August 5th, 2010
Tinnitus
Tinnitus is not a disease or illness, this is a huge misconception that many people have. Tinnitus is a symptom and this symptom can be triggered by one of many underlying causes. By way of it been a symptom there is not really a “cure” in development for it in a traditional sense.
Tinnitus could be caused by something as simple as ear wax or as a side effect of taking some medicines but could indicate a much more serious underlying condition (such as Lyme disease) which is why its best to always have it checked out.
There are two types of tinnitus, objective and subjective. Subjective tinnitus can be very difficult to diagnose or medically validate as the noise that is heard within the ears does not actually exist in the traditional sense and, even with specialist equipment, no actual notice can be established. In this type of tinnitus one way of establishing the scale of the problem is by comparison of the volume of the tinnitus to actual external noises – medically this will help plot the severity on the medical scale of “slight” through to “catastrophic”.
Objective tinnitus is a little easier to diagnose as an actual sound exists and can be detected upon examination, this can be caused by one of so many issues that it will not be covered here but will be looked at in more details in a later post.
The actual sound people hear when experiencing tinnitus can vary hugely, it could be a swooshing, crackling, humming, whistling or almost any other sound.
As you will see from the above tinnitus has so many “varieties” and variables that its quite difficult to diagnose and treat, take a look at the below video for a more detailed overview of tinnitus: