Tinnitus is an extremely common condition of the ear. Some estimates indicate that 10 percent of people have tinnitus at one time or another, making it one of the most common health conditions in the world. Even though the most common manifestation of tinnitus is a phantom ringing or buzzing in your ear, it can also present as other sounds as well.
While the prevalence of tinnitus may be evident, the causes are often more cloudy. Some of the wide variety of tinnitus causes are temporary, while others can be more permanent.
This is why environmental factors can Have a major impact on tinnitus symptoms. If the background sound of your particular environment is very loud, you may be harming your hearing. This environmental tinnitus may sometimes be long lasting or it might sometimes react to changes to make your environment quieter.
What is tinnitus (and why is it so common)?
When you hear sounds that aren’t really there, that’s tinnitus. Tinnitus usually manifests as a ringing or buzzing, but can also manifest as other noises, like screeching, thumping, or humming. The sounds are normally rhythmic in nature. Tinnitus will normally clear itself up after a short time period. Though not as common, chronic tinnitus is effectively permanent.
There are a couple of reasons why tinnitus is so prevalent. Firstly, environmental factors that can contribute to tinnitus are fairly prevalent. The second reason is that tinnitus is usually a symptom of an underlying condition or injury. Put simply, there are many such injuries or conditions that can cause tinnitus. Tinnitus is quite prevalent for these reasons.
How can the environment impact tinnitus?
There are a wide variety of factors that can contribute to tinnitus symptoms, including ototoxic chemicals and medicines. But when it comes to “environmental” triggers, noise is the biggest culprit. For example, some locations are noisier than others (traffic noise in some settings can get exceptionally high). Likewise, anyone who works around industrial equipment all day would be at risk of their environment worsening their tinnitus.
These environmental factors can be exceptionally significant when considering your hearing health.
Noise induced damage, as with hearing loss, can trigger tinnitus symptoms. In these cases, the resulting tinnitus tends to be chronic in nature. Some of the most common noise and environment-related causes of tinnitus include the following:
- Music: Listening to music at loud volumes is a fairly common practice. Tinnitus will frequently be the result if you do this regularly.
- Noise in the workplace: Many workplaces, including offices, are often the source of loud noises. Whether it’s industrial equipment or chatty office neighbors, spending eight hours a day around constant workplace noise can eventually lead to tinnitus.
- Events: Tinnitus can sometimes result from loud noises, even if they aren’t experienced over a long time-period. Shooting a gun or going to a rock concert are examples of this kind of noise.
- Traffic: Traffic in heavily populated areas can be a lot louder than you might expect it to be. And you may not even realize that your ears can be damaged at lower volumes than you may expect. Tinnitus and hearing damage can be the result of long commutes in these noisy locations.
Damage to the ears can happen at a far lower volume than people usually expect. For this reason, hearing protection should be used at lower volumes than you may expect. Noise associated tinnitus symptoms can often be avoided altogether by doing this.
What should I do if I’m experiencing tinnitus?
Will tinnitus clear up by itself? Well, in some instances it might. But your symptoms might be irreversible in some cases. There’s no way to know which is which at the outset. Moreover, just because your tinnitus has reseeded doesn’t mean that noise damage hasn’t happened, resulting in an increased risk of chronic tinnitus down the road.
People tend to underestimate the minimum volume that damage starts to happen, which is the most significant contributing factor to its advancement. If you experience tinnitus, your body is telling you that damage has already likely happened. This means that there are a number of things that you should do to alter your environment so as to prevent more permanent damage.
Here are some tips you can try:
- Reducing the amount of time you spend in loud environments without giving your ears a chance to recover.
- Stop damage by using hearing protection like earplugs or earmuffs. You can also get some amount of protection from noise canceling headphones.
- If possible, try to decrease environmental volume. For instance, you could close the windows if you live in a noisy area or turn off industrial equipment that is not in use.
Managing symptoms
Many people who experience chronic tinnitus find the symptoms to be tremendously distracting and uncomfortable. This prompts them to try and find a way to ease the intensity of their symptoms.
You should contact us for an appointment if you are hearing a persistent ringing or buzzing in your ears. We can help you figure out the best way to manage your specific situation. There’s no cure for the majority of forms of chronic tinnitus. Here are a number of ways to manage the symptoms:
- Retraining therapy: In some cases, you can work with a specialist to retrain your ears, gradually changing the way you process sound.
- Masking device: This device is a lot like a hearing aid, but instead of boosting sounds, it masks them. The precise calibration of your device will depend on your specific symptoms.
- White noise devices: In some instances, you can tune out some of your tinnitus symptoms by utilizing a white noise generator around your home.
- Relaxation techniques: High blood pressure has sometimes been connected to an increase in the severity of tinnitus symptoms. Your tinnitus symptoms can sometimes be eased by using relaxation techniques like meditation, for example.
- Hearing aid: The ringing or buzzing produced by tinnitus can be drowned out by raising the volume of external sounds with hearing aids.
There’s no cure for tinnitus. A good first step would be to safeguard your hearing by managing your environment.
But treating and controlling tinnitus is possible. Depending on your lifestyle, your hearing, and your tinnitus, we’ll be able to formulate a specific treatment plan for you. A white noise machine, for many, may be all that’s necessary. For others, management may be more intense.
Make an appointment to learn how to address your tinnitus symptoms.