Tinnitus is characterized by ringing or buzzing in the ears. Exposure to loud noises, earwax blockages, heart or blood vessel issues, prescription medications, and thyroid disorders can all cause tinnitus. See your doctor for an accurate diagnosis, and work with them to develop a treatment plan. In many cases, tinnitus is irreversible, but there are several ways to reduce its severity. For instance, sound generators, hearing aids, and medication can help mask ringing or buzzing. Tinnitus research is a constantly evolving field, and you might be able to try experimental therapies as well.
Another thing that tinnitus and sleep problems share? A tendency among people to brush them off, and try to “tough it out,” rather than addressing their conditions. It’s not worth it, to your health or your quality of life. If you’re having trouble sleeping and you have symptoms that sound like tinnitus, talk with your doctor about both, so you can sleep better—and feel better— soon.
Muscular tinnitus can be caused by several degenerative diseases that affect the head and neck including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or multiple sclerosis. Myoclonus can also cause muscular tinnitus, especially palatal myoclonus, which is characterized by abnormal contractions of the muscles of the roof of the mouth. Spasms of the stapedial muscle (which attaches to the stapes bone or stirrup), which is the smallest muscle in the body, and tensor tympani muscle, both of which are located in the middle ear, have also been associated with objective tinnitus. Myoclonus or muscle spasms may be caused by an underlying disorder such as a tumor, tissue death caused by lack of oxygen (infarction), or degenerative disease, but it is most commonly a benign and self-limiting problem.
Avoid a too-quiet bedroom. People with tinnitus may find it easier to sleep in a less quiet bedroom, and may benefit from white noise or other sleep-friendly sounds that help mask and minimize their tinnitus. To my patients who are looking to introduce soothing sounds to their sleep environment, I recommend the iHome Zenergy Sleep System, which combines relaxing sounds with aromatherapy and sleep-promoting light therapy.
Most tinnitus is subjective, meaning that only you can hear the noise. But sometimes it's objective, meaning that someone else can hear it, too. For example, if you have a heart murmur, you may hear a whooshing sound with every heartbeat; your clinician can also hear that sound through a stethoscope. Some people hear their heartbeat inside the ear — a phenomenon called pulsatile tinnitus. It's more likely to happen in older people, because blood flow tends to be more turbulent in arteries whose walls have stiffened with age. Pulsatile tinnitus may be more noticeable at night, when you're lying in bed and there are fewer external sounds to mask the tinnitus. If you notice any new pulsatile tinnitus, you should consult a clinician, because in rare cases it is a sign of a tumor or blood vessel damage.
Pulsatile tinnitus is generally caused by abnormalities or disorders affecting the blood vessels (vascular disorders), especially the blood vessels near or around the ears. Such abnormalities or disorders can cause a change in the blood flow through the affected blood vessels. The blood vessels could be weakened from damage caused by hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis). For example, abnormalities affecting the carotid artery, the main artery serving the brain, can be associated with pulsatile tinnitus. A rare cause of pulsatile tinnitus is a disorder known as fibromuscular dysplasia (FMD), a condition characterized by abnormal development of the arterial wall. When the carotid artery is affected by FMD, pulsatile tinnitus can develop.
Acoustic Neural Stimulation. This relatively new treatment has shown to be effective in reducing, and in some cases eliminating, symptoms in patients whose tinnitus just won’t go away or is very loud. The treatment utilizes a device small enough to fit into the palm of your hand that delivers a broadband acoustical signal embedded in special music you can listen to via headphones. The treatment eventually desensitizes you to the ringing in your ears by stimulating changes in the neural circuits in your brain.
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.
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.
If you're not sure of what is causing your tinnitus, a hearing care professional can help pinpoint the issue through a series of tests. It can be helpful to take notes of the sounds you are regularly or irregularly experience to help your hearing healthcare professional put together the clues to what may be causing it. Be sure to alert your practitioner of any pertinent medical history, medications or excessive noise exposure that could be playing a role in your tinnitus.
