Living with Tinnitus
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Hearing aids can help ease the burden of tinnitus in people who have hearing loss.
People who have tinnitus experience an ongoing high-pitched ringing, buzzing, or humming sound that is audible only to them. It can be quite disconcerting, but many people do successfully learn to live with it.
“It’s extremely common,” says Alison Grimes, AuD, Director of the UCLA Audiology Clinic. “There are many possible causes, but a combination of noise and aging are the most prevalent. Those two factors are probably interrelated because most of us have had noise exposure of some sort or another.”
Tinnitus can result from too many loud rock concerts or listening to headphones at high volumes. First responders exposed to wailing sirens, military personnel and police officers who hear gunfire and other explosives, construction and factory workers, and even some musicians also can develop tinnitus over time.
More rarely, tinnitus can be caused by medication side effects and heart or blood vessel diseases, Ménière’s disease, brain tumors, hormonal changes in women, and thyroid abnormalities.
In the Ear and to the Brain
Tinnitus is not a disease, but rather a malfunction within the auditory system, which includes the ear, the auditory nerve that connects the inner ear to the brain, and parts of the brain that process sound. While sound is filtered through the ears, we process and interpret sound in the brain. Ongoing exposure to excessively loud noise damages tiny sensory hair cells in the inner ear that help transmit sound to the brain. The exact reason why people hear phantom sounds isn’t clear, but scientists suspect that tinnitus could be the result of the brain’s neural circuits trying to adapt to the loss of sensory hair cells by turning up the sensitivity to sound. This would explain why some people with tinnitus are overly sensitive to loud noise. It’s also been suggested that tinnitus is similar to chronic pain syndrome, where pain persists even though an injury has healed.
Treating Tinnitus
There are no clinically proven ways to cure tinnitus, but there are some ways to alleviate the burden of it. The first step is to have your hearing evaluated. According to Grimes, if you have tinnitus and hearing loss, wearing hearing aids can be a solution.
“About 50% of people who have tinnitus and hearing loss find that when they wear hearing aids, tinnitus is no longer a problem for them,” she says. “Hearing aids generate some internal noise, but more importantly, when you wear hearing aids there is just a lot more additional sound that comes into the ears and that helps mask the tinnitus.”
Though tinnitus can sometimes go away, generally, the ongoing noise will just be part of life forever. That’s where the cognitive behavioral approach, or mind or over matter comes into play. Though it may sound flippant, if you don’t mind, it won’t matter. However, this behavior usually requires some time and coping strategies to adopt. Grimes suggests saying to yourself that: “I am aware I have tinnitus. It won’t hurt me. It’s not dangerous and I am just going to go do something else.”
Such mantras really can and do work for many people. Some sessions with a psychotherapist can help you train your brain to overcome the intrusiveness of tinnitus.
At night, and when it’s quiet, tinnitus can become more obvious, making sleep more difficult. An inexpensive white noise machine, or app that plays soothing rain or other nature sounds can help mask tinnitus and help you fall asleep.
Prevention and Protection
Whether you have tinnitus or not, it’s never too late to protect your hearing. Avoid loud noise when you can, and wear hearing protection when you work with power tools, mow the lawn, attend concerts or other loud events like basketball games. Inexpensive foam earplugs work well. “People carry sunglasses for when the sun’s too bright,” explains Grimes. “Why not carry earplugs and just have them at the ready?” At the very least, you can cover your ears next time a siren comes your way.
Something as simple as excessive earwax and ear and sinus infections can cause temporary tinnitus. When these conditions are cleared the phantom sounds may go away, too.
Most people are successfully able to live with the disorder. But other people may experience depression, anxiety, fatigue, and problems concentrating. If you are unduly bothered by the sound, or if it’s new, talk with your doctor to rule out medical conditions or medication side effects. You may be referred to an otolaryngologist (commonly called an ear, nose, and throat doctor, or an ENT), who will physically examine your head, neck, and ears. You also should be referred to an audiologist, who can measure your hearing, evaluate your tinnitus, and help you find the perfect pair of hearing aids, if needed.
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