Sound in my head. Tinnitus and Hyperacusis: Understanding Auditory Disorders and Their Impact
What are the symptoms and causes of tinnitus. How does hyperacusis affect daily life. What treatment options are available for these auditory disorders. How can you manage the impact of tinnitus and hyperacusis on your quality of life.
Tinnitus: The Phantom Sound in Your Ears
Tinnitus, a condition affecting approximately 20% of Americans, is characterized by the perception of sound in the absence of an external source. This phantom noise can manifest as ringing, buzzing, roaring, clicking, or hissing, often described as similar to the sound one hears when pressing an ear against a seashell. Despite its prevalence, only about 16% of those affected seek medical attention, even when the condition significantly disrupts their daily lives.
Interestingly, 90% of individuals with tinnitus also experience some degree of hearing loss, although they may not be aware of it. This correlation highlights the complex relationship between tinnitus and overall auditory health.
The Mechanism Behind Tinnitus
Tinnitus is not a condition in itself but rather a symptom of an underlying issue, often related to hearing loss. The sensation occurs when tiny hair cells in the inner ear misfire, sending random electrical impulses to the brain that are interpreted as sound. These impulses are not triggered by actual sound waves, which explains why the noise is only perceived by the affected individual.
Common Causes of Tinnitus
Several factors can contribute to the development of tinnitus:
- Age-related hearing loss (presbycusis)
- Exposure to loud noises (acute or chronic)
- Earwax buildup
- Changes in ear bone structure
- Ménière’s disease
- Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorders
- Head injuries
- High blood pressure
- Rare tumors in the ear
- Medication side effects
Among these causes, presbycusis is the most common, particularly in individuals over 60 years of age. However, each case of tinnitus is unique, and identifying the specific cause is crucial for effective management.
Diagnosing and Treating Tinnitus
The first step in addressing tinnitus is to undergo a comprehensive hearing test and ear examination. These assessments help identify the root cause of the problem, which is essential for developing an effective treatment plan.
In many cases, treating the underlying condition can significantly reduce or even eliminate tinnitus symptoms. For instance, if hearing loss is the primary issue, the use of hearing aids can amplify real sounds, making the phantom noises less noticeable.
At-Home Management Strategies
While professional treatment is crucial, there are several strategies that individuals can employ at home to manage tinnitus:
- White noise machines: These devices produce soothing environmental sounds that can mask the tinnitus, especially during sleep.
- Background noise: Creating a gentle, persistent sound in your environment (e.g., using a fan or humidifier) can help keep ear cells occupied and reduce misfiring.
- Relaxation techniques: Stress management can help alleviate tinnitus symptoms, as stress often exacerbates the condition.
- Avoiding triggers: Identifying and minimizing exposure to sounds or situations that worsen tinnitus can be beneficial.
Hyperacusis: When Everyday Sounds Become Unbearable
Hyperacusis is a rare auditory disorder characterized by an increased sensitivity to everyday sounds. Affecting approximately 1 in 50,000 people, this condition can make normally tolerable sounds seem unbearably loud. Interestingly, many individuals with hyperacusis also experience tinnitus, highlighting a potential connection between these two auditory phenomena.
Symptoms of Hyperacusis
The symptoms of hyperacusis can significantly impact daily life. Common signs include:
- Discomfort or pain when exposed to ordinary sounds
- Feeling overwhelmed in noisy environments
- Difficulty concentrating due to sound sensitivity
- Anxiety or stress related to potential sound exposure
- Social isolation to avoid triggering sounds
Sounds that may be particularly challenging for individuals with hyperacusis include:
- Running water from a faucet
- Kitchen appliances (e.g., refrigerators, dishwashers)
- Car engines
- Loud conversations
- Music or television at normal volumes
The Impact of Auditory Disorders on Quality of Life
Both tinnitus and hyperacusis can have profound effects on an individual’s quality of life. These conditions may lead to:
- Sleep disturbances
- Difficulty concentrating
- Emotional distress (anxiety, depression)
- Social withdrawal
- Reduced work productivity
- Strained personal relationships
Understanding the far-reaching consequences of these auditory disorders underscores the importance of seeking proper diagnosis and treatment.
Advances in Auditory Disorder Research
Ongoing research in the field of auditory disorders continues to shed light on the mechanisms behind tinnitus and hyperacusis. Recent studies have explored:
- The role of neural plasticity in the development and persistence of tinnitus
- Potential genetic factors contributing to hyperacusis susceptibility
- The effectiveness of sound therapy in managing both conditions
- The use of cognitive-behavioral therapy to address the psychological aspects of auditory disorders
- Emerging technologies for more precise diagnosis and targeted treatment
These advancements offer hope for improved management strategies and potential breakthroughs in treating tinnitus and hyperacusis.
Holistic Approaches to Auditory Health
Maintaining overall auditory health is crucial for preventing and managing conditions like tinnitus and hyperacusis. A holistic approach to ear care includes:
- Regular hearing check-ups
- Protecting ears from loud noises
- Maintaining a healthy diet rich in vitamins and minerals that support ear health
- Managing stress levels
- Staying physically active to promote good circulation, including to the ears
- Avoiding ototoxic medications when possible
- Practicing good sleep hygiene
By adopting these practices, individuals can contribute to their long-term auditory well-being and potentially reduce the risk of developing or exacerbating auditory disorders.
The Future of Auditory Disorder Treatment
As our understanding of tinnitus and hyperacusis continues to grow, so does the potential for more effective treatments. Emerging areas of research include:
- Neuromodulation techniques to alter brain activity associated with tinnitus
- Personalized sound therapy protocols based on individual tinnitus characteristics
- Gene therapy approaches for hereditary forms of hearing loss and associated tinnitus
- Advanced hearing aid technologies that incorporate tinnitus management features
- Virtual reality applications for desensitization in hyperacusis treatment
These innovative approaches hold promise for improving the lives of those affected by auditory disorders, offering hope for more comprehensive and tailored treatment options in the future.
The Role of Patient Advocacy and Support
Living with tinnitus or hyperacusis can be challenging, but patients are not alone in their journey. Support groups and patient advocacy organizations play a crucial role in:
- Providing emotional support and coping strategies
- Sharing information about the latest research and treatment options
- Raising public awareness about auditory disorders
- Advocating for increased research funding and improved healthcare policies
- Connecting patients with healthcare professionals specializing in auditory disorders
Engaging with these resources can empower individuals to take an active role in managing their condition and contribute to the broader community of those affected by auditory disorders.
