There is no cure for tinnitus.Ī study by BTA found that 80% of tinnitus patients in the UK are unhappy with the current treatment options. Though there are dozens of tinnitus treatments and medications on the market, none have been proven to actually work. You have to tell your brain that it's there and it will be there forever." "If I go to the doctors, they just say there's nothing we can do and you have to live with it. I listen to classical music sometimes and that does help. It's only me that listens to it so it's hard to explain to people. Sometimes I get a bell in my ear which is there for a few seconds and it disappears. "I just pretend I am in a desert and the sand is going against the tent, and that's what the hiss is. If I sit down at night, or if I drive a car, I think my brain decides to listen to it. "If I'm doing something, I don't think about it. Ian Evans has had tinnitus for ten years (Image: Ian Evans)ħ6-year-old Ian said: "I've had it for about ten years. He thinks the reason for his tinnitus is from working at sea for years, exposed to loud noise. One of those people is Ian Evans from Anglesey. I spoke to three Welsh people who live with the same condition about how it affects their life and how they cope with the sound that never stops.īritish Tinnitus Association (BTA) defines tinnitus as "the sensation of hearing a sound in the absence of any external sound".Īccording to BTA, about 30% of people will experience tinnitus at some point in their lives, but the number of people who live with persistent tinnitus is approximately 13%. I, like many people with tinnitus, mourn the sound of silence. I no longer enjoy concerts, or nightclubs, or listening to loud music, as these things can make the sound unbearable. Sometimes it can hurt, and sometimes I can experience temporary deafness. Every minute of every day I can hear a sound like TV static. I have lived with tinnitus for the last seven years. Read more: The remote, frozen-in-time Welsh valley that needs someone to manage it. The next day, you wake up back to normal and forget about that high pitched sound until the next big night out.īut what if it never went away? This is the reality for people living with tinnitus. The disorder is most often caused by damage to the microscopic endings of the hearing nerve in the inner ear, although it can also be attributed to allergies, high or low blood pressure (blood circulation problems), a tumor, diabetes, thyroid problems, injury to the head or neck, and use of medications such as anti-inflammatories, antibiotics, sedatives, antidepressants, and aspirin.įull details of the study are published in the January 2008 edition of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery.We've all experienced the sensation of walking out of a concert or nightclub with our ears ringing.įor many people, it's an annoying side effect, or even a nice reminder of the night. Tinnitus, an auditory perception that cannot be attributed to an external source, affects at least 36 million Americans on some level, with at least seven million experiencing it so severely that it interferes with daily activities. The authors believe that these findings show that with regards to tinnitus, the role of attention to symptoms, as well as silence, plays a large role in experience and severity. This is compared to only 45.5 percent of participants who heard phantom ringing when asked to focus on visual stimuli and not on their hearing, and 19.7 percent of those asked to focus on a task in a quiet environment. The Brazilian study, which consisted of 66 people with normal hearing and no tinnitus, found that among subjects placed in a quiet environment where they were asked to focus on their hearing senses, 68 percent experienced phantom ringing noises similar to that of tinnitus.
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