Joel Edwards, Au.D., CCC-AAudiologist
Tinnitus is a condition that people actually complain about or notice. It’s a word meaning ringing and ringing for most people could be either a buzz in the ear, cricket sounds, and whooshing sounds.
Most people generally think that tinnitus happens with people that have some type of hearing loss or hearing disorder of some sort, though not always. We do see some people in here with normal hearing that have tinnitus issues, but it is more common among older individuals and it does seem to increase with age, particularly after age 65.
For some people they can have pervasive tinnitus and you know, very minimal hearing loss but they are so focused on the tinnitus that it does affect their mood, anxiety, concentration, and ability to sleep.
There is a strong correlation between tinnitus and sleep and tinnitus and stress. There are also many medications that the side effect is tinnitus.
There are certain things that make tinnitus worse, something as common as middle ear pressure or fullness that can you know, some people that can be a trigger for tinnitus. Ear wax can cause tinnitus in some folks.
The ENT will probably ask enough questions to figure out or the nurse will figure out what things they are doing that are causing the tinnitus or things they can stop doing to alleviate the tinnitus.
There isn’t a cure, pill wise, and the best recommendation is counseling, hearing aids, amplification is recommended for people that have tinnitus and hearing loss and some type of noise therapy.
There is a lot of apps you can have people download now that they can use, environmental noises, rain, water noises, to kind of help them listen to something else and forget about the tinnitus.
Everybody is different so there is not just one thing you can do for everybody and that is what makes helping people with tinnitus so challenging.
Tinnitus is a noise or ringing in the ears. Joel Edwards, Audiologist with Boys Town National Research Hospital, explains who is at risk for Tinnitus, possible causes of Tinnitus, and how Tinnitus is treated.