Integrating Auditory Health into Overall Wellness
Recognizing the interconnectedness of auditory health with overall well-being is essential for comprehensive care. This integration involves:
- Considering the impact of auditory disorders on mental health and addressing psychological aspects of treatment
- Exploring the relationship between auditory health and other systemic conditions, such as cardiovascular health
- Incorporating auditory health checks into routine physical examinations
- Educating healthcare providers across specialties about the signs and symptoms of auditory disorders
- Promoting interdisciplinary collaboration in the treatment of complex cases
By adopting a more holistic view of auditory health, healthcare systems can provide more comprehensive and effective care for individuals with tinnitus, hyperacusis, and other auditory disorders.
As research progresses and awareness grows, the outlook for individuals affected by tinnitus and hyperacusis continues to improve. With ongoing advancements in treatment options and a greater understanding of these complex conditions, there is hope for enhanced quality of life and more effective management strategies in the years to come.
What’s That Weird Noise in Your Head
Do you hear that ringing in your ears and wonder where it comes from? You’re not alone. It is estimated by the Hearing Health Foundation that 20 percent of Americans hear that same ringing sound, or ones similar to it, each day. Only around 16 percent of those with tinnitus will discuss the problem with a physician even though it disrupts their lives. Of that 20 percent, 90 percent of them also live with hearing loss even if they realize it. It is a growing concern throughout the country, but what does all the noise mean?
About Tinnitus?
Tinnitus is the medical name for the phantom sound in your ears. There is no one source for this noise – it’s actually a symptom of another problem, one usually associated with loss of hearing. Tinnitus is more of a sensation than an actual sound, too. This is why no one else hears the noise that’s keeping you awake at night. There are no sound waves causes this phenomenon, instead, it relates directly to tiny hairs inside the inner ear that produce an electrical signal telling the brain there is a sound. These cells are misfiring, sending random electrical impulses not based on any true noise.
There is More to Tinnitus Than Just Ringing
Tinnitus is usually described as a high-pitched ringing, but not everyone hears the same thing. Some report:
- Buzzing
- Roaring
- Clicking
- Hissing
Others say it sounds like you are pressing your ear up against a seashell to hear the waves. The diversity of sounds is one thing that makes this condition confusing, especially for some who fails to get medical treatment or a hearing test.
What is Behind Tinnitus?
Tinnitus is basically a mechanical breakdown of a critical element in the inners ear. For most people with it, the answer is presbycusis, an age-related cause of hearing loss.It’s a problem that gets worse after age 60. Other possible causes of tinnitus include:
- Exposure to loud noises – This could be a one-time bang or daily hearing abuse from machines, headphones or loud music
- Earwax – Build up of earwax causes temporary hearing loss that triggers the ringing
- Changes in the ear bones – This is a hereditary condition caused by abnormal bone growth in the ear
There are other possible, but less common, triggers for tinnitus, too, such as Ménière’s disease, a condition that leads to abnormal fluid pressure in the inner ear. TMJ disorders may also be at the heart of that phantom sound. For some, the noise is a consequence of a head injury that damaged the nerves in the ear. It might also be a sign of high blood pressure, a rare tumor in the ear or a side effect of a medication.
What Can You Do About Tinnitus?
The first step is to get a hearing test and ear examination to find the root cause of the problem. Once you treat the underlying condition, like getting hearing aids, the tinnitus may become less prevalent or disappear completely. Tinnitus is usually a sign of hearing loss that may be affecting your life in other ways, too, like isolating you during conversations or leaving you feeling like you are missing things. Once you identify your hearing loss, then getting hearing aids increases real sounds so the phantom ones are less of an issue. There are other things you can do at home, too, to help deal with what can be an annoying and distracting problem. White noise machines produce environmental sounds that sooth your mind, especially if tinnitus is keeping you awake. You can fall asleep listening to the rain, for example, instead of that buzzing in your head. You can create your own background noise, too, to deflect some of the tinnitus chaos. A fan blowing in the room might help or a humidifier – anything that produces a soft, but persistent sound to keep the hair cells in the ear busy so they don’t misfire. It’s important to remember, though, that the ringing is trying to tell you something. Most likely the message is about hearing loss, so it’s worth a trip to the doctor to get a hearing test and find out more about your ear health.
Sound Sensitivity Causes and Treatment
What Is Hyperacusis?
Hyperacusis is a hearing disorder that makes it hard to deal with everyday sounds. You might also hear it called sound or noise sensitivity. If you have it, certain sounds may seem unbearably loud even though people around you don’t seem to notice them.
Hyperacusis is rare. It affects 1 in 50,000 people. Most people who have it also have another condition called tinnitus, which is a buzzing or ringing in your ear.
Hyperacusis is a hearing disorder. But a lot of people who have it also have normal hearing.
Symptoms of Hyperacusis
The symptoms of hyperacusis can affect your everyday life and include:
Some sounds that might seem louder than they should include:
- A running faucet
- A kitchen appliance, like a refrigerator or dishwasher
- A car engine
- A loud conversation
Some people are only mildly bothered by these sounds. Others have severe symptoms such as a loss of balance or seizures.
Hyperacusis Causes and Risk Factors
Your ears detect sounds as vibrations. If you have hyperacusis, your brain confuses or exaggerates certain vibrations. So even if you get the same signals as someone else, your brain reacts differently to them. That’s what causes the discomfort.
People aren’t typically born with hyperacusis. It usually results from certain diseases or health issues. The most common ones are:
Being around a loud noise also can cause hyperacusis. Something like a single loud gunshot can trigger the condition. But it also can come from being near loud noises over a long period.
Hyperacusis Diagnosis
If you think you have hyperacusis, you’ll see an ear, nose, and throat doctor (ENT, or otolaryngologist). They’ll ask about your medical history, look closely at your ears, and give you a hearing test to confirm it.
Hyperacusis Treatment and Home Remedies
Treatment will depend on what caused it. In some cases, like with injuries to your brain or ear, the sound sensitivity might get better on its own.
