What causes tinnitus and cricket sounds in the ears? How can it be diagnosed and managed? Get answers to these questions and more in our comprehensive article.

What is Tinnitus?

Tinnitus is a common condition that is often described as a ringing, buzzing, whistling, or cricket-like sound in the ears. It is the perception of sound when no external sound source is present. The experience of tinnitus can vary greatly from person to person, with some individuals hearing a soft, low-pitched sound, while others may hear a loud, high-pitched tone.

Causes of Tinnitus

Tinnitus is not an illness itself, but rather a symptom of an underlying health condition. The most common causes of tinnitus include:

• Noise-induced hearing loss, such as from exposure to loud noises or machinery
• Age-related hearing loss, which typically affects high-frequency sounds and occurs after age 60
• Blockages in the ear canal, such as earwax or sinus congestion
• Head and neck trauma
• Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorder
• Certain medications, including antibiotics, cancer drugs, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)
• Metabolic disorders like hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, and anemia
• Autoimmune disorders such as Lyme disease and fibromyalgia
• Blood vessel disorders like high blood pressure and atherosclerosis
• Psychiatric conditions including depression and anxiety
• Vestibular disorders like Ménière’s disease and otosclerosis
• Rare tumor-related disorders such as acoustic neuroma and vestibular schwannoma

Diagnosing and Managing Tinnitus

If you are experiencing persistent or bothersome tinnitus, it is important to see an audiologist for a comprehensive diagnostic evaluation. The audiologist will assess your hearing and may refer you to a medical specialist if they suspect an underlying condition. While there is no cure for tinnitus in most cases, it can be effectively managed through a multifactorial treatment plan that may include:

1. Ear-level sound devices or hearing aids (if hearing loss is present)
2. Sound therapy to provide relief and distraction from the tinnitus sounds
3. General wellness and behavioral therapies, such as stress management and cognitive-behavioral therapy

The Importance of Early Detection and Treatment

One of the key challenges with hearing loss and tinnitus is that they often develop gradually, making them easy to overlook or dismiss. However, early detection and treatment are crucial for slowing the progression of these conditions and limiting their impact on your quality of life.

Some of the most common early symptoms of hearing loss include difficulty distinguishing consonant sounds, such as “s,” “f,” “th,” “sh,” “v,” “k,” and “p.” If you are experiencing these or other signs of hearing loss, it is important to schedule an appointment with an audiologist for a comprehensive evaluation.

Managing Tinnitus and Improving Hearing Health

Tinnitus can be a frustrating and debilitating condition, but with the right approach, it can be successfully managed. By working with an audiologist who specializes in tinnitus, you can develop a personalized treatment plan that addresses the underlying cause of your tinnitus and provides relief from the symptoms.

In addition to professional treatment, there are also steps you can take to support your overall hearing health and potentially reduce the impact of tinnitus, such as:

• Avoiding exposure to loud noises
• Practicing stress management and relaxation techniques
• Maintaining a healthy lifestyle, including a balanced diet and regular exercise
• Consulting with your healthcare provider to address any underlying medical conditions

Seeking Professional Help for Tinnitus

If you are experiencing persistent or bothersome tinnitus, it is important to seek professional help from an audiologist or other healthcare provider. They can help determine the underlying cause of your tinnitus and develop a comprehensive treatment plan to manage your symptoms and improve your overall hearing health.

Don’t let tinnitus and hearing loss hold you back from living your best life. By taking proactive steps to address these conditions, you can regain control and enjoy the sounds of the world around you.

Conclusion

Tinnitus, or the perception of sound in the ears when no external sound source is present, is a common and often frustrating condition. While there is no cure for tinnitus in most cases, it can be effectively managed through a multifactorial treatment plan that addresses the underlying cause and provides relief from the symptoms.

By working closely with an audiologist who specializes in tinnitus, you can develop a personalized treatment strategy that may include sound therapy, hearing aids, and other interventions to help you regain control over your hearing health and quality of life. Don’t hesitate to seek professional help if you are experiencing persistent or bothersome tinnitus – your journey to better hearing and well-being begins today.

Tinnitus Causes, Diagnoses and Treatments

Tinnitus is often described as ringing in the ears, but each individual’s experience with tinnitus is different. Some hear crickets chirping, some hear ringing, buzzing or whooshing, and others hear white noise or clicking.

The common denominator for most people who experience tinnitus is that it is the perception of sound when no external sound source is present. It can vary from soft to loud and from low to high pitched.

