Tinnitus is an exceptionally prevalent medical condition. Something like 20 million people routinely suffer from persistent tinnitus so intense that it becomes burdensome. And there are also more common presentations of tinnitus which are much more mild and intermittent and are also easier to deal with.
When you hear sounds in your ears that don’t have an outside source and nobody else can hear them, that’s tinnitus. This could be a ringing in the ears or a buzzing sound you can’t get rid of. Although hearing loss is often associated with tinnitus, there isn’t necessarily a cause-and-effect relationship between the two.
In fact, there are a significant variety of forms of tinnitus. Dealing with these varieties of tinnitus will call for different approaches.
What is tinnitus?
So, what is tinnitus and where does it come from? The first thing to understand is that tinnitus comes in a number of types and causes. Regardless of the specific cause, the symptoms will be similar. But it’s still crucial to determine the cause in order to effectively treat the symptoms.
For some individuals, tinnitus is the result of a neurological issue, including a traumatic brain injury or a concussion. In other circumstances, tinnitus might result from age-related hearing loss. Here are some of the most common types of tinnitus:
- Neurological tinnitus: Tinnitus isn’t always caused by ear problems. The brain itself can sometimes be the cause. If your baseline neurological functions are damaged by injury it can trigger neurological tinnitus. This means that the standard communication between your brain and ears isn’t functioning correctly. The result is that you hear a phantom sound that may not be there. Neurological tinnitus can be due to concussion, stroke, traumatic brain injury, and others. In some cases, neurological tinnitus might resolve as the brain heals. It may be permanent in other circumstances.
- Subjective tinnitus: When only you can hear the sound of your tinnitus, which is very common, hearing specialists will talk about your condition as a subjective tinnitus. Lots of other forms of tinnitus also fall into this category. Neurological tinnitus, for instance, is often also subjective tinnitus. There are a large number of sounds that can manifest with subjective tinnitus, including buzzing, ringing, screeching, roaring, thumping, and lots of others.
- Objective tinnitus: When the sound you’re hearing in your ears is a real, verifiable sound, it’s referred to as objective tinnitus. Objective tinnitus is not quite 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 form of tinnitus. Objective tinnitus causes those sounds to be abnormally loud.
- Somatic tinnitus: For many people, the sound they hear with tinnitus is relatively constant. That’s true for both subjective and objective tinnitus. With somatic tinnitus though, things are a bit different. This is tinnitus that grows worse with movement. Normally, somatic tinnitus will cause the symptoms to get worse when you move your head or neck.
Often, people will have more than one type of tinnitus simultaneously. You might have subjective tinnitus and neurological tinnitus at the same time, for example. Figuring out the cause of your symptoms can help your hearing specialist decide the best tinnitus treatment strategy for your symptoms.
Finding tinnitus support
If your tinnitus is here this minute and gone the next, you probably don’t have to do anything about it. But if your tinnitus hangs around or comes back frequently, it may have real and severe impacts on your day-to-day life. When that occurs, your best plan to get some relief is to contact us for a consultation.
After we determine the root cause of your symptoms, there are a number of treatment strategies we can utilize. A few of these strategies can decrease the intensity of your symptoms making them less apparent. We may also use masking techniques to hide your symptoms.
Tinnitus can’t usually be cured, but it can be successfully managed. We will work with you to create treatments that work for your symptoms. That way, you can more easily ignore the buzzing or ringing in your ears, and get back to the life you love.