If it doesn’t, the doctor might suggest something called sound desensitization. You’ll work with a specialist who’ll help you learn to deal with sound. You’ll listen to very quiet noises for a certain period every day and build up gradually to louder sounds.
Most of the time, you’ll wear a device on your affected ear or on both ears. It puts out a sound like static, so it shouldn’t bother you or cause pain. It can take 6 months to a year or more to get the full benefit of the therapy.
There hasn’t been enough research done on other hyperacusis treatments to know if they’re helpful. These include acupuncture and relaxation exercises. Another option, auditory integration therapy (AIT), is often used in autism treatment. It involves listening to music at different volumes for a period of time every day.
Your doctor also may give you medicine to help you manage the stress the condition can cause.
If you have hyperacusis, you might be tempted to use earplugs to muffle sound or stay away from social situations where there might be sounds that bother you. While these can give you short-term relief, they can, over the long term, make your symptoms worse. That’s because when you eventually remove your earplugs or go into a social setting, the sounds can seem even louder.
Sound therapy may train the brain to ignore tinnitus
By Lisa Rapaport, Reuters Health
(Reuters Health) – A sound-emitting device worn in the ear during sleep may train the brain to ignore an annoying chronic ringing in the ears, a new study suggests.
People with the disorder, known as tinnitus, who slept with the in-ear devices felt less bothered than patients who used bedside noise machines, researchers found in a study funded by the device manufacturer.
Tinnitus is the perception of sound that has no source outside the head, and it’s often caused by exposure to loud noise. While sound therapy is one of the treatments doctors recommend, research to date has offered a mixed picture of how well this works at reducing how much people notice ringing in their ears.
For the current study, researchers randomly assigned 60 patients with tinnitus to sleep with one of three sound therapy devices: a customized in-ear device that played sounds matched to the ringing sounds patients typically heard; an in-ear device that let patients select a pre-set sound; or a bedside noise machine.
After three months of treatment, patients with all three types of sound therapy reported being less bothered by ringing in their ears. However, people with the customized in-ear device reported a greater reduction in the perceived loudness of tinnitus than other participants.
“By listening to this sound while sleeping, the idea is the brain will learn to ignore the tinnitus,” said lead study author Sarah Theodoroff, a researcher at the VA Portland Health Care System and Oregon Health and Science University.
“This study lends additional support that sound-based therapy helps reduce tinnitus distress,” Theodoroff said by email.
With the customized in-ear device, participants created a tinnitus “sound print” by using software to identify the sounds that most closely matched the ringing they heard in their ears. These patients were asked to listen to the sound print each night and adjust the volume to match the loudness of tinnitus.
People who got the other in-ear device could choose settings with white noise, band noise or a combination of the two. They were asked to select the noise option and volume level that felt most comfortable.
Similarly, patients who received the bedside noise machine were asked to choose a comfortable sound and volume. If they shared a bedroom, they were told it was fine to include their partner in their selection.
Both in-ear devices in the study were Levo System products. The study was funded by Baker Group LLP, which manufactures Levo System devices.
One drawback of the study is that it lacked a control group of patients who didn’t receive sound therapy. It also didn’t directly compare sound therapy to other interventions for tinnitus like cognitive behavioral therapy or hearing aids.
There’s also no way to objectively measure whether the loudness of tinnitus is reduced by sound therapy, Theodoroff noted. That’s why researchers focused instead on reducing reactions to tinnitus, she said.
The best option for patients with tinnitus is to see a doctor, advised Dr. Jennifer Derebery, a partner at the House Ear Clinic and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine.
“They should get their hearing checked if they have tinnitus and see if there is an underlying reason that can be identified,” Derebery, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.
Causes might include grinding the teeth at night or taking certain medications like aspirin or certain anti-inflammatory drugs, she said.
With time, most patients can adjust to the ringing in their ears to the point where it’s no longer an issue or they only think about it some of the time, Derebery added. If sleep is an issue, some sound in the room at night, even if it’s just ambient noise, may help people with mild or moderate tinnitus.
In-ear devices might help when symptoms are more persistent or severe, Derebery advised.
SOURCE: bit.ly/2EY2BDn American Journal of Audiology, online December 12, 2017.
Tinnitus: The Sound That Comes From Nowhere
Melanie West, 63, has had a ringing in her ears as long as she can remember. When she was a kid in the ‘50s and ‘60s, it was a high-pitched sound in both ears that her doctors did not believe existed. “I would go from doctor to doctor explaining, ‘I hear this sound inside of my head, and it won’t let me sleep.’ I was having a hard time concentrating, and they would tell me that I don’t have it,” she says. When West was stressed, or hadn’t had enough sleep, it would get worse and her grades would plummet. Once, the noise made her so tense that she broke a hairbrush she was holding.
The trouble with tinnitus—the medical term for ear-ringing—is there’s really no good way to measure a sound that only the patient can hear. Interest in and recognition of the condition has improved in the past couple decades, partly thanks to advances in brain science. But when West, now the CEO and chair of the board of directors of the American Tinnitus Association (ATA), was young, it was less understood.
Over time, she adapted. She read a lot of psychology books and says those helped. She started to manage a pretty good quality of life, until she got in a car accident in 2008. Another vehicle rear-ended hers at about 55 miles per hour, and something about this event changed the sound considerably.
It got louder—about twice as loud, she says—and fuller, and made more of a “shh” sound. The noise is now louder in her right ear than her left, “so they’re not the same, and even that becomes a little irritating,” she says. After the accident, “I couldn’t sleep, I didn’t want to eat. It just affects every single part of your life.”
Talking with doctors, once again, was frustrating. She describes visiting otolaryngologists—ear, nose, and throat doctors—and “literally, I sat in the parking lot, crying, because they would simply look at you and say ‘There’s nothing we can do for you,’” she says. “‘Go home and learn to live with it’—I have heard that so many times in my life.”
* * *
Tinnitus is often described as ringing in the ears, but that’s not the only sound that qualifies. It can also present as buzzing, roaring, clicking, hissing, or a noise like crickets, among other things. A type known as pulsatile tinnitus is rhythmic, often keeping time with the person’s heartbeat.