Everything you need to know about acoustic neuroma Acoustic neuroma is a benign tumor affecting nerves between the inner ear and the brain. It can lead to hearing loss, tinnitus, and loss of balance. This MNT Knowledge Center article explores the treatments, symptoms, and causes of acoustic neuroma, as well as how the condition may become more severe and complicate. Read now
Research regarding using cognitive behavioral therapy for tinnitus shows that tolerance to tinnitus can be facilitated by “reducing levels of autonomic nervous system arousal, changing the emotional meaning of the tinnitus, and reducing other stresses.” (6) It’s been found that there’s some overlap in anxiety and tinnitus due to an association between subcortical brain networks involved in hearing sounds, attention, distress and memory functions.
CBT could potentially help people with tinnitus deal with fears that their tinnitus might be caused by brain damage or might lead to deafness. During CBT, they might learn that the condition is common and that it is not associated with brain damage or deafness. They might also be exposed to the sound in a safe environment, so that it has less of an impact on their daily life. CBT also involves techniques such as applied relaxation and mindfulness training.
Health care professionals who incline to offer patients an option or strategy to deal with tinnitus are confronted with the variability inherent to this disorder.5 The cause of tinnitus can vary, although people who experience tinnitus have usually first developed hearing loss due to ageing or from exposure to loud noise that caused peripheral auditory damage. In fact, the number of tinnitus sufferers that develop the constant ringing due to hearing loss may be even higher than thought, as some tinnitus sufferers only appear to have normal hearing when thresholds at frequencies below 8 kHz are measured. Less frequently, tinnitus may also occur after a head or neck injury, or due to the presence of an acoustic neuroma. Certain medications may also contribute to the development of tinnitus through effects on hair cells in the inner ear or via mechanisms that are not yet well understood.6 This variety in cause has been the first part of the challenge in developing a “cure” or effective treatment for tinnitus. However, even for the largest group of tinnitus sufferers (those who may develop tinnitus due to hearing damage), effective treatments have been hard to come by.
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.
It is possible that the most common cause of pulsatile tinnitus is sigmoid sinus diverticulum and dehiscence, which can be collectively referred to as sinus wall abnormalities or SSWA. The sigmoid sinus is a blood carrying channel on the side of the brain that receives blood from veins within the brain. The blood eventually exits through the internal jugular vein. Sigmoid sinus diverticulum refers to the formation of small sac-like pouches (diverticula) that protrude through the wall of the sigmoid sinus into the mastoid bone behind the ear. Dehiscence refers to absence of part of the bone that surrounds the sigmoid sinus in the mastoid. It is unknown whether these conditions represent different parts of one disease process or spectrum, or whether they are two distinct conditions. These abnormalities cause pressure, blood flow, and noise changes within the sigmoid sinus, which ultimately results in pulsatile tinnitus. Narrowing of the blood vessel that leads into the sigmoid sinus, known as the transverse sinus, has also been associated with pulsatile tinnitus.
White noise machines. These devices, which produce simulated environmental sounds such as falling rain or ocean waves, are often an effective treatment for tinnitus. You may want to try a white noise machine with pillow speakers to help you sleep. Fans, humidifiers, dehumidifiers and air conditioners in the bedroom also may help cover the internal noise at night.
Tinnitus affects every layer of society, and there has been increasing support for awareness. Recently, musicians who are affected by tinnitus have come together to create awareness for the disorder. Artists including Chris Martin of Coldplay and Black Eyed Peas have created a compilation album to help raise funds towards finding a cure for tinnitus. In the United States, the Department of Defense has invested millions of dollars into investigations of tinnitus sound therapies. In addition, the American Tinnitus Association makes efforts to lobby the US government to provide support for tinnitus sufferers.
Pulsatile tinnitus is a rare type of tinnitus that sounds like a rhythmic pulsing in the ear, usually in time with your heartbeat. A doctor may be able to hear it by pressing a stethoscope against your neck or by placing a tiny microphone inside the ear canal. This kind of tinnitus is most often caused by problems with blood flow in the head or neck. Pulsatile tinnitus also may be caused by brain tumors or abnormalities in brain structure.