According to the American Tinnitus Association (ATA), tinnitus is one of the most common health conditions in the United States, affecting approximately 45 million Americans to some degree. An estimated 20 million have symptoms severe enough that they seek medical attention, and approximately 2 million cannot function “normally” on a day-to-day basis.

What Causes Tinnitus?

Tinnitus is not an illness in itself. It’s a symptom of an underlying health condition. Often, tinnitus is the first sign of damage to the hearing system. For example, sometimes people will experience temporary tinnitus after attending a loud concert without hearing protection, or being exposed to loud machinery at work. If those sounds are loud enough or last long enough though, they can cause permanent damage to the hearing system, resulting in hearing loss and tinnitus.

Age-related hearing loss also can result in tinnitus. This is common after age 60. It usually occurs in both ears and especially affects high-frequency sounds. 

Though hearing loss is often associated with tinnitus, blockages in the ear canal, such as ear wax or sinus congestion, also can cause tinnitus symptoms. Often, when the blockage or condition is resolved, the tinnitus goes away.

Other causes of tinnitus include:

• Head and neck trauma
• Temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ)
• Sinus pressure and barometric trauma
• Ototoxic drugs, including certain antibiotics, cancer medications and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS)

Other medical conditions related to tinnitus include:

• Metabolic disorders: hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, anemia
• Autoimmune disorders: Lyme disease, fibromyalgia
• Blood vessel disorders: High blood pressure, atherosclerosis
• Psychiatric disorders: Depression, anxiety, stress
• Vestibular disorders: Ménière’s disease, otosclerosis
• Tumor-related disorders (very rare): Acoustic neuroma, vestibular schwannoma, other tumorous growths. These conditions often result in unilateral tinnitus (tinnitus in one ear only).

Who Can Diagnose and Manage Tinnitus?

If tinnitus affects your ability to live your life to the fullest, or you have had tinnitus for some time but it seems to be getting more severe, see an audiologist for a diagnostic hearing evaluation. If the audiologist determines you have hearing loss, your tinnitus may be connected to it and the audiologist may be able to offer relief in the form of tinnitus management strategies, including hearing aids and sound therapy.

If the audiologist suspects there may be an underlying medical condition causing your tinnitus, they will refer you to the appropriate medical specialist for further evaluation.

The fact is that there is no cure for tinnitus in the majority of cases, but if it’s bothersome, it can be successfully managed with the help of an audiologist who specializes in the condition.

Susan Smittkamp, Au.D., Ph.D., Tinnitus Specialist with Associated Audiologists, utilizes a multifactorial treatment plan involving ear-level sound devices, hearing aids if the patient has a hearing loss, general wellness and behavioral therapies, as appropriate.

If you experience bothersome tinnitus, schedule an appointment with an audiologist for a comprehensive diagnostic evaluation.

Are You Experiencing These Common Hearing Loss Symptoms?

10/26/2021 | Hearing Loss, Patient Resources

Most of us can’t see grass growing, but we can recognize when it is time to get out the lawnmower. Just like growing grass, identifying hearing loss comes on so slowly that most people have no idea they have a problem until it becomes a severe one.

The sad thing is that early detection and treatment of hearing loss can help slow down the process and limit its damage.

As a means of helping members of the Menlo Park and Los Altos communities identify and come to terms with hearing loss before it becomes a more severe problem, I have put together some of the most common early symptoms of hearing loss.

Difficulty Distinguishing Consonant Sounds

Do other people make statements that seem completely ridiculous? Although people sometimes say crazy things, it is the exception rather than the rule. One of the most common early indicators of hearing loss is difficulty distinguishing one consonant sound from another.

The consonant sounds of S, F, Th, Sh, V, K, and P are among those that become indistinguishable. Given their frequent usage in conversations, it is no wonder those with a hearing loss have difficulty making sense out of what others are saying.

The World Has Gotten Quieter

When was the last time you heard birds singing, crickets chirping, the clock ticking, or the buzz of the refrigerator? Those sounds probably haven’t gone away – you can’t hear them anymore.

These sounds tend to register at 2,000 Hz or higher, which is the frequency range that tends to disappear first when a person has a hearing loss. The loss of higher frequency sounds also explains why you are having difficulty understanding conversations with women and children.

Trouble Keeping Up With Conversations In A Crowded Room

Do you have to ask others to repeat themselves more during a party or at a restaurant? One of the functions of healthy hearing is the capacity to pick out sounds and conversations that are near from the other noises of your environment.