Most people will probably experience temporary tinnitus at some point in their lives after exposure to loud noises—after a concert, say. But it will likely go away. Estimating how many people have tinnitus, and the severity of each case, is difficult, because different studies have defined it in different ways. According to one measure, 50 million Americans—or 25 percent of the population—experienced any tinnitus in the past year, while 16 million, or 8 percent, experienced it “frequently.” The ATA reports that 20 million people have “burdensome” tinnitus and 2 million have “extreme and debilitating” cases. The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) asks people if they’ve had tinnitus that lasted for more than five minutes in the past year—10 percent (25 million) have. “We’re interested in something that pushes the threshold so that they noticed it for a while,” says Howard Hoffman, the director of epidemiology and statistics at the NIDCD.
Suffice it to say it’s a common experience—and, for a significant number of people, an exhausting one.
Tinnitus is not a disease in and of itself, but it can be a symptom of other underlying problems. It can also be a symptom of nothing in particular. Pulsatile tinnitus, which accounts for less than 10 percent of tinnitus cases, is unique in that it can typically be heard by the doctor as well as the patient, and it tends to be a sign of something wrong with the vascular system. With idiopathic tinnitus—the kind only the sufferer can hear—the story is more complex. It is often associated with hearing loss, but not always, and the chances of getting it increase with age. It can indicate a tumor (in which case the tinnitus will usually be one-sided) or appear as part of Ménière’s disease, otosclerosis (a disorder that causes progressive deafness), or disorders of the temperomandibular joint that connects the jaw to the skull. Exposure to loud noises, especially over long periods of time, puts a person at risk, so construction workers and musicians have higher rates of tinnitus than the general population. Tinnitus is also the number-one disability among veterans.
But “in a majority of cases, there is no known cause,” says Deborah Hall, a professor of hearing sciences at the University of Nottingham. She estimates that about 80 percent of the time, doctors would not be able to pinpoint where a patient’s tinnitus came from.
* * *
Descriptions of tinnitus date all the way back to ancient civilizations. An Egyptian sheet of papyrus from the 16th century B.C. describes “bewitched ear,” and the Assyrians wrote on clay tablets around 700 B.C. about three different kinds of tinnitus: “whispering,” “speaking,” and “singing” of the ears.
We now know, though, that it’s actually the brain that’s singing, usually. A study from 1981 looked at patients with tinnitus who had surgery to cut their auditory nerves. Forty-five percent said their tinnitus improved post-surgery, but 55 percent said it stayed the same or got worse. Even after the nerve responsible for hearing was severed, they still heard the sound, indicating that whatever was happening to them, it wasn’t only in the ear.
When the ear is damaged, some of the auditory input the brain is used to getting suddenly disappears, explains Jinsheng Zhang, a professor of otolaryngology and communication sciences and disorders at Wayne State University. (Zhang is also the chair of the ATA’s scientific-advisory committee.) To compensate for the loss of those signals from the outside world, the brain’s auditory system becomes more active.
“Now, you can hear my voice, because my voice is a sound that’s converted to a signal,” Zhang says. “My sound signal is converted by your hair cells into neural signals and they travel to the brain. This stimulates lots of nerve cells in the brain. They become excited and they start to fire. The increased neural activity is coded, it has meaning. But if the ear is damaged, there is no sound but the brain has enhanced activity. This enhanced activity has no coded meaning.” The meaningless activity can be perceived as a sound, and then you’ve got tinnitus.
This is the simple explanation. Exactly what the brain is doing to compensate is more complex and hard to understand, and likely differs from person to person, given the wide variability in how people experience tinnitus. Some tinnitus, as previously noted, doesn’t involve hearing loss, which doesn’t seem to jive with the idea that the brain is compensating for missing sound. But research in mice has shown that there can be damage present in the inner ear even without changes to the animal’s hearing threshold, so it may be that problems can lurk even under seemingly perfect hearing—or that current tools may not be able to detect some kinds of slight hearing loss.
To treat tinnitus, a Welsh manuscript from the 14th century recommends taking a hot loaf of bread out of the oven, tearing it in half and holding it over your ears.
Aside from the auditory system, brain regions that deal with attention, arousal, and emotions are also involved in the experience of tinnitus—the condition is defined not just by the sound, but by how people react to it. If you constantly heard ringing, but you were cool with it, then it wouldn’t be a huge problem. Zhang compares it to pain—two people may get the same injury and one may be able to tolerate the pain better than the other.
“The way we manage it not only needs to treat an audiological problem, but there’s quite a lot of psychology in there as well,” Hall says. “Trying to change the way that people think about their tinnitus and what significance it has for them.”
* * *
Here are some ways people tried to treat tinnitus in the past: The ancient Egyptians suggested poking reeds into your ears. The Assyrians would chant an incantation. Pliny the Elder, an ancient Roman scholar, favored earthworms boiled in goose grease and stuck into the ear as a treatment for all manner of ear maladies. A Welsh manuscript from the 14th century recommends taking a hot loaf of bread out of the oven, tearing it in half and holding it over your ears. “Bind and thus produce perspiration, and by the help of God you will be cured,” it reads.
Today, the available treatments are less yeasty. They focus on the two avenues Hall suggested: masking the sound, and helping people cope with it.
There is still a lot about tinnitus that is not understood, and there is no cure. There’s nothing doctors can do as of yet to make the sound go away, though researchers are looking into different kinds of brain stimulation as a possibility. But everyone I spoke to was adamant that doctors should not tell patients they just have to live with it.
As with pain, doctors treating tinnitus (usually) only have the patient’s subjective experience to go on. Hall says doctors will typically just talk with the patient about what kinds of sounds they’re hearing, how loud, and how often. To determine the pitch and volume, they may play sound recordings and ask the patient which one matches their tinnitus, but “those kind of objective measures are still more often in the domain of research rather than in the clinic,” she says. Usually, it’s just patient reports. As long as there are no indications of anything more serious, like a brain tumor or the vascular problems that can come with pulsatile tinnitus, it’s not totally necessary to figure out the sound’s origins in order to treat it.
“The concern is how it interferes with people’s daily life, as opposed to putting a label on it, saying ‘Well, this is due to that,” Hoffman says.
For people whose tinnitus comes with hearing loss, getting a hearing aid can often improve their tinnitus as well as their hearing. Doctors may recommend cognitive-behavioral therapy to reduce the distress that tinnitus can cause. Or they may recommend sound therapy, which distracts the brain from the noise it’s creating by masking it with other sounds. This can be as simple as playing background music, or as elaborate as a hearing aid that can also pipe white noise into the ear.
