I had to find the source article. I was too fascinated.
https://thequietus.com/interviews/lola-de-la-mata-oceans-on-azimuth-tinnitus-interview/
this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2025
698 points (99.3% liked)
People Twitter
8725 readers
1072 users here now
People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
RULES:
- Mark NSFW content.
- No doxxing people.
- Must be a pic of the tweet or similar. No direct links to the tweet.
- No bullying or international politcs
- Be excellent to each other.
- Provide an archived link to the tweet (or similar) being shown if it's a major figure or a politician. Archive.is the best way.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Next time I'm gonna have to make the source thingy bigger. I put it up above. Not criticizing you, saying sorry that I wasn't more obvious with my thing and made you go lookin'. But it is a fascinating article
I saw it but I thought it was a link for the source for the tweet not the source for the original article. I wasn't motivated enough to check it because of my assumption.
I assumed the same 😂
Wait what? I can literally put my head to my kids ear and she can hear my tinnitus. How is this news?
Wait what??
So I guess me and my numerous old laptops have something in common
I've always learned it comes from damaged hair cells inside the ear, how could it be anything but physical? Very surprised it can be picked up with a microphone in an anechoic chamber though
It's called objective tinnitus. Tinnitus can have different causes, the damaged hair cells one is the most common.
I was with you until: "[...] but it can also be heard by the examiner (eg, by placing a stethoscope over the patient's external auditory canal)." and now I'm even more confused
The DC power supply inside your ears is only medium quality and so your preamp is prone to picking up coil whine.
how could it be anything but physical?
The sound? Well, ultimately sounds are just those hairs and your cochlea and eardrum and all that getting hit by vibrations in the air and sending signals to your brain which get interpreted; damage the equipment so it sends signals even when there's no vibrations in the air hitting it, and you have your non-physical sound. Same way phantom limb syndrome works.
However what if the damage doesn't cause signals in the absence of sound? What if tinnitus is actually the cochlea itself (or something/s in the apparatus anyway) physically vibrating and producing that whining sound? Like a mosquito's wings beating.
Makes sense, and I've also read it's very hard to study as well. Different causes with the same perceived sound sounds like a diagnostic nightmare
load more comments
(9 replies)
I have a kind of tinnitus that comes and goes based on how stressed out the tendons in my neck and jaw are, on one side, after a pretty serious physical injury.
I can basically massage away my tinnitus a good deal of the time, its only on the side that got fucked up.
Beyond that, I actually have exceptionally good hearing (for my age at least), and I often hear things other people don't even notice, yay autism!
Poorly shielded electronic devices go ~~BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT~~ EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Poorly shielded inductors in switch mode PSUs/old CRTs for me (Very common in older devices, low current causes the switching frequency to drop into the audible range.)
You can build your own tinnitus inducer with a cheapo 100kHz buck ic, put an air coil inductor on it, and then decrease the current until failure.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Here is an interview with her. She had it bad:
“I do have a chronic health condition, which made it difficult to pinpoint if it was that that was suddenly getting worse, or whether it was [the damage to the ear] that was causing neurological changes, but I literally couldn’t walk straight; I was having what looked like strokes where I would collapse.” A violinist, she was told by doctors to give up playing. When the COVID pandemic arrived a few months in, she was forced to shield because of ultimately false suspicions that she had MS. “I got really frustrated,” De La Mata says. “I wasn’t getting any of the answers I wanted. It was, ‘Your hearing is fine, you’re young, you’re healthy,’ and it’s like, well clearly I’m not if I can’t walk and people are feeding me.”
https://thequietus.com/interviews/lola-de-la-mata-oceans-on-azimuth-tinnitus-interview/
"you're young, you're healthy", and its like, well clearly I'm not if I can't walk and people are feeding me.
Yup, sounds like a doctor alright
I've had my own fair share of doctors not believing my struggles. Sometimes even directly getting in the way of medical help. And yes, it's incredibly unhelpful.
I spent 20 years trying to find a rheumatologist who would take my positive lupus test results, symptoms, extensive family history, and potential comorbidities seriously and give me a diagnosis and treatment. Nobody would listen until I was 23 because I was "too young." After 23, they started accusing me of just wanting medical marijuana.
At 27 I finally found a doctor that would take me seriously. We spent 2 hours going over the 15 years of medical records of mine that are accessible digitally, as well as some physical records from before that that my mother kept in a safe. The doctor ordered an absurd amount of tests and gave me a diagnosis when they all came back indicating that I, indeed, have lupus. She saw the same results in all of my records, too. I've tested positive and have had all of the other indicators my entire life. Like I am a textbook case of Systemic Lupus Erythematous that attacks the joints and connective tissue.
She started me on treatment and for the first time in my life, I'm not ruled by my pain and fatigue. I actually have a life now. I have started doing things that I've always dreamed of doing because now I can. I'm not chained to my bed anymore.
All of the doctors that refused to treat me despite positive test results and symptoms because I was "too young" or "just wanting marijuana" can rot in Hell. "Do not harm" my ass. I spent twenty years suffering, with multiple pediatricians and general practitioners sending me to every rheumatologist they knew of to try to get treatment for what they, non-specialists, believe I suffer from.
I drive two and a half hours one way every 6 months to see my rheumatologist and it's worth it because she gave me my life. I'd say she gave my life back to me, but I never had one to begin with. I'm actually living now. 20 years too late if you ask me, but better late than never.
load more comments
(2 replies)
A violinist, she was told by doctors to give up playing.
i've had doctors recommend similar. i've basically learned MDs gave up all their dreams and they expect us to do so as well
load more comments
(5 replies)
So its a real sound? Noise cancelling implants then?
i had decent pitch before my tinnitus, but it rings at a constant e8. now i have perfect pitch.
load more comments
(6 replies)
My tinnitus is at the very upper frequency range of my ability to hear, right around 13,000 Hz (I'm 60). Fortunately, I don't notice it except in a quiet room.
extremely dumb question, but would a very loud 13kHz sound kill the cochlear cells that detect that specific frequency?
now we're onto something. shoot that tinnitus dead with high frequency sound lasers
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
This was already known. Some forms of tinnitus are 'real'
This is the one thing I don’t like about some doctors and scientists: they think they know everything, and in doing so they become lazy and dismissive (or they only care about money and fame). They should always be curious, and always seek to find the next truth, no matter what the general consensus is in the community. Good on De La Mata for challenging the status quo.
that's a good philosophy in general. but I'm practice, it's hard.
for every million "that can't be" theories only a handful pan out. doing every "stupid" experiment is practically impossible.
This is literally an example of a scientist being curious about something they don't know and setting up an extremely far fetched experiment.
I got rid of my handheld game after I noticed my thumb was starting to twitch while I was at rest.
Apparently, the same thing can happen with ears.
view more: next ›