Tinnitus is an exceptionally common medical condition. Tinnitus can become so extreme that it becomes a burden to live with for around 20 million individuals worldwide. This does not even reference the more common types of tinnitus, which for most individuals can come and go without causing a major impact on their quality of life.
When you hear noises in your ears that don’t have an outside source and nobody else can hear them, that’s tinnitus. It might manifest as a continual buzzing or ringing in the ears. Tinnitus is frequently linked to hearing loss, but that doesn’t mean that one condition will immediately result in the other.
As a matter of fact, tinnitus comes in numerous forms. Managing these varieties of tinnitus will call for different approaches.
What is tinnitus?
So, what is tinnitus and where does it come from? Well, it’s important to mention that not all kinds of tinnitus are the same. The various causes of tinnitus will present with similar symptoms. But it’s still crucial to identify the cause in order to successfully treat the symptoms.
For some people, tinnitus is the outcome of a neurological issue, like a traumatic brain injury or a concussion. In other circumstances, tinnitus might be caused by age-related hearing loss. The following are a few other possible causes:
- Neurological tinnitus: Issues with the ear are not always the cause of tinnitus. Sometimes, the underlying cause lies within the brain. If your baseline neurological functions are impaired by injury it can activate neurological tinnitus. This means that the standard communication between your brain and ears isn’t working correctly. As a result, a phantom sound is heard which isn’t really there. A stroke, concussion, or brain injury can all be the underlying causes of tinnitus, as well as others. In some cases, neurological tinnitus may go away as the brain heals. It might be irreversible in other circumstances.
- Subjective tinnitus: With subjective tinnitus, the sound you’re hearing is phantom and has no external source and only you can hear it. Lots of other forms of tinnitus also fall into this category. For instance, neurological tinnitus can also be subjective tinnitus. There are a large number of sounds that can manifest with subjective tinnitus, including buzzing, ringing, screeching, roaring, thumping, and many others.
- Objective tinnitus: When you have objective tinnitus, you’re hearing a real, verifiable, objective sound. Objective tinnitus is not really as common as subjective tinnitus, but it still happens. Pulsatile tinnitus, which is when you hear your heartbeat or pulse, is an illustration of this type of tinnitus. Objective tinnitus causes those sounds to be abnormally loud.
- Somatic tinnitus: Tinnitus sounds are often quite constant for many individuals coping with them. That’s true for both subjective and objective tinnitus. With somatic tinnitus though, things are a bit different. This type of tinnitus becomes more severe when you move around. Typically, somatic tinnitus will cause the symptoms to become more intense when you move your head or neck.
Often, individuals will have more than one form of tinnitus simultaneously. You may have subjective tinnitus and neurological tinnitus at the same time, for example. In order for us to formulate a treatment plan, we will first need to determine the underlying cause of your tinnitus.
Getting tinnitus support
You probably won’t have to take any particular action if your tinnitus symptoms are intermittent. But your quality of life can be significantly impacted if your tinnitus symptoms are fairly constant or keep coming back. When that happens, your best plan to get some relief is to call us for a consultation.
We have several different tinnitus management strategies we might try depending on the underlying cause of your symptoms. A few of these techniques can minimize the severity of your symptoms making them less evident. We may also utilize masking techniques to hide your symptoms.
Tinnitus can’t generally be cured, but it can be effectively managed. We will help you customize the best treatment for your specific situation. This will help you enjoy life again by moving your symptoms into the background where they can be more easily ignored.