The American Tinnitus Association has a story its members like to tell, about how its co-founders, Jack Vernon and Charles Unice, came up with the idea for sound therapy. According to West (and to a story in the spring 2011 issue of the ATA’s magazine Tinnitus Today), Unice, who suffered from tinnitus himself, came to Portland from California in 1971 to visit Vernon. While they were out for lunch, they passed Portland’s Lovejoy Fountain. Unice stopped in his tracks and declared that while he stood by the fountain, he couldn’t hear his tinnitus. And thus the two men realized that if noise is the problem, the solution is … more noise.
West has found this to be true for herself. After her car accident, she reached out to an ATA support group, which recommended she see Michael Robb, an oto-neurologist in Phoenix, Arizona. “It took him a year to convince me,” she says. “I’ve got a little bit of vanity in me.” But once he fitted her with hearing aids that also provide sound therapy, the volume of her tinnitus went down by half. She was so impressed with Robb’s work that she volunteered to work with him as an assistant and a scheduler. A little while later, he hired her for the job as a paid position. She does this now in addition to her role as CEO of the ATA.
“[The hearing aids have] made a tremendous difference, and that’s why I dedicate myself to helping other people enjoy a better quality of life,” she says. “Do, please, in your article, give people hope. And be sure to use some ear protection.”
Ask the Doctors – What causes the hissing sound in my ear?
- Aging
- Ask the Doctors – What causes the hissing sound in my ear?
By Ask the Doctors • June 27, 2018
Dear Doctors: Sometimes I get a sudden hissing sound in my right ear that lasts for a few minutes and then slowly goes away. What is it and is there anything I can do to make it stop?
Dr. Elizabeth Ko and Dr. Eve Glazier
Exposure to noise is a major cause of tinnitus, as is hearing loss. Both can result in damage to the sensitive hair cells that line the cochlea. This is the portion of the inner ear that translates vibrations into nerve impulses, which are then sent to the brain to be interpreted as sound.
Blockage due to earwax buildup, as well as changes to the ear bones as we age can contribute to tinnitus. Some medications, including certain antibiotics, cancer drugs, antidepressants and high doses of aspirin are known to play a role in tinnitus.
Although the most common form of tinnitus involves a ringing in the ears, people with this condition may also hear the hissing you describe, as well as buzzing, clicking, humming, whistling or a roaring sound, like wind. In rare cases, patients with tinnitus have even reported hearing music.
Tinnitus can affect one or both ears. It ranges in volume from a low, background noise that is bearable and even forgettable, to sounds that are so loud and persistent, they interfere with daily life. In many cases, tinnitus is temporary. In severe cases, the phantom sounds never go away.
It is estimated that up to 45 million Americans – that’s 15 percent of the population – report having some form of tinnitus on a regular basis. Like you, the vast majority of them have subjective tinnitus, which is sound that only the patient can hear. In objective tinnitus, which affects just one percent of the population, the sounds a patient hears are audible to others as well. The causes of objective tinnitus are most often internal conditions related to blood flow in vessels near the ear.
Men are more prone to tinnitus than women, and it becomes increasingly common as we age. Individuals who work in loud environments such as factories and construction sites are at increased risk. Recent studies suggest that earbuds, which sit so close to the delicate structures of the inner ear, may also put users at higher risk.
At this time, there is no single treatment for tinnitus. An examination by an ear specialist, known as an otolaryngologist, can pinpoint whether tinnitus is due to earwax buildup, medication, or, more rarely, a blood vessel condition. These are often treatable. If not, your doctor can help you explore noise suppression techniques such as using a white noise machine, or masking devices that are worn in the ears.
Meanwhile, you can take steps to lessen the impact of tinnitus. Make sure your blood pressure is under control, avoid loud noises, which can set off a tinnitus episode, and – this will improve your overall quality of life – be sure to get enough rest.
Eve Glazier, MD., MBA, and Elizabeth Ko, MD., are internists at UCLA Health. Dr. Glazier is an associate professor of medicine; Dr. Ko is an assistant professor of medicine.
Ask the Doctors is a syndicated column first published by UExpress syndicate.
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Jean-Luc Puel, a professor of neuroscience in Montpellier, France, is not convinced that tinnitus always originates as a phantom sound in the brain. He has studied rats and guinea pigs that were treated with high doses of aspirin or exposed to noise trauma. Puel believes that glutamate, a neurotransmitter, is inappropriately processed in the cochlea, which causes abnormal impulses from the acoustic nerve, and that by infusing the animal’s ear with a drug that blocks the action of glutamate he can reduce the tinnitus. More broadly, Puel argues that the disorder may have multiple causes. “This conflict between peripheral and central origin of tinnitus is simplistic,” he said. “To have perception of tinnitus, which is subjective, you need a brain.” Puel allows that his view is contrarian, adding, “I like to arrive at scientific meetings and disturb people.” But he also believes that different causes of tinnitus may reflect differences in biology. “There is no one type of tinnitus,” he told me.
When I visited Salvi’s laboratories, Edward Lobarinas, a researcher, was conducting experiments on rats that had been subjected to acoustic trauma. Lobarinas showed me a Plexiglas platform with an embedded pressure sensor attached to a computer. On top of the Plexiglas was a metal mesh canopy. First, a normal rat that served as a control was caged under the canopy and the entire apparatus was placed inside an acoustic chamber, into which Lobarinas delivered a steady noise with a narrow frequency range. “It’s a continual sound in the background, a sort of sh-h-h,” he said. This was interrupted by a loud bang. “The animal startles,” he said, and this sent a measurement of the movement through the pressure sensor to the computer screen, which showed a sharp spike.
In the next step, the sudden bang was preceded by a silent gap in the noise. This time, the rat had a much smaller startle reflex, seen on the computer as a low peak. “When you have a silent gap before the loud noise, you’re less startled,” Lobarinas said. “It’s like when it’s dark and you’re in your room and a bogeyman jumps out at you. You have a maximum startle. But if, before the bogeyman jumps out, the door is slowly creaking open, you sort of know the bogeyman is going to come out, and that decreases your startle.”
