Family Hearing and Balance Center

Doctors of Audiology

Tinnitus Truths….By Dr. Amy Welman, Au.D Family Hearing and Balance Center

As an Audiologist the best part of my job is helping improve a person’s quality of life.    I meet a lot of people everyday.  Some I get to know well over the years, some people I meet once and never see again.  The only thing that remains consistent across every person is their differences.  Not one person has identical hearing loss or medical history or jobs or hobbies. Each person’s life story is unique.   The same goes for each patient who is bothered by tinnitus AKA: “ringing, buzzing, hissing, etc” in the ears or head.  Every tinnitus patient is different and may or many not need “treatment” based on their disturbance level or test results.  Many people don’t know how it started or what it is and often don’t know that there is “something you can do about it”.  Except for rare medical anomalies, most people can find a way to live without being bothered by tinnitus.

Truth 1: Tinnitus is normal.  It is always there in everyone’s brain. It’s our “brain noise” as nerves send electrical signals through our body up to 119 meters per second (thanks Google).   Some people hear it for a few seconds now and then, some people hear it only when its very quiet.  Hearing your brain noise doesn’t mean anything is “wrong” but our brain can get stressed out or “react” in fear which can cause the sound to become more noticeable.
Truth 2:  Tinnitus is scary.  No-one has ever told me “I love my tinnitus, it makes me feel happy”.  It is annoying.  It’s invasive. Even when I momentary hear my tinnitus I stop what I’m doing for a second because my mind gets distracted.  But focusing past the tinnitus and pushing it to the side can take some practice.  The automatic negative response and fear response is completely natural, it’s the way our brain protects us from “bad things”.  Option 1: get angry and fight it, or option 2: run from it.  The problem with tinnitus is the negative emotional response actually feeds the attention to the brain noise. More attention = louder or more noticeable brain tinnitus.
Truth 3:  You can teach your brain what to pay attention to and what to ignore.   Question, do you pay attention to the shoes on your feet or the feeling of your glasses on your face? Not until I mentioned it, right? and in 3 minutes your brain will automatically filter out those incoming signals because it’s “not important”.  Your brain thinks your tinnitus is important because it is “scary”.  Have you ever heard a branch scratch on the window at night? You wake up scared, until you figure out it’s just a branch, then you go back to sleep and don’t wake up again because your brain learned to ignore it.  Your brain can learn to ignore your tinnitus too.
Truth 4:  Millions of people are bothered by tinnitus and don’t know there is hope or a way to train your brain to ignore it.  Sometime people still hear their tinnitus after months of training but maybe not as loud, maybe they can ignore it ‘most of the time’,, or at least they can live each day with less disturbance.  There is no “cure” to stop your brain from making noise, it always will, but there is help to stop your brain from paying attention to it.
Truth 5: Your Audiologist cares about your quality of life and tinnitus can be related to hearing loss or other “ear problems”.  Asking questions and finding the truth about your tinnitus is the first step to getting help.


 

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  3. Jen

    Dr. Welman, you are so, so good at explaining things so, so well! This is just a small piece of why you are such a great Audiologist and you are a huge benefit to our practice and our patients.
    This is very well written, great job!

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