The Ultimate Checklist to Tackle Tinnitus
Over 45 million people in US are impacted by tinnitus according to the National Tinnitus Association. If you have it, don’t worry you are not alone. There is no cure, and it’s not absolutely obvious why some people get tinnitus. Discovering ways to manage it is the secret to living with it, for most. An excellent place to begin to tackle tinnitus is the ultimate checklist.
Understanding Tinnitus
About one in five people are living everyday hearing sounds that no one else can hear because they have tinnitus. Medically, tinnitus is defined as the perception of a phantom sound caused by an inherent medical issue. It’s not an illness of itself, but a symptom, in other words.
Hearing loss is the most common reason people develop tinnitus. Think of it as the brain’s method of filling in some gaps. Your brain makes the decision as to what it needs to know after interpreting the sound it hears. For example, your someone talking to you is only sound waves until the inner ear converts them into electrical signals. The electrical signals are translated into words you can comprehend by the brain.
You don’t actually “hear” all the sound that is around you. The brain filters out the noise it doesn’t think is important to you. You might not hear the wind blowing, for instance. Because it’s not important, the brain masks the sound of it as it passes by your ears even though you can feel it. If you were able to listen to every sound, it would be both distracting and confusing.
When someone develops certain kinds of hearing loss, there are less electrical impulses for the brain to interpret. The brain waits for them, but due to damage in the inner ear, they never arrive. When that happens, the brain may try to produce a sound of its own to fill that space.
Some Sounds tinnitus sufferers hear are:
- Ringing
- Clicking
- Roaring
- Hissing
- Buzzing
It may be a soft, loud, low pitched, or high pitched phantom sound.
There are other reasons besides loss of hearing you could have tinnitus. Here are some other potential causes:
- Loud noises around you
- Meniere’s disease
- Malformed capillaries
- Head injury
- Poor blood flow in the neck
- TMJ disorder
- Tumor in the head or neck
- Acoustic neuroma
- Atherosclerosis
- Medication
- High blood pressure
- Ear bone changes
- Neck injury
- Earwax build up
Although physically harmless, tinnitus is connected to anxiety and depression and high blood pressure, difficulty sleeping and other complications can occur.
Prevention is Your Ear’s Best Friend
Like with most things, prevention is how you avert a problem. Protecting your ears reduces your chance of hearing loss later in life. Check out these tips to protect your ears:
- Consulting a doctor if you have an ear infection.
- Reducing long-term exposure to loud noises at work or home.
- Spending less time wearing headphones or earbuds.
Every few years get your hearing checked, also. The test not only points out hearing loss problem, but it allows you to get treatment or make lifestyle adjustments to lessen further damage.
If You do Hear The Ringing
Ringing means you have tinnitus, but it doesn’t tell you why you have it or how you got it. You can understand more with a little trial and error.
Find out if the sound goes away over time if you avoid wearing headphones or earbuds.
Evaluate your noise exposure. Were you around loud noise the night before the ringing began? For example, did you:
- Work or sit next to an unusually loud noise
- Attend a party
- Go to a concert
- Listen to the music of TV with headphones or earbuds
The tinnitus is most likely temporary if you answered yes to any of these situations.
If The Tinnitus Doesn’t Get Better
Having an ear exam would be the next step. Your physician will look for possible causes of the tinnitus such as:
- Ear damage
- Ear wax
- Infection
- Inflammation
- Stress levels
Here are some specific medications which could cause this problem too:
- Cancer Meds
- Antibiotics
- Antidepressants
- Water pills
- Aspirin
- Quinine medications
The tinnitus may clear up if you make a change.
If there is no obvious cause, then the doctor can order a hearing test, or you can schedule one on your own. Hearing aids can better your situation and minimize the ringing, if you do have hearing loss, by using hearing aids.
How is Tinnitus Treated?
Since tinnitus isn’t a disease, but rather a side effect of something else, the first step would be to treat the cause. If you have high blood pressure, medication will lower it, and the tinnitus should go away.
For some people, the only answer is to deal with the tinnitus, which means finding ways to suppress it. A useful device is a white noise machine. They generate the noise the brain is missing and the ringing goes away. You can also get the same effect from a fan or dehumidifier.
Another approach is tinnitus retraining. You wear a device that creates a tone to mask the frequencies of the tinnitus. It can teach you not to focus on it.
You will also want to look for ways to stay away from tinnitus triggers. They are different for each person, so start keeping a diary. When the tinnitus begins, write down everything just before you heard the ringing.
- What were you doing?
- What did you eat or drink?
- What sound did you hear?
Tracking patterns is possible using this method. Caffeine is a known trigger, so if you drank a double espresso each time, you know to order something else next time.
Your quality of life is affected by tinnitus so your best chance is finding a way to eliminate it or at least lessen its impact. To find out more about your tinnitus, schedule an appointment with a hearing care specialist today.