Tinnitus is commonly described as a ringing in the ears, but it also can sound like roaring, clicking, hissing, or buzzing. It may be soft or loud, high pitched or low pitched. You might hear it in either one or both ears. Roughly 10 percent of the adult population of the United States has experienced tinnitus lasting at least five minutes in the past year. This amounts to nearly 25 million Americans.
The sound you hear is actually being generated by the part of your ear known as the cochlea. It’s a very complicated organ with sensory hairs, internal fluid and nerve receptors, that when damaged (or as it naturally degrades as you get older), can cause it to send incorrect input into your brain. In layman’s terms, because it’s no longer working as well as it used to, it thinks there’s a ringing sound in the area and tells your brain to generate that sound in your head. There are other symptoms of tinnitus, but this is the main one.
Muscle spasms: Tinnitus that is described as clicking may be due to abnormalities that cause the muscle in the roof of the mouth (palate) to go into spasm. This causes the Eustachian tube, which helps equalize pressure in the ears, to repeatedly open and close. Multiple sclerosis and other neurologic diseases that are associated with muscle spasms may also be a cause of tinnitus, as they may lead to spasms of certain muscles in the middle ear that can cause the repetitive clicking.
Acoustic qualification of tinnitus will include measurement of several acoustic parameters like frequency in cases of monotone tinnitus or frequency range and bandwidth in cases of narrow band noise tinnitus, loudness in dB above hearing threshold at the indicated frequency, mixing-point, and minimum masking level.[51] In most cases, tinnitus pitch or frequency range is between 5 kHz and 10 kHz,[52] and loudness between 5 and 15 dB above the hearing threshold.[53]
We occasionally recommend neuropsychological testing using a simple screening questionnaire -- depression, anxiety, and OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) are common in persons with tinnitus. This is not surprising considering how disturbing tinnitus may be to ones life (Holmes and Padgham, 2009). Persons with OCD tend to "obsess" about tinnitus. Treatment of these psychological conditions may be extremely helpful.
Sound therapies are one method that has previously been shown to reduce the severity of tinnitus. While not all sound therapies have gone through rigorous clinical testing, they have far greater traction and adoption in the tinnitus community. There are two types of sound therapy approaches: (1) maskers that are intended to block out the tinnitus and have the patient learn to ignore their tinnitus, and (2) sound therapies that utilize the same brain plasticity that is thought to be causing the tinnitus for the purpose of reducing it. Both approaches can be delivered via electronic devices that can produce sound. There has been an increase in tinnitus maskers that are built into hearing aids. These built-in maskers generate different sounds including white noise and random tones. Unfortunately, due to their design, hearing aids are still limited to providing masking at frequencies below 8 kHz.
Tinnitus (pronounced "tin-it-tus") is an abnormal noise in the ear (note that it is not an "itis" -- which means inflammation). Tinnitus is common -- nearly 36 million Americans have constant tinnitus and more than half of the normal population has intermittent tinnitus. Another way to summarize this is that about 10-15% of the entire population has some type of constant tinnitus, and about 20% of these people (i.e. about 1% of the population) seek medical attention (Adjamian et al, 2009). Similar statistics are found in England (Dawes et al, 2014) and Korea (Park and Moon, 2014).
Earwax (ear wax) is a natural substance secreted by special glands in the skin on the outer part of the ear canal. It repels water, and traps dust and sand particles. Usually a small amount of wax accumulates, dries up, and then falls out of the ear canal carrying with it unwanted particles. Under ideal circumstances, you should never have to clean your ear canals. The absence of ear wax may result in dry, itchy ears, and even infection. Ear wax may accumulate in the ear for a variety of reasons including; narrowing of the ear canal, production of less ear wax due to aging, or an overproduction of ear wax in response to trauma or blockage within the ear canal.
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.
