if you don’t already have tinnitus, i really feel that you should actively be taking every possible precaution to not develop it. so here’s a couple of tips from someone who developed this awful (and, at the time of writing, incurable!) condition in his early teens:
always listen to music/audio at a reasonable volume. additionally, use over-ear headphones instead of earbuds whenever possible, preferably noise-cancelling ones as you won’t have to turn up the volume to drown out ambient sounds.
use earplugs when going to concerts/other loud places (cons, sport events, etc). if you’re worried about audio quality or not being able to hear people in a conversation, don’t be! many modern earplugs simply attenuate incoming sound without muffling it or otherwise deteriorating the sound (this is absolutely not an ad but Flare Audio’s Isolate is one example of earplugs that work like this). use of earplugs can in many cases result in an even better experience, as your ears will only perceive really loud audio as straight-up distortion anyway, a problem that earplugs fix quite effectively.
it’s also important to note that if anyone gives you shit for wearing earplugs, they are not your friend and you should absolutely not listen to anything they have to say (if you’re the kind of person who does this then please drop your address in my DMs so i can personally come punch you in the face, thanks!)
if you work in or otherwise frequent a noisy environment, try to find the time to give your ears some rest. just sitting/meditating in a quiet space on a somewhat regular basis is enough, and also has the added benefit of decreasing stress and anxiety, two other factors that can potentially lead to/worsen tinnitus.
this is all important because once you have tinnitus, it will not go away. while there are treatments that can help mitigate the symptoms or help you cope with them, there is no cure for tinnitus, and there is no guarantee that there ever will be.
i feel like i don’t need to put into words how detrimental it is to your overall quality of life to have a constant tone/noise playing in your ears, never being able to hear pure silence ever again.
if you’re curious about what it’s like for me specifically, go to this website, set the waveform to “sine”, put in 6800 hertz, drag the volume slider almost all the way to the left, then click play. this is approximately what i hear in my left ear constantly, even when there’s other sounds in the background. any everyday sounds in the same frequency range that i happen to hear also amplify this tone, so simply drowning it out is not an option.
please take care of your ears.
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