Tinnitus is the perception of sound within the human ear when there is no external sound that the person could possibly be hearing.  People who had this condition were once thought to be possessed by the devil or evil spirits and were often tortured in order to drive the spirits away.  In more modern times  medical professionals once thought that tinnitus was all “in a patients head” making remarks that would be sufferers of this condition believing they were losing their mind.

While in many cases the sounds are all in the patients head, in some cases the sounds can be heard by people standing close to the patient or by clinicians with tools that can hear inside the human ear.  In both cases the tinnitus sufferers are in their right minds and the sounds they hear are very real and always caused by physical conditions that often lead to damaged nerves in the ear resulting in a kind of short circuit that has brain telling the people they are hearing sounds that are not actually there.

While tinnitus is often called a ringing in the ears different tinnitus sufferers actually hear a wide variety of sounds including:

・ Whistling

・ buzzing

・ whooshing

・ murmuring (resembling human voices talking low)

・ roaring

and the lists goes on and on. The sounds can be intermittent or constant and in some cases the sounds are low like a background noise and in other cases it can become so loud the sufferers can’t hear much of the real external sounds that go on around them.

There are two basic types of tinnitus, Objective and subjective.  In objective tinnitus the sound the person is hearing can be heard by someone other than the sufferer.  The most common causes for objective tinnitus comes from muscle spasms, and altered blood flow.  In cases of objective tinnitus the condition that causes the sound may be serious and sometimes life threatening because it is often associated with problems in blood flow and certain types of hypertension.

Subjective tinnitus on the other hand is only heard by the person who has the condition and the sounds are usually a result of nerve damage to the the small hair follicles in the ear that vibrate when sound is introduced.  When this damage occurs the brain somehow begins getting the message that sound is present when it is not and responds by sending back the sound to the ear that the brain “thinks” is being heard.

It should be understood that tinnitus is not a disease but, rather a symptom of something else going on that causes the brain to react the way it does.  In the vast majority of the cases the tinnitus is linked to people who have been exposed to loud sound over a period of time.  The loud sound causes damage to the ear and this damage results in the brain responding to sound that is simply not there.  However, there are many more causes of tinnitus other than loud noise and some of these causes are:

・ ear infections (the tinnitus may be present just while the infection exists or in cases where the infection causes nerve damage the tinnitus could become permanent.)

・ Foreign objects poked into the ear

・ Nasal allergies

・ Wax build up

・ medications and withdrawal from certain medications

・ Mercury or lead poisoning

・ Meniere’s disease

・ hearing loss due to natural aging

These causes are just the tip of the iceberg.  The lists goes on and on.

In some cases treatment of tinnitus is possible by treating the underlying cause.  For example, tinnitus that is caused by a build up of earwax may simply go away when the earwax is removed.  However, in most cases that results in some type of damage to the ear and the nerves and there is really no way to “cure the Tinnitus”

Except in rare cases of objective tinnitus that signals a serious health issue the medical community itself does not consider tinnitus a serious condition because it generally poses no risk to life.  However, to the millions of people who suffer from tinnitus the condition is very serious interfering with their ability to enjoy life to the fullest.

What makes this condition even more frustrating for sufferers is that most of the people around them simply cannot understand the toll the constant sound has on them.  Tinnitus sufferers never get to enjoy a moment of peace and quiet and no matter where they go or what they do the sound is always there.