Just as we mentioned above, as hearing loss sets in, higher frequency sounds within conversations get lost among the other noises, making it difficult to enjoy social gatherings, sporting events, family get-togethers, or dining out.

Increased Fatigue After a Long Day

Do you come home more exhausted and fatigued than you used to, or do you feel completely drained after a social gathering? Although fatigue and an accompanying headache can relate to a number of causes, one of them could be hearing loss.

Those who perform daily tasks that require a lot of verbal communication or use of the telephone will find themselves coming home with a headache or increased fatigue because they spend their entire day straining to understand conversations.

Constant Ringing, Buzzing, Or Humming Sounds

Do you hear a constant ringing, buzzing, or humming? You are not alone. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that more than 50 million people suffer from the same issue, which is tinnitus. According to researchers, tinnitus is your brain’s way of making up for missing frequencies that it no longer hears, filling in the silence by hearing a constant sound that really isn’t there.

We Provide Professional Hearing Tests And Treatment Solutions

If you can identify with any or several of these common hearing loss symptoms, it is time to schedule a professional hearing test. Untreated hearing loss will only get worse and has the potential to cause other physical and mental health issues as well as decrease your overall quality of life.

An evaluation of your hearing by Pacific Hearing Service is the first step in identifying the source of the problem and its severity so that we can provide treatment solutions to help restore your hearing and your lifestyle.

Contact either our Menlo Park location (650)854-1980 or Los Altos location (650)941-0664 to schedule a teleaudiology consultation or for a hearing test that complies with proper protocols to ensure your health and safety.

Jane H. Baxter, Au.D.

Dr. Baxter became a partner at Pacific Hearing Service in 1986 and both manages and provides audiology services at the Menlo Park office. She completed her clinical doctorate in Audiology (Au.D.) at Salus University, received her graduate training at San Francisco State and UC Berkeley, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Audiology and certified by the American Board of Audiology.

what the noises in the head say

Bells, sea surf and squeak – it happens that only sounds are not heard in a person’s head. And each of them signals a serious illness. How to decipher the noises in your head and keep your health?

Bells, sea surf and squeak – it happens that only sounds are not heard in a person’s head. And each of them signals a serious illness. How to decipher the noises in your head and keep your health?

The buzzing in the ears begins suddenly, at first it is weak, then the noise grows and turns a person’s life into a real torment. Noise attacks result in depression and neurosis, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Tinnitus often indicates other, more serious diseases.

It buzzes and chirps

Each disease has its own noise. If it is similar to the sounds of the tide, there is no time for romance, doctors warn. This is one of the signs of vascular atherosclerosis and hypertension. The fact is that atherosclerotic plaques deposited on the vascular walls narrow the lumen of the vessels and increase blood pressure, which causes tinnitus and pressure in the head.

Noises that increase during physical exertion, during stress, may be a symptom of vascular diseases of the head.

Osteochondrosis is another common cause of tinnitus and head noise, it manifests itself in the form of an unpleasant hum of different heights. Tinnitus (a high-pitched sound resembling the ringing of a bell) signals thyroid disease – a lack or excess of hormones.

In diseases of the inner ear, the patient develops congestion in the ears and noise in the head in the form of chirping and squeaking.

Severe tinnitus is one of the symptoms of a brain tumor. Such patients develop attacks of dizziness, seizures resembling epileptic ones, attacks of nausea and vomiting caused by an increase in intracranial pressure. In this case, you should immediately consult a doctor.

Symptom of what?

Noise in the ears and head is not a disease, but a response to existing pathologies. If you identify and eliminate the cause of extraneous sounds, they will disappear.

Typically, when complaining of noise, the doctor prescribes a magnetic resonance imaging for the patient. This is one of the most effective modern diagnostic methods, moreover, operational. Specialists do tomography of the head or other organs, since the reason is not always in the brain.

Head noise examination includes brain and vascular scans, sometimes it may be necessary to examine the inner ear and cervical spine. MRI results allow the doctor to make the correct diagnosis. Informativeness of these surveys is 98 %.

Tinnitus is the medical term for ringing or noise in the ears. A person describes this unpleasant sensation as a ringing, buzzing, hum, squeak, or other sounds perceived by the ear in the absence of external auditory stimuli. The intensity of noise at different time intervals can vary from a weak, barely noticeable ringing to a strong hum. As practice shows, along with tinnitus, the patient also has a hearing impairment, and the strength of the noise increases in proportion to the hearing loss. Most often, this symptom manifests itself in middle-aged and elderly people (40–80 years). If you constantly hear tinnitus, you should consult a cardiologist, neurologist, endocrinologist.

