I remember reading somewhere a Doctor found a way to 'cure' ringing in the ears temporarily for almost a year in some people by doing something with a tuning-fork.
But after that article I heard nothing more. I just looked it up and seems it may not be a reliable method.
I can play a pure sine wave tone with a tone generator app, and dial the frequency up until it precisely matches my tinnitus. I originally did this just to determine that frequency.
But I noticed a side-effect: if I then turn off the tone generator, my tinnitus would disappear! Unfortunately that effect only lasts for a minute or less, so it is not really practical to get relief this way.
That's called "residual inhibition".
Note that I would be careful about using pure tones for too long. Pure tones end up focusing the energy in your cochlea towards a small area of hair cells. Since these cells don't regenerate, it may be wise to avoid overstressing them.
Thanks! I didn't know it was a known phenomenon. Now I know what to google.
My tinnitus is fortunately not super loud; it's only noticeable when it's relatively quiet, or I'm blocking sounds (with ear plugs, or noise cancelling headphones without input, etc.). So it's not like I habitually blast my ears with loud sine waves out of desperation. But I can imagine it may be different for other readers, so that's a good caveat.
That is fascinating.
I have a coworker that swears by certain sound baths to remedy his tinnitus. It “cures” him for 10-12 months and then he just goes back.
Don't know about the tuning fork one, but there is a method where by if you poke some muscle on the back of your neck repeatedly, it stops for some people. This is apparently due to that muscle being the thing that makes a noise, and poking it eventually physically exhausts it temporarily. Obviously that only works if that's your cause.
Masseter and suboccipital muscle massage that I read about on Reddit of all places instantly reduced my subjective tinnitus by maybe 90% about five years ago. It's not permanent but lasts months and has worked for me for years. I now need near total silence to hear the tone, and it completely resolved the condition as a daily problem for me.
I vaguely recall that tuning fork remedy as well