Allergies in Life in General

I’m not totally sure, but I’m wondering if I’m close to solving a big part of my tinnitus.

So one of the things that makes my tinnitus worse is ear pressure. I frequently have pressure that just makes my baseline ringing seem so much louder (or maybe it actually is louder, I’m not sure). I attributed this to some sort of Eustachian tube problem, but I scheduled an appointment with an ENT a while back to sort this out.

Allergy Test

The ENT did notice some inflammation on my Eustachian tubes but didn’t see much else wrong so he suggested an allergy test. However the allergy test wasn’t covered by insurance (for some reason) and would have cost me $400. I passed.

But then I was at my PCP for an unrelated reason and mentioned how I skipped this allergy test and they said “oh your test would be covered here for sure, let’s get you scheduled” and sure enough he was right it was a $30 copay and took care of everything.

First of all, maybe my pain tolerance is low and I’m a little bitch, but that test HURT. Everyone said it wasn’t a big deal but god dang I felt like I was getting stabbed. Anyway

I lit up like a christmas tree. I was allergic to over half of the airborn stuff. I had a few food allergies but it wasn’t that bad. But yeah so clearly air quality is important. Now they told me I qualified for a immunization program to help deal with these allergies, but my insurance changed at the beginning of the year so now I have to wait for my new PCP appointment to bring it up again and see what they say.

In the meantime, I figure “okay let’s do what I can to reduce the allergens in the house.”

Now I’m not a gross person but I def don’t sweep and vacuum often enough. By the time I get around to it it’s like a lot so I said “okay now we start vacuuming at least a couple times a week and sweeping daily.

Roborock Vacuum

But to help out, I bought a new little sweeping/mopping robot and this thing is AWESOME. I was a little reluctant to buying a new one because we have a roomba already and it’s TERRIBLE. Don’t get me wrong, the dustbin was always full when it finished.... keyword “when”. Probably only finished a cleaning 20% of the time, the rest of the time it would get stuck on edges of carpets, shoes.. just anything. And it didn’t clean in a smart way, just kind of bumped around randomly hoping it would clean everything.

So the replacement I bought is a roborock qrevo pro and this thing is LEGIT. I did a lot of research and it seemed like roborock took a lot of the features they saved for their $1500 robots and added them to a budget one (budget meaning still over $600) and called it a “qrevo pro”. It’s amazing. Most of these robots have little mop pads they just kind of drag around but this one has two separate mop pads that spin and one of them can extend out into corners. I was still skeptical until I saw the dirty mop water… ewwwwww. Definitely must be getting something. Oh and it won’t mop rugs or carpet, it automatically detects them and lifts the mop pads away.

Also it takes care of it’s own self cleaning. Just keep the main dust bag and the clean/dirty water tanks maintained like once a week, and the robot will empty out and clean the mop pads all on its own. And since it maps out the house, it does an efficient route and cleans my living room and kitchen in about 30 minutes. I just set it to clean before I wake up so I can walk out to clean floors and the smell of pine sol. And while the app isn’t perfect, you can really customize what it does like how well it cleans, which rooms it cleans… etc. Anyway I really recommend one if you have $600 you don’t want.

Air purifier

So of course, like everyone else, I learned about air purifiers during covid. Everyone was freaking out about viruses in the air and figured these things would save them, and to an extent, they do help some with keeping the air cleaner but realistically there are better ways to stay safe and keep your air “virus-free”.

But I remember learning that you can just tape a nice HVAC filter to a cheap box fan and achieve a similar effect, because air purifiers are just fans and filters. So for a few years, I’ve had one but didn’t run it all the time because box fans are pretty loud even on the lowest setting. But I knew it was doing something because after 4-6 months there would be this dark circle on the filter where the fan was pulling air through.

Now during my recent tinnitus spike, I started running the fan 24/7. The sound helped a little but it’s too low frequency to cover up my ringing so I eventually started turning it back off.

But with this recent allergy discovery, I figure it was time to get it back out. But I’d always been interested in buying a real air purifier, so I started doing research and y’all… these heckin things are expensive! Like $150 for a cheap one, and $50 filter replacements 2-3 times per year. The nicer ones were in the $500 range. These are just fans and filters… how they heck are they that much?!

That’s when I ran across something called a corsi-rosenthal box. A couple of professors during the pandemic popularized this design of taking 4 20x20 HVAC filters and arranging them in a box and plopping a box fan on top. Similar to my “single filter taped to a fan” thing, but since it’s 4 filters you get much better airflow and more air cleaning. But the main issues?

1. You have to untape and disassemble it to change the filters
2. It’s noisier than an official air purifier
3. It’s ugly.

Well the ugly part didn’t bother me because it was gonna sit behind a couch but I didn’t want it to be too loud because while noises help with my tinnitus, it’s the wrong type of noise. So I decided to go the DIY route, but with a couple modifications.

1. I used 16x25 filters because it’s an identical filter surface area, but taller and skinnier for a smaller footprint.
2. I didn’t use tape, I used hot glue because tape has an odor and I’m trying to clean the air not add stuff to it haha.
3. I used 4 PC fans because they’re designed to move air through restrictive spaces (like heat sinks in a PC) but are very quiet.
4. I added some cheap fiberglass filters in front of the main filters to act as a “pre filter” that catches large stuff like hair that I can just vacuum off. That will help extend the main filters life.
5. I used foam to seal the fans to the filters so when I exchange the filters in the future, I can just lift the fans off instead of ripping glue off.

And that’s what I came up with. I’m pretty pleased with it! Some people on reddit are doubting how much air the PC fans will move compared to a box fan but I can feel they are pulling an insane amount of air through currently so I feel like I’m okay. As the filters age they restrict more flow so we’ll have to wait and see what things are like a few months from now.

Tinnitus Update

And let me tell you something. Ever since I started taking better care to clean the surfaces in house (even before the air purifier) I have noticed a big drop in pressure in my ears, and also a drop in my tinnitus levels. I find myself not even putting my hearing aids in for a while because I just forget.

Now don’t get it twisted, I still have ringing and still prefer wearing my hearing aids, but it’s so much better these days. so much more tolerable.