Hearing and Ear Facts – Acoustic

Facts about hearing and ears

1. Ears grow throughout our lives, as does the nose. Moreover, the ears of one person are completely different from each other, both inside and out.
   2. The sound of the sea when applied to the ear from a seashell is actually the sound of blood circulating through the veins.

   3. Noise weakens human immunity. Scientists have proven that at a sound volume above 65 dB, the pulse increases significantly, and above 90 dB – even tachycardia begins. Every third lover of nightclubs and loud music in 4-5 years has a significant deterioration in hearing.

   4. The diagnosis of congenital hearing loss is mainly characteristic of those children whose parents have never had serious problems with their ears.

   5. Vaccines against mumps, rubella, measles, meningitis and a number of other infections play an important role in preventing hearing loss in children.

   6. Hearing aids improve quality of life 90% of people with hearing problems.

   7. A person hears his voice through the prisms of air and water. The surrounding people perceive our voice in a completely different way, because they hear it much “clearer”.
   8. Crickets and grasshoppers hear with their paws located in front. They are covered with hairs with a film sensitive to noise and sound.
   9. Every tenth earthling suffers from hearing problems and has recommendations for the use of a hearing aid. But 4 out of 5 people who need it don’t use it.
   10. Partially or completely hearing loss is possible at any age. The main reasons may be: prolonged exposure to loud sound, antibiotics, hereditary diseases, otitis media, infectious and viral diseases, complications of diseases during pregnancy, etc.
   11. Women hear better than men, especially when talking in a raised tone. However, men are better at recognizing the distance to the sound source, as well as its direction.
   12. The main cause of hearing problems is exposure to noise.
   13. If a person wants to hear something, he moves only his right ear to the source of the sound.

   14. Using headphones can damage your ears. Ear pores produce wax, small hairs push it out.
   15. Hearing problems are the cause of poor academic performance in a third of schoolchildren.

   16. More than half of the world’s population over the age of 60 develop hearing problems, and forty percent of them require hearing aids.
   17. Sound above 140 dB causes immediate hearing damage every second. 90 dB for a person is already considered dangerous. The smallest sound that a human ear can hear is zero dB.
   18. Elephants hear not only with their ears, but also with their trunk and legs.

   19. The range of frequencies within which people can hear sounds is called the sound or auditory range. Sounds located above this range are commonly called ultrasounds. The ones below are infrasounds. Elephants and whales mostly use infrasound to communicate with their relatives, and dogs use ultrasound. But the bat uses high-pitched sounds for sonar.

   20. Any person, even with some hearing problems, is able to distinguish several sounds at once.
   21. Too much wax in the ear can cause vomiting, dizziness, convulsions, noise, and even partial hearing loss.

   22. Wax plugs can be earned with ear sticks! The thing is that with ear sticks we remove only liquid sulfur. And we push the one that creates the cork into the middle and tamp it down. The majority of the population has traffic jams, but they do not bother them (for the time being). In fact, the ears are not properly cleaned, but washed. It is enough to carry out this procedure at least once a week, because. excess sulfur is removed from the auricle during chewing, and if the ears are not washed, then we will simply have dirty ears.

   23. The average young person visits a club once a week for 5 years, where the average sound level is 115 dB (with the limit threshold without harm to health for an adult of 85 dB). Over five years, the total exposure is at least 1500-2000 hours, which means an irreversible hearing loss of 25 dB.
   24. A teenager hears sounds of higher sound frequencies than older people. In Western countries, young people have turned this feature to their advantage: young people put a certain ringtone on their smartphones, with which they can receive SMS in class, while the teacher does not suspect anything.

   25. It turns out that each human ear hears in its own way. At the same time, it independently submits information to the corresponding hemisphere of the brain (the right ear to the left hemisphere and vice versa).
   26. There are channels near the human ear that function as a gyroscope and help a person navigate in space and keep balance.

27. Men are more likely to have hearing problems at a young age than women. All thanks to the costs of the profession because they often work in places with a violation of the norm of noise pollution.

28. Overeating from all five senses has an effect on hearing.

29. The first precious earrings were worn by sailors so that after death they could be buried with dignity.
    30. When frightened, sulfur is released more intensely.
    31. Absolute hearing does not depend on the condition of the ears, but on the perception of sounds by the brain.
    32. It turns out that it is the ears that give off heat to the external environment. Therefore, people who live in cold climates have smaller ears than those who live in warm countries.