When a rat with induced hearing loss underwent the same experiment, it had a robust startle reflex even when the loud noise was preceded by silence. “The rat has tinnitus,” Lobarinas said. “It can’t tell us, of course, but it has constant buzzing in the ear, and we know that although it hears, it doesn’t perceive the silent gap because of tinnitus. So its startle reflex is not attenuated. It doesn’t hear the door slowly creaking open, just the bogeyman.”
Total funding for tinnitus research in the United States has recently been little more than three million dollars. “People don’t realize how complicated tinnitus really is,” Salvi said. “It’s in the same league as epilepsy and many neurological disorders. But so little money is spent on it, so there is almost no scientific database you can build on.”
Perry Jefferies, now a forty-eight-year-old retired Army first sergeant, entered Iraq with the 4th Infantry Division in April, 2003, as part of the initial invasion of Operation Iraqi Freedom. “We moved from Kuwait to Baghdad,” he told me, when we spoke by phone, “and then went up to Tikrit, until we were posted at the Iran border.” Jefferies escorted and resupplied units moving into battle. After one firefight, as his convoy was evacuating an injured Iraqi soldier, U.S. helicopters fired missiles into enemy ammunition bunkers. “We were right there at the explosions,” he said. Later, as his convoy was resupplying a unit near the border with Iran, a massive explosion at a nearby Iraqi fort rocked his Humvee. “We think that looters set it off,” he said. “It fried the fort.”
Although hearing trauma was most intense in combat, Jefferies said, he had been exposed to repeated noise during his many years in the military. During basic training, while on the weapons range, “we only wore one earplug, so you could hear the instructor when he yelled at you.” While learning how to fire a .50-calibre gun from an armored personnel carrier, he recalled, “we had no hearing protection. Afterwards, blood was coming out of one of my ears.” He had ruptured his right eardrum. Even so, the close-range explosion at the fort was different from anything he had experienced before. “I felt like I was under water for a few minutes,” he said. Since that time, he has been afflicted with tinnitus. “It is a high, steady electronic tone,” he told me. “And my ears feel heavy and blocked.”
As a first sergeant, Jefferies acted as an adviser to soldiers during their deployment. “One of my jobs was to try to find answers,” he said. “But I don’t remember any discussion about hearing protection.” The soldiers in his unit were required to carry earplugs, but many of them would simply attach the case to the front of their protective vests. “I had to listen sometimes to three different radios in the Humvee and respond,” Jefferies went on. No one, he told me, wore hearing protection, even when machine guns were test-fired on the base. In 2004, Jefferies retired from active service and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Legion of Merit.
Jefferies’s hearing fluctuates, at times diminishing to thirty-five per cent below normal, and he is now receiving ten-per-cent disability compensation for tinnitus. He is active in the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and works as a blood-donor recruiter at Robertson Blood Center, at Fort Hood, in Texas. “It is hard to hear in a bar or restaurant, hard to discern certain words, and I have to turn up the TV,” he told me. At times, the high-pitched drone of his tinnitus wakes him in the middle of the night.
A recent report from the Department of Veterans Affairs estimated that nearly seventy thousand of the 1.3 million soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan are collecting disability for tinnitus, and more than fifty-eight thousand are on disability for hearing loss. In 2006, the V.A. reportedly spent five hundred and thirty-nine million dollars on payments to veterans with tinnitus. A survey of more than a hundred and forty-one thousand Army active-duty, reserve, and Guard members who were examined in audiology clinics from April, 2003, through March, 2004, showed that tinnitus accounted for more than thirty per cent of post-deployment-related diagnoses. The study, from the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, concluded, “There were not adequate supplies of earplugs to fit all deploying soldiers. There was also failure of an Army medical readiness automation system . . . to provide unit commanders with information regarding troops having adequate hearing protection. . . . Finally, there is evidence . . . that soldiers having blast injuries may not have been referred to audiology for adequate evaluation and treatment.” As with body armor and protective shielding on Humvees, the Pentagon had failed to anticipate the kind of hearing-protection devices that were needed. Even soldiers who were provided with earplugs were given insufficient instruction in their use; mistakenly believing that the earplugs could interfere with low-frequency sounds, like whispered commands during search-and-destroy operations, many chose not to use them.
Theresa Schulz, an audiologist who served in the military for twenty-one years, told me that hearing loss accompanying tinnitus is now the No. 1 cause of disability among veterans of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. “I think it’s probably because of the nature of urban warfare,” she said, given that gunfire and mortar and grenade explosions occur in relatively confined and often closed areas. After Schulz left the military, she worked for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, in the field of hearing conservation among workers, and she is now employed in the private sector, developing devices that can protect against noise trauma. For civilians, Schulz noted, extraordinary noise like construction blasts or jackhammering can often be anticipated and protected against, but “in the military that’s not the case. It can come up anytime.”
“We’re not friends—she just e-mails me things I’m not interested in.”
In the fall of 2004, in an article for Hearing Health titled “Troops Return with Alarming Rates of Hearing Loss,” Schulz wrote, “Unfortunately, the resources required to accomplish the hearing conservation mission throughout the armed forces are diminishing just as the problem worsens.” Positions for active-duty audiologists, Schulz noted, were quickly being eliminated; since 1990, these positions had dwindled from seventy-three to twenty-five, with six more posts expected to be eliminated in the coming years. Meanwhile, Schulz wrote, “In the Army . . . only forty-six per cent of those soldiers who require an annual hearing evaluation—because they are exposed to hazardous noise as a part of their routine duties—received one last year.”
The military has attempted to make hearing protection more widely available. The combat-arms earplug currently in use was originally developed in France, in the late nineteen-nineties, and contains a unique acoustic filter that is about the size of a grain of rice. The filter creates acoustic friction to capture potentially harmful sound waves and turn them around, so that the noise doesn’t send signals into the ear canal. Schulz described it as low-end, explaining, “It’s basically just a fairly traditional earplug that has a filter in it, that allows through most of the sounds that you would normally hear,” while blocking sharper noises, like gunfire. A more sophisticated device, called QuietPro, is a lightweight digital tactical-communication headset with high-level hearing protection. Continuous low-frequency rumbling noises above eighty-five decibels, such as those produced by helicopters and armored vehicles, are attenuated by more than thirty decibels. Outer microphones amplify surrounding sound, but very loud impact noises from I.E.D.s are instantly blocked by a digital processor; normal amplification is restored immediately after the impact sound has passed. “It’s essentially a hearing aid and a hearing protector in one,” Schulz said. “It’s a device that allows you to turn up the sound so that you can hear what’s on the other side of a door, what’s around the corner. . . . It basically shuts down and protects you during the blast and then comes back on so that you can hear what’s going on after the blast.” The Marines have adopted the QuietPro, but the Army and the Air Force, Schulz said, are taking a “wait-and-see approach,” particularly since each QuietPro unit costs about a thousand dollars. But, Schulz noted, hearing loss and tinnitus can prevent soldiers from being redeployed and qualifies as a disability. “It’s one of those pay-me-now, pay-me-later” situations, Schulz said. “Pay-me-now is really less.”
