ABOUT TINNITUS
If you suffer with Tinnitus, you’re not alone. Nearly 66 million people in the U.S. alone will experience some degree of Tinnitus in their lifetime. For most, the sudden onset of noise in their ears will go away relatively quickly. Unfortunately for one in 10 people, it will not. If you are indeed one of the unlucky ones who find the noise in your head continuing to grow worse, you will need to learn more about this crazy condition. You will need to know why this buzzing and ringing in your ears appear out of nowhere and drives you crazy day and night without end.
WHAT IS THIS NOISE IN MY HEAD?
To truly understand Tinnitus, you must understand how the ear works. That’s why we took so much time to discuss your hearing in the last chapter. Here are the basics: sound is carried though the ears like a moving wave. When this wave hits the eardrum, it makes it and the tiny bones throughout the ear vibrate. These vibrations create sound. If something interferes with normal vibrations, the brain may think it hears sound when it doesn’t. This is Tinnitus.
A lot of things can cause this breakdown between your ear and your head, but for now, we’re only going to talk about the three main causes of Tinnitus:
1. Brain Lesions
Now before you panic, it is important to understand that the brain lesions we are talking about here are not deadly. These lesions just cause Tinnitus. Such brain lesions do not (and will not) cause other malfunctions within your body.
It has been estimated that more than 90 percent of people suffering from central Tinnitus -- which originates from the brain and not the ear – will have side to side perfusion asymmetries involving the medial temporal lobe system when scanned by advanced SPECT imaging.
Most neuroscientists believe that it is this area of the brain where memory and stress meet, and this is the area that is probably linking emotions and the memory – including the memory of sound. The key here is to remember that Tinnitus is simply the re-running of sound memories that are already heard in an unending loop. Therefore, when the emotion linked to a certain sound is felt, the patient will hear the sound again, even if it doesn’t exist at the moment. By breaking the emotional tie of Tinnitus, some researchers believe that the sufferer can stop the noise altogether. We will discuss a variety of ways you can break both the emotional Tinnitus tie and the memory loop. But first, there’s more to learn about Tinnitus.
2. Damage to the Cochlea
As we’ve already discussed, the Cochlea is the small part of the inner ear that looks a lot like the shell of a snail. Although small, it is essential because it helps us hear properly. Within this shell-like tissue are tiny sensory hairs that tell the brain when sound is heard. Any damage at all to these miniature sound detectors can severely affect your hearing. Something as simple as exposure to a one-time loud sound (like gunfire or an explosion) or even sitting at a loud concert for a few hours can cause temporary hearing problems. But sometimes, if the noise damage is more severe, it can cause the tiny Cochlea hairs to bend or even break, thus permanently damaging them.
When Tinnitus is caused by excessive noise, it is due to the breakage of these sensory hairs, which results in a misfiring of electrical impulses that randomly tell the brain that sound is being heard when it isn’t.
3. Stress
We all know that stress can play havoc with our hearts, immune systems and other vital organs. But did you know that it is also a main culprit that causes Tinnitus?
The Hypothalamus controls many systems in your body, including the pituitary gland, which oversees the endocrine organs and the autonomic nervous system. One of the main jobs of the Hypothalamus is to produce chemicals that are needed by the body to function normally. Unfortunately, it is very susceptible to stress, shock and grief, and these causes may interfere with its chemical production. When this happens, there may be a breakdown in communication between the ear and the brain, causing the brain to respond as if sound has been heard, even when all is quiet. This is Tinnitus.