I rarely went to such venues (couple of times a year, for 4 years) I'm not sure it's relevant.

Over the course of the next 8 years or so I suffered with varying degrees of it, and partial hearing loss (only high frequency loss, about 12KHz and above but this is never reflected in medical tests as they stop at 8KHz). This manifested in things like asymmetric hearing of rain/shower noise - quite off-putting. Simultaneously I was using otrivine and other nasal sprays to deal with chronic rhinitis issues (and then became dependent on it). In the last 18 months I saw an ENT specialist and he pulled me of the otrivine and put me on steroidal sprays and my tinnitus and hearing loss reduced by 90%, confirmed by auditory tests showing I actually have hearing that is significantly better than my age group across the board. He blamed my hearing loss on a swelling of my Eustachian tubes and said there was no underlying issue, just one of those things.

Then I went diving last month, for the first time in 2 years. 12C water temp, 15C air temp, 20m dive, no problems equalising, nice controlled dives with no buoyancy issues. Tinnitus back, loud enough to hear over people talking at times, but comes and goes in intensity and is now also responding to coffee intake which it never did.
 
I'm with @CrispyPancakes on this one. Since the thread was revived, I have a similar issue.

I have worked the "entertainment industry" for many years, and have (very) slight detectable loss in my left ear, but not the right, and have had tinnitus even before the slight loss in the left ear.

Diving can aggravate my tinnitus. But it does not seem to be depth related. One or two deep dives, no problem. A dozen shallow dives, the ringing goes on for a week. (That is, noticable ringing, beyond what I automatically tune out.)
 
I've got pretty severe tinnitus (from playing years in front of a full Marshall stack).
It is at its worse each day after I shower, it gets really really loud then.
I never noticed it after diving though.

Whatever you do, ignore it and don't try to think about it all that much, just accept it for what it is.
 
After 21 years in the Marines and 3 combat zones my tinnitus is bad. Even before 2 perforated drums. Anything from Sudafed to diving causes it to elevate. It's not in the ear so much as it is a product of a problem generated in the aural processing area of the brain. You just have to disregard it. That sounds easy to do but I've found little that will truly quiet it. My wife thinks I am not listening to her when I say "what?", When in fact I'm tuning out so it doesn't drive me crazy.
Good luck
 
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