Ringing in your ears, hissing, buzzing, roaring - tinnitus can take many forms. The bothersome and uncomfortable noise in your ear varies from one tinnitus sufferer to another. So does the impact of tinnitus on people's lives. Some get used to the never-ending noise in the ear with relative ease, while others are driven to despair. Many ask can tinnitus be cured? Is there a tinnitus remedy?
Ototoxic drugs can also cause subjective tinnitus, as they may cause hearing loss, or increase the damage done by exposure to loud noise. Those damages can occur even at doses that are not considered ototoxic.[30] Over 260 medications have been reported to cause tinnitus as a side effect.[31] In many cases, however, no underlying cause could be identified.[2]
The similarities between chronic pain and tinnitus have led researchers to develop a mindfulness-based tinnitus stress reduction (MBTSR) program. The results of a pilot study, which were published in The Hearing Journal, found that participants of an eight-week MBTSR program experienced significantly altered perceptions of their tinnitus. This included a reduction in depression and anxiety.
Tinnitus also could be the result of neural circuits thrown out of balance when damage in the inner ear changes signaling activity in the auditory cortex, the part of the brain that processes sound. Or it could be the result of abnormal interactions between neural circuits. The neural circuits involved in hearing aren’t solely dedicated to processing sound. They also communicate with other parts of the brain, such as the limbic region, which regulates mood and emotion.
Tinnitus sufferers most often cite stress as the cause of their condition. While it’s true noises are perceived more acutely when you are tense, there is no scientific basis for saying stress causes tinnitus. But the reverse is definitely true — hearing a constant noise in your ears can certainly cause stress and anxiety, and even lead to depression in some cases.
Tinnitus is the hearing of sound when no external sound is present.[1] While often described as a ringing, it may also sound like a clicking, hiss or roaring.[2] Rarely, unclear voices or music are heard.[3] The sound may be soft or loud, low pitched or high pitched and appear to be coming from one ear or both.[2] Most of the time, it comes on gradually.[3] In some people, the sound causes depression or anxiety and can interfere with concentration.[2]
Individuals were recruited from within and around Hamilton, Ontario via online announcements and audiology clinics. Applicants were initially interviewed via telephone to screen for all inclusion and exclusion criteria for the study in order to determine whether they qualified for on-site screening. The on-site screening, and characterization of participants’ hearing thresholds and tinnitus profiles were conducted in a lab at McMaster University using a computer-based tinnitus assessment tool. Participants were randomly allocated to the treatment or placebo-control group. The assignment of the treatment or placebo music package was completed by a distributor site independent of the research study site. Participants and research personnel were blinded to which music package the participants received.
Many drugs have been studied for treating tinnitus. For some, treatment with low doses of anti-anxiety drugs -- such as Valium or antidepressants such as Elavil -- help reduce tinnitus. The use of a steroid placed into the middle ear along with an anti-anxiety medicine called alprazolam has been shown to be effective for some people. Some small studies have shown that a hormone called misoprostol may be helpful in some cases.
Your doctor will try to determine what is causing the condition. If it is not due to a medication side effect or a general medical condition (such as high blood pressure), he or she may refer you to an otolaryngologist (an ear, nose, and throat doctor) or an audiologist (hearing specialist). It is especially important to see an otolaryngologist if you experience tinnitus in only one ear, tinnitus that sounds like your heartbeat or pulse (pulsatile tinnitus), tinnitus with sudden or fluctuating hearing loss, pressure or fullness in one or both ears, and/or dizziness or balance problems. Unless the cause of the tinnitus is obvious on physical examination, a hearing test is usually required.
Tinnitus (pronounced ti-nə-təs or tə-nī-təs) is the conscious awareness of a sound in your ears or head not caused by an external noise. Too often associated with hearing loss, the fact is more than 50 percent of people living with tinnitus don’t have measurable hearing loss. Since there are many causes, tinnitus can be associated with a variety of health problems.
Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) syndrome is a disorder that causes symptoms like pain, clicking, and popping of the jaw. TMJ is caused by injury to the temporomandibular joint. Stress, poor posture, jaw trauma, genetic predisposition, and inflammatory disorders are risk factors for the condition. A variety of self-care measures (application of ice, use of over-the-counter pain medication, massage, relaxation techniques) and medical treatment options (dental splint, Botox, prescription medications, surgery) are available to manage TMJ. The prognosis of TMJ is good with proper treatment.
It is important to note that existing hearing loss is sometimes not directly observable by the patient, who may not perceive any lost frequencies. But this this does not mean that hearing damage has not been done. A trained audiologist or other hearing health professional can perform sensitive audiometric tests to precisely measure the true extent of hearing loss.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) / Hypnotherapy. Another alternative treatment option worth considering is Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), which is often simply referred to as hypnotherapy. The goal of CBT is to help lower any anxiety, anger or depression you are feeling toward your tinnitus, as well as to help retrain your brain to notice the ringing in your ears less. CBT is typically used in conjunction with sound stimulation therapies, like Neuromonics or Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TRT). When choosing your therapist, be sure they not only do they have previous experience working with patients with tinnitus, but also have Neural Linguistic Programming (NLP) training.
The multidisciplinary approach required input from many different professionals including audiologists, psychologists, speech therapists and physical therapists. Which particular care elements of the intervention had the greatest effect is unknown. A multidisciplinary approach such as the intervention trialled here may have resource implications if it were introduced into standard clinical practice.
Often people bring in very long lists of medications that have been reported, once or twice, to be associated with tinnitus. This unfortunate behavior makes it very hard to care for these patients -- as it puts one into an impossible situation where the patient is in great distress but is also unwilling to attempt any treatment. Specialists who care for patients with ear disease, usually know very well which drugs are problems (such as those noted above), and which ones are nearly always safe.
The exact biological process by which hearing loss is associated with tinnitus is still being investigated by researchers. However, we do know that the loss of certain sound frequencies leads to specific changes in how the brain processes sound. In short, as the brain receives less external stimuli around a specific frequency, it begins to adapt and change. Tinnitus may be the brain’s way of filling in the missing sound frequencies it no longer receives from the auditory system.
Glenn Schweitzer is an entrepreneur, blogger, and the author of Rewiring Tinnitus and Mind over Meniere’s. He is passionate about helping others who suffer from tinnitus and vestibular disorders and volunteers as an Ambassador Board Member for the Vestibular Disorders Association (VEDA). Through his blogs, he continues raise awareness for tinnitus, Meniere’s disease, and other vestibular disorders, spreading his message of hope to those in need.
Repeated loud noise exposure can be a cause of tinnitus as well as hearing loss. Loud music may cause short term symptoms, but repeated occupational exposure (for example, musicians, factory and construction workers) requires less intense sound levels to cause potential hearing damage leading to tinnitus. Minimizing sound exposure, therefore, decreases the risk of developing tinnitus. Sound protection equipment, like acoustic ear-muffs, may be appropriate at work and at home when exposed to loud noises.
If the source of the problem remains unclear, you may be sent to an otologist or an otolaryngologist (both ear specialists) or an audiologist (a hearing specialist) for hearing and nerve tests. As part of your examination, you may be given a hearing test called an audiogram. An imaging technique, such as an MRI or a CT scan, may also be recommended to reveal any structural problem.