Colonel Kathy Gates, the director of the Army Audiology and Speech Center in Washington, D.C., serves as the audiology consultant to the Army Surgeon General, working to redesign the hearing program in that branch of the service. In 2004, Gates instituted an annual surveillance hearing test for soldiers about to be deployed, and last year mandated a similar evaluation of those returning from service. All soldiers must now be instructed in the use of the combat-arms earplugs. Gates has helped develop a strategy for persuading Army personnel to wear the earplugs in combat by linking their use to success in battle rather than to long-term health. “A soldier with hearing loss is impaired in battle,” Gates said. “We are linking hearing not to quality of life per se but to survivability and completion of the mission.” Gates said that QuietPro is being field-tested in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that the Army had increased the number of positions for audiologists in the battle theatre and in regional hospitals in Iraq. Even so, recruitment was slow, and the military is not yet fully staffed despite the restoration of funding for the hearing program.
The efforts to provide proper training and equipment have had some success. Specialist Joseph McLosky, who is twenty-four, is a member of the military-police reserve; in September, 2006, his unit was sent to Fort Dix to prepare for urban combat, and he was issued the newly requisitioned combat-arms earplugs. Two-sided and color-coded (the green side for use when actively shooting—on a range, for instance—and the yellow side for missions), the earplugs, McLosky said, were to be used in addition to the radio headsets that soldiers wear in convoys. “A lot of guys thought it was ridiculous to use both,” he told me, when we spoke in September.
In December, 2006, McLosky was deployed to the city of Bayji, between Baghdad and Mosul, in the north of the country, to train Iraqi police recruits in the use of firearms, surveillance missions, and the pursuit of insurgents. “We went from police station to police station along the same roads, spending eight to sixteen hours a day in the convoy,” he said. They encountered about one I.E.D. a week. In June, 2007, his squad was passing a checkpoint when a car bomb exploded. “Dirt and smoke and debris were flying past my head,” he went on. “We had been up all night, and I thought I was dreaming.” Although he was only a few yards away from the explosion, McLosky said, “My ears weren’t ringing.” In October, an I.E.D. detonated underneath McLosky’s truck. “I was ejected from the vehicle,” he said. “It broke my pelvis, left leg, and ankle. I had to have my left foot amputated.” Despite the severity of his injuries, McLosky emerged with his hearing intact; he now plans to become a physical therapist. Throughout his deployment, McLosky told me, it had been easy to tell which soldiers weren’t wearing their earplugs. “They were the ones saying, ‘What? What?’ ”
Tinnitus patients desperate for relief sometimes turn to folk remedies. Christina Stocking routinely hears of patients using herbal supplements like ginkgo biloba or high doses of Vitamin B, neither of which has been proved effective in large controlled studies. Antioxidants are commonly recommended—because the aging process is believed to be related in part to oxidized damage to tissues, including the auditory nerve—although no practical benefit has been documented. Some of the more extreme approaches that Stocking has encountered include the neti pot, a device that resembles a teapot with a long spout; the device is filled with warm salt water and used to irrigate the nasal passages. “You get yourself into a position to pour up one nostril, and it gets up to your sinus and drains out the other side,” Stocking explained. Another is “ear candling,” she told me. “People actually take wax paper, roll it up, stick one end into the ear canal, and light the other end.”
Stocking trained under Pawel Jastreboff, now a professor at Emory University, who developed a treatment plan called tinnitus retraining therapy. It combines counselling, to reduce the anxiety caused by the phantom sounds, with sound therapy, using a neutral background noise. Stocking first determined the decibel level of my tinnitus, then transmitted a noise similar to rushing water to both ears through headphones. For the first time in a year, I couldn’t hear the dental drill even when I tried.
The device currently approved by the F.D.A. for tinnitus treatment, produced by a company called Neuromonics, resembles an MP3 player. I put the earbuds in and listened to a soothing piece of classical music. “That is meant to induce relaxation,” Stocking explained, a key component of the tinnitus management strategy. Then I noticed a soft white noise that was programmed to mask my own tinnitus. Again, within moments, the tinnitus was gone. The theory, elaborated by Jastreboff, is that when more sounds are fed to the brain sensitivity and spontaneous activity decline—the effect Hippocrates remarked upon.
A simple hearing aid may reduce some tinnitus by amplifying background noises, but other strategies include using sounds in the environment, like soft background music from a stereo or more directed sounds that come from a fan or a small desktop sound machine. Similarly, a device called a sound generator, which is worn on the ear, can supply a white noise that partially interferes with the tinnitus. “It really provides a sense of relief and control over the tinnitus,” Stocking said. “Patients feel they are able to do something about it. And, by providing additional sound, it seems to bring down the sensitivity of the auditory system.”
Recently, I met with Dr. David Vernick, an ear-nose-and-throat specialist at my hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess. He reviewed the tests done in Buffalo and concurred that I needed hearing aids. “They will certainly help you with what you are missing now,” he said. “It’s hard to know how much benefit you will get with regard to your tinnitus.” He added that hearing aids often act simply as a placebo.
Ann Stockwell, an audiologist in Vernick’s office, entered the data from my audiogram into a computer, then used earbuds to transmit sounds generated by the computer—in essence, programming the hearing aids. I listened to a range of tones, which Stockwell compared with the data provided by the audiogram. Once the hearing aids were fitted, she asked me to turn my back. From about sixteen feet away, she spoke in a normal voice that I heard with no difficulty. “The aids will amplify background sounds, like the noise from the refrigerator or a heater,” she said. “Initially, there will be increased sensory awareness, and then you will adapt. I like to say that we are entering the auditory closet and throwing out what the brain can’t hear. We will fill the closet with a new set of sounds. And, hopefully, your brain will change so that there is less tinnitus.”
