Causes of tinnitus
If you’ve just found out that you have tinnitus, it’s important for you to know that you don’t have to live with it or as how your doctor told you to ‘deal with it’, or allow it to ruin your life just like that. There are ways to overcome tinnitus. The first step to getting control over tinnitus is to identify the root cause. There are many different causes of tinnitus.
When you have tinnitus, it basically means that there is something interfering with the sound transmission pathway between your ear(s) and your brain. Many different reasons can cause this ‘breakdown’ in your head to mislead your brain to think that you are hearing ringing sounds, but in fact they are not present. The ringing sound may be consistent or intermittent.
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What are the most common causes of tinnitus?
There are generally three main causes of tinnitus.
1. Tinnitus from cochlea damage
Cochlea damage is what causes ringing in ears in about 85% of the tinnitus sufferers. Tinnitus due to cochlea damage is most often noise damage, a result of continual exposure to loud noises.
Loud noises cause damage to parts of the inner ear (i.e. cochlea), impairing the hearing mechanisms. You may suffer from tinnitus or even hearing loss; it may be temporary or permanent. The types of loud noise exposure that puts you at risk of tinnitus include: concerts, band in the pubs, loud stereos, industrial noise (e.g. factories, construction), MP3 players (e.g. iPod), sudden high level of noise like gunshots and explosions.
Other events that can also lead to cochlea damage include ear infection, ear wax removals, a severe blow to the head, head surgery, dental surgery, and ear or nasal passage surgery, to name a few. These types of tinnitus occur although the person has not really been exposed to loud noises.
2. Tinnitus induced by stress
This is the second most common cause of tinnitus. Up to 10% of tinnitus is induced by stress. This form of tinnitus involves a breakdown in the function of certain important parts in the brain. One of them is hypothalamus.
If you are under stress for long periods of time, you may often hear very loud episodes of ear ringing. This is because the hypothalamus is severely affected by long-term stress, and stops producing certain essential chemicals that your body needs to function normally.
Sometimes the stress causes the tinnitus, and other times it aggravates an already existed tinnitus from a previous cause. For this type of tinnitus, you’ll need to learn to reduce or to manage stress better to improve your tinnitus symptoms.
The hypothalamus can also be affected by shock, grief or any traumatic events in life, such as the death of a love one, consequently leading to tinnitus.
3. Tinnitus from sinus infection
Ear ringing from sinus infections is responsible for 5% of tinnitus incidence. It is the third most common form of tinnitus, but can be prevented. People who suffer from this type of tinnitus are those with chronic sinusitis, rhinitis and allergies.
This type of tinnitus is a consequence of thick mucus building up in the middle ear – a side effect of antibiotic and antihistamine medications in sinus infections and allergy conditions. Mucus that accumulated in the middle ear can lead to infections and therefore ear ringing. The only way to treat this condition is to first thin down the mucus before drain it out.
Apart from the above mentioned causes of tinnitus, another common cause of tinnitus is Meniere’s Disease. Tinnitus is in fact one of the symptoms of Meniere’s Disease, which is an inner ear disorder that causes the person to experience periods of dizziness, vertigo, ear pressure, tinnitus and nausea. It is a chronic condition that often leaves the sufferer feeling very exhausted and need to sleep for a few hours after an attack. Tinnitus noises may indicate an impending attack of the disease.
Tinnitus is annoying and even life destructing, but you can do something to reduce the noise, and eventually stop ears ringing by targeting the root causes of tinnitus. The good news is, you can achieve tinnitus relief with natural methods without depending on drugs.