Tinnitus is experienced at some time or another by some 40 million people in the US alone. It is a persistent ringing, roaring, or hissing sound that’s heard in the absence of any external sound source. Researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center published research in early 2011 that is providing some new insights in to what causes the condition.
Tinnitus may be caused by certain changes in the brain, and there may be ways to reverse these changes. In brain scans of 22 people, half of whom had tinnitus and half of whom did not, results suggested that tinnitus is caused by the brain’s attempts to produce sounds to replace sounds of frequencies that are lost due to age-related hearing loss. If yet another part of the brain is not able to stop these sounds from reaching the brain’s auditory processing center, the result is tinnitus.
Another study conducted by researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas tested the effects of stimulation of the vagus nerve along with presentation of certain frequencies of sound. The combination appears to have stopped tinnitus in laboratory animals for a period of several weeks. Vagus nerve stimulation trials in humans are expected to start in 2011, so new treatments could be on the horizon for this life-affecting condition.
But people who have brought tinnitus to the attention of their doctors in the past, only to be told that they must simply learn to live with it, owe it to themselves to seek out new help for the condition, because doctors are finally taking the condition seriously and developing programs to manage the condition.
In some cases, drugs are used to manage the indirect symptoms of chronic tinnitus, such as insomnia, anxiety, and depression. In other cases, properly fitted hearing aids are able to provide great relief and improve hearing at the same time. Some patients are able to find relief from their symptoms through simple devices like white noise machines, and others are able to use cognitive behavioral therapy to learn effective ways to cope with the condition. The future for treatment of tinnitus is bright, so if you have the condition, don’t give up!