The hearing aids aren’t a cure: in a quiet room, my tinnitus is as persistent as ever. But when I returned to my office, with the hearing aids in place, I could hear the noise of the air vents, which previously had been inaudible. I tried to catch the high-pitched drone that has accompanied me in the past year. I couldn’t hear it. ♦
Clicking Sound in the Head While Running
Tinnitus can produce clicking noises when you run.
Image Credit: SolisImages/iStock/GettyImages
Clicking in your ear when running most likely results from tinnitus. Tinnitus is a symptom of other conditions such as hearing loss and jaw-joint disorders; it produces sounds such as ringing or clicking in your ears and head.
Although exercise generally helps relieve the stress associated with tinnitus, high-impact activities such as running may exacerbate this condition. Only your doctor can determine the specific cause of the clicking noises in your head.
Read more: 3 Vitamins That Could Be Causing Your Tinnitus
What is Tinnitus?
Tinnitus is a common problem that causes hearing sensations such as ringing, roaring, buzzing and clicking in your head or ears when no other noise is present, according to Mayo Clinic. This symptom can occur for many reasons including ear or hearing problems, ear injuries, excessive ear wax, sinus infections, brain tumors, heart disorders and blood vessel diseases, as well as for no apparent reason at all.
Tinnitus symptoms can appear in one or both ears and can come and go — whether you are resting or performing high-impact aerobic or other exercises. Tinnitus sensations may also be heard along with each heartbeat, called pulsatile tinnitus. The repeated high-impact motions experienced in running may negatively affect tiny parts of your ears associated with hearing and increase the presence of tinnitus. Listening to white noise or other low sounds while you run or at other times may help counteract these annoying sensations.
Temporomandibular Joint Disorders
Temporomandibular joint disorders, or TMJ disorders, can result in tinnitus and pain in the joint that allows you to chew and talk — your jaw joint. TMJ disorders can occur from muscle fatigue produced by clenching or grinding your teeth and arthritis, according to Cleveland Clinic. Symptoms of this disorder include jaw, ear or facial pain, uncomfortable chewing and headache.
TMJ can also create a clicking sound in your head when you open your mouth or when you compress your teeth. Exercises such as running or jogging, in which your teeth tend to clamp together, can exacerbate TMJ symptoms. Brisk walking may provide an easier way to exercise and relieve stress without clamping your jaw.
Tinnitus and Jaw Clenching
According to the British Tinnitus Association, tinnitus is strongly linked to jaw joint dysfunction. Muscles that you use to chew food are insert on bones in the middle ear, which might contribute to tinnitus. Ligaments also attach your jaw to hearing bones and nerves that supply your jaw joint are linked to the area of the brain that controls hearing.
Read more: How to Strengthen Your Jaw Muscles
Eustachian Tube Dysfunction
Eustachian tube dysfunction can also result in cracking, clicking or popping noises when you run and at other times. Your Eustachian tubes, small passages that connect the upper part of your throat to your middle ears, open when you sneeze, swallow or yawn to allow airflow. When one of your Eustachian tubes gets clogged by mucus, due to a sinus infection, a cold or allergies, you may experience the sounds of tinnitus.
Pain may also occur in one or both of your ears and you may have difficulty keeping your balance, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians. Altitude changes, such as when flying, riding in elevators, diving or running in high or low elevations, can increase the noise you hear. To help relieve Eustachian tube dysfunction, you can perform exercises such as swallowing and chewing gum, as well as taking a deep breath and breathing out with your mouth closed and your nostrils pinched together.
90,000 How the brain can hear non-existent sounds
According to one theory, such hallucinations are associated with a deficiency in the structure of the brain – for example, with a weak connection between the frontal and temporal lobes. “Certain groups of neurons, those that are responsible for the creation and perception of speech, can begin to function autonomously, outside the control or influence of other brain systems, – wrote a psychiatrist, professor at Yale University Ralph Hoffman. “It’s like the orchestra’s string section has suddenly decided to play its own music, ignoring everyone else.”
Healthy people, who have never experienced anything like this, often prefer to joke about hallucinations and delusions. Probably, this is our defensive reaction: to imagine that someone else’s monologue suddenly appears in your head, which cannot be interrupted by an effort of will, can be really scary.
That is why the destigmatization of mental illness is a complex and incredibly important social process. Cecillia McGough, an astrophysicist from the United States, spoke at the TED conference “I’m not a monster”, talking about her illness and how a person with such a diagnosis lives.
In the world, work on the destigmatization of mental illness is carried out by very different specialists. It is not just politicians, psychiatrists and social services that are involved. For example, Rafael D. de S. Silva, associate professor of the Department of Computer Technology at the University of Southern California, and his colleagues proposed to fight the stigmatization of schizophrenic patients with the help of … augmented reality.
Healthy people (the experimental group included medical students) were asked to undergo augmented reality session.They were shown audiovisual imitation of hallucinations in schizophrenia. Examining the questionnaires of the participants, scientists recorded a significant decrease in skepticism and greater empathy for the history of the schizophrenic patient, which they were told before the virtual experience.
Although the nature of schizophrenia is not fully understood, it is clear that the destigmatization of psychiatric patients is an extremely important social task. After all, if you are not ashamed to get sick, then you will not be ashamed to go to doctors for help.
Stream HEADACHE by Apathy
published on
WE (DO NOT) WANT TO BE HUMANS
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Headache
[Verse 1]
Sounds intensified in my head
Hearing tears and beckons everywhere
It hurts my fucking soul
I’m falling apart into a million pieces
People are killing themselves to someone’s tune
Driving through the vein at a rave and super
Everybody dance and dance in a deceiving noise
I dance too, but I’d rather die
Hey i’m scared
And you are corrupt
I’m lying in broken glass
And nobody cares
But you are a swindler
I’m not clean either
The pain suffocates me a lot
Knowing no boundaries
[Chorus x2]
Headache
It’s a headache (pain)
Headache
It’s a headache (pain)
Headache
It’s a headache (pain)
It seems to me
I don’t care, oh
[Verse 2]
I am shaking from the hum in my ears, I hear
People screams and pops under the speed
There is no hidden meaning in these