Let’s set the stage: You’re lying in bed attempting to sleep after a long exhausting day. You feel yourself beginning to drift off to sleep. Then you start to hear it: a buzzing sound inside your ears. You know it’s nothing in your room because the radio, TV, and phone have all been turned off. No, this sound is coming from within your ears and you’re not sure how to make it stop.
If this situation sounds familiar, then it’s likely that you’re one of the 50 million people that suffer from tinnitus. This condition makes you hear buzzing, whooshing, and ringing sounds, among others, inside your ears. The majority of people suffering from tinnitus think of it as a mere inconvenience; they notice it now and again but it doesn’t really impact their day-to-day lives. But this is not the situation with everyone who has tinnitus. For some, it can cause them to lose sleep, to disengage socially, and to have a hard time working.
What’s The Primary Cause of Tinnitus?
Tinnitus is still a bit of a mystery, but specialists have focused in on a few causes for this problem. It shows up commonly in people who have damaged hearing, and also people who suffer from heart conditions. It’s believed that tinnitus occurs due to restricted blood flow around the ears, which causes the heart to pump blood harder so that it can get where it needs to go. People who have iron-deficiency anemia commonly suffer from tinnitus symptoms since their blood cells don’t carry enough oxygen throughout their body, which, once again, works the heart harder to get nutrients to the correct place, often leading to tinnitus.
Tinnitus also occurs as a symptom of other conditions, like Meniere’s disease, ear infections, and ear canal blockages. Situations where tinnitus becomes more pronounced happen with all of these condition because they all affect the hearing. At times treatment can be difficult when the cause of tinnitus isn’t evident, but that doesn’t mean treatment is impossible.
How Can Tinnitus be Managed?
Depending on the root cause of your tinnitus, there may be a number of possible treatment choices. One important thing to take note of, however, is that there is presently no known cure for tinnitus. In spite of this fact, there’s still a good possibility that your tinnitus will improve or even vanish altogether because of these treatments.
Research has revealed that hearing aids help cover up tinnitus in individuals who have hearing loss.
If covering up the noise isn’t helpful, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) has been proven to help people live with the ringing in their ears that doesn’t fade away with other treatments. This mental health style of therapy can help people who are afflicted by tinnitus to function more normally on an everyday basis by helping them transform their negative thinking into a more positive outlook.