(upbeat orchestral music)
- You know the sound of the ocean?
How relaxing it is,
or maybe a nice breeze blowing,
or even the sound of crickets chirping,
all relaxing, right?
Well, what if you heard those sounds all the time?
Wouldn't be so relaxing then.
And what if it wasn't crickets chirping
or the sound of the ocean
but a siren or a dial tone
or something like that?
And then even worse,
if you threw your hands to your ears
it did nothing to muffle the noise?
You would have what's called tinnitus
and you wouldn't be alone.
An estimated 50 million Americans
suffer from tinnitus in some form or fashion.
16 million of them bad enough
that they go to seek medical attention for it.
And it gets even worse
for two million Americans
their tinnitus is so bad
that it's debilitating
and they can't lead normal lives as result of it.
Under normal circumstances when you're hearing,
you're hearing because your hair cells are working.
Now, your hair cells are tiny, little cells
located in your cochlea
which is a little pea-sized part
of your inner ear.
The hair cells receive information
from little, tiny bundles of fibers
called stereocilia.
And the stereocilia respond to vibrations
from sound waves.
Depending on how the volume or the pitch of the sound is,
the stereocilia will vibrate like crazy
or else it might just do it kinda mellow,
whatever.
That information is going to be transferred
to your hair cells,
which sends an electrochemical message to your brain
and presto change-o,
you're experiencing the sensation we call sound.
But in tinnitus sufferers,
there's a breakdown in this process
and science isn't exactly sure what the problem is.
But there are a couple of hypotheses
and they are very interesting.
One is that the hair cells are just broken
and they're constantly on.
leading the brain to think that it's receiving sounds
that it's not.
The other one, which is my personal favorite,
is that the brain's noise filtering system
isn't working any longer.
Normally, the brain's noise filtering system
keeps you from hearing your neurons firing
in your brain.
Which means that if you have tinnitus,
you're actually listening to the sounds
of your central nervous system functioning
which is pretty cool.
So, what causes tinnitus?
Well, pretty much everything it turns out.
Auditory damage is the leading cause.
You can get that from all sorts of stuff,
from going to concerts too much,
to working around a jackhammer.
Explosions are also a big cause
something like 49% of all American soldiers
returning from Afghanistan and Iraq
are thought to have tinnitus in some form.
You can also develop tinnitus
from neurological damage,
head trauma, earwax buildup,
low blood pressure, high blood pressure,
you can't win.
There's medications that are ototoxic
which means that they damage your hearing.
All sorts of stuff.
And there are just about as many treatments
as there are causes for tinnitus.
Things like ginkgo,
acupuncture, vitamin B complex,
all these things are said to make tinnitus better.
You can also get surgery if it's particularly bad.
And some people just learn to live with it,
literally train themselves.
You know, they say the best offense is a good defense
and that applies to tinnitus as well.
The best way to not get tinnitus
is to take measures against it.
So for example, if you're going to be exposed
to anything over 85 decibels
and a lawn mower is about 90,
you're gonna want to wear hearing protection.
So basically just walk around with plugs in your ear
all the time.
You can also avoid not getting enough of sleep,
avoid aspirin, avoid caffeine,
just basically stay in your bed with earplugs in
all the time
and you won't get tinnitus.
Here at Brain Stuff we want to know,
do you have tinnitus?
If so, how do you think you got it?
You can leave a comment in the comments section.
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