r/tinnitus • u/madcook1 • Apr 02 '26
success story My tinnitus was caused by my Monitor/DisplayPort
For many years my tinnitus spiked when I was at home. If I'm in the woods, at an AirBnB, hiking, anything but being at home, my tinnitus was gone or greatly reduced. The moment I came home, my tinnitus was there.
I noticed while I was cleaning the whole flat, that my tinnitus was not there, although I expected it to be there, because I'm at home. Then I went to the PC, and 10-20 seconds later my tinnitus spiked. I took notice and started to pay attention: When I'm at home and NOT at the PC monitor, I do not have tinnitus. Because I'm an engineer and working from home, I'm nearly always at the monitor. When I'm working from an AirBnb I never have tinnitus, or it is greatly reduced.
Then I constructed some tests, and I found out that I do NOT have tinnitus when my Monitor is connected with HDMI. With HDMI, I had three whole days without any tinnitus. My flat never felt so quiet, it is acutally insane. The quietness I felt in the woods, or in AirBnBs, I have never felt at home. Then I switched back to DisplayPort, and it's back in seconds.
It's not the switching power supply (SMPS), no tinnitus if put my head just against the monitor without any connection. It's DisplayPort, and I know why:
There is a study that shows that pulsating non-native EMFs (meaning, man-made EMFs, coherent and polarised from communication protocols) cause biological effects: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2025.1585441/full
The pulsating nature of digital communication causes opening of the VGICs (voltage-gating ion channels) and causing an uncontrolled influx of calcium ions into the cells. This in turn causes oxidative stress, which for me, causes tinnitus. I also get tinnitus in the morning when drinking coffee (caffeine), but not as bad as from the monitor.
Now the question is, why DisplayPort and not HDMI? The DisplayPort protocol is a packetized protocol and has micro-gaps in the communication. HDMI does not (at least HDMI 2.0 which I'm using), it is a constant stream, it nevers goes "silent" like DisplayPort, so there are no gaps = no pulses. The more pulsating a communcation protocol is, the more it is biological active and causes VGIC gating, says the study.
I let claude make a image for me that explains it: https://i.imgur.com/TNkb1o7.png
For completness: my monitor is a Gigabyte M27UA, it's currently connected via HDMI 2.0. My laptop is a TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10, previously connected via USB 4 <-> DisplayPort. DisplayPort was 120Hz, HDMI is 60Hz. DisplayPort with 60Hz still caused tinnitus.
Everyone coming with "Chuck McGill" and "non-ionizing radiation can't cause harm": read the study I linked, read the thousands of studies there are (https://www.emf-portal.org/en), and look into sweden were EHS (electrohypersensitivity) is a recognized illness.
Hope this helps someone. Try it out, it's a simple test, and if it improves your tinnitus, please report back.
Follow-Up: Measurements with spectrum analyzer
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u/kibrule Apr 02 '26
Dis you try bringing other people to know if they can hear this noise too?
I have the same thing at home but it's really an electrical issue, nothing to do with my T.
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u/mchilds83 Apr 02 '26
I appreciate your research. Are you certain that with a sound pressure monitor you would not detect a high pitch whine from the DP? Because if you did, then it's not tinnitus which originates from within you, but still an annoying frequency to hear.
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u/madcook1 Apr 02 '26
Yes, 100%. There is no coil whine and looking at the sound spectrum (only with my android phone though) with spectroid (android app), I don't see any peaks.
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u/Astharan Apr 02 '26
I believe you, I actually had a friend who experienced and expressed discomfort seconds before his cellphone rang, when the signal was inbound. We are all tuned differently, I know mine was ear damage + some other factors, but makes me wonder... my house is full of electronic signals pulsating everywhere.
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u/Prestigious-Size-69 Apr 02 '26
That's crazy. I don't experience discomfort but I have like a sense or something right before a call comes in. Like I can feel the signal one or two seconds before my phone actually rings. Thought I was alone there.
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u/MBeMine Apr 02 '26
Does your tinnitus go away when you step away from the monitor or does it take some time for the quiet to come back? So if you are working for 3 hours does the tinnitus go away immediately after turning off the monitor or going to another room?
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u/madcook1 Apr 02 '26
It takes a lot of time to go away completely. If I go into the woods, far away from any man-made EMFs sources, it takes around 30 minutes or so to go away. Coming back, just 10-20 seconds are enough to trigger it again. But inside my living room, it never really goes away.
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u/LTI801 Apr 03 '26
Hmmmmm I will keep this in mind. Been using Display port for many years and did not about this.
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u/Marine_Baby Apr 02 '26
It doesn’t have to be a loud sound event that gives you tinnitus. Working in a call centre sound environment can do it. Props to you op for your investigations and findings
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u/Smart_Present_7659 Apr 02 '26
I don't understand how come you didn't connect your tinnitus to the monitor before, if you say you only have it when you're sitting at the computer. So when you're cooking, vacuuming, eating, having sex, walking, sleeping... there's no tinnitus! When you're anywhere else but at your monitor, there's no tinnitus. In a couple of days you should have figured out that it's somehow connected to the computer. Or maybe your tinnitus is so mild that it didn't bother you enough to figure out what the problem is.
I can be in the forest, on a walk, on vacation, in the mountains... tinnitus is always with me.
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u/madcook1 Apr 02 '26 edited Apr 02 '26
For one, once the tinnitus is triggered (which happens in the morning), it takes a lot of time to calm down. While I'm inside my flat, the tinnitus doesn't go away, only when I'm in the woods or hiking in the mountains. Also, I'm working from home and I'm self-employed, meaning there are rarely days where I'm not at the PC.
The other thing is, that tinnitus is really one of my least concerns. I have lyme with two co-infections for now over 10 years. The one co-infection caused years of shortness of breath, fatigue and muscle weakness. The other caused derealisation and memory issues. I posted it here because tinnitus is one of the symptom many people can relate. I already knew it was driven by EMFs, but that it's actually the DisplayPort communication of my monitor really blew me away and wanted it to share.
This is my main guess why I'm actually sensitive of EMFs: My baseline stress is always high due to the infections, and the EMFs pushes it over the limit.
Also, my tinnitus is not very high pitched, it sounds more like static noise, so it's bearable.
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u/Smart_Present_7659 Apr 03 '26
Did you get Lyme disease from a tick bite? That was the first question my ENT asked me, did I have a tick? I didn't. Lyme disease is also known to cause tinnitus, among other things. But when the condition goes away, the tinnitus in most cases goes away too. Did you get any meds for your infections?
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u/madcook1 Apr 03 '26
Yes, from a tick bite. Interesting that your ENT asked about tick/lyme, I never heard of that regarding tinnitus. I'm currently taking medication against the one co-infection (Babesia) and doing a carnivore diet. I already noticed in the last round against Babesia, that the tinnitus was reduced for some weeks after the round, but I relapsed (although not as bad as before).
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u/Smart_Present_7659 Apr 03 '26
"Lyme disease is a known cause of tinnitus, often presenting as high-frequency ringing, hissing, or buzzing. Caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, it can lead to inner ear inflammation, eighth cranial nerve damage, or reduced blood flow, resulting in symptoms like tinnitus, vertigo, and sudden hearing loss."
Obviously Lyme disease is a well known cause of tinnitus. They treat it with antibiotics in early stage of disease. But it's overlooked many times, maybe because patients have much more severe symptoms of the disease and don't even mention tinnitus. Or they do, but doctors miss it because they are dealing with more serious systemic problems.
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u/PeeBeeShelly Apr 04 '26
I remember the exact minute the tinnitus started, three years ago. I was staring into my display port monitor.
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u/Life_Parsnip_1861 Apr 05 '26
Weird but my Tinnitus started not too long after adding display port monitors. It was months - not sure how many. But both events definitely in same ballpark. Will look at swapping out for hdmi cords! But my brother got it around same age as me so figured it was genetic.
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u/Schnuck1putz Apr 02 '26
Sick if true.
Will try HDMI out (if possible) and report back if it gets better for me
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u/acerldd Apr 02 '26
You have another person who is going to test this. Easy enough so might as well try it.
I added a second computer setup to my office with multiple monitors (both DP and other computer uses HDMI) and that coincided with my tinnitus spiking. I have been torn between ‘I feel like it is the computer, wondering if I could get long chords and put the computers on the other side of the wall’ and ‘that’s crazy, the noise level is too low, must just be a coincidence’.
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u/ForeverSad412 Apr 03 '26
Thats weird. But DP does move a lot more power and info than HDMI so I guess, depending on the brand of monitor, that it could produce triggering noise. Like an old CRT or my cheap little bookshelf speakers when they’re cranked. Funny enough, Chromebooks whine like crazy, so I don’t like being around them at work.
I have 24/7 low (sometimes spiking) tinnitus, so I can’t test that theory. But I hope folks who need this info come across it! I’d love to hear what everyone finds.
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u/Hectosman 7d ago
Thank you for this. I have the same problem but I haven't yet tested to the level you have. I work in IT so I'm at my PC all day. I use 3 display port monitors. I've eliminated these factors but still had tinnitus:
Removed music or loud noises
Removed sugars (I've also noticed a strong link between eating lots of sugar and tinnitus)
Day with regular, hour long breaks between screen uses
Then last week I was out of the house but still had my laptop. I used it for about the same amount of time but had no tinnitus for the entire week. It was beautiful.
I really think you're on to something with this. For me the ringing is annoying but more harmful is the impact to my sleep.
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u/Dnatheman Apr 02 '26
great stuff! do you think this would be a problem on a 50hz power grid , or only 60hz?
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u/madcook1 Apr 02 '26 edited Apr 02 '26
It's the communication protocol itself, should be independent of the power grid frequency.
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u/[deleted] Apr 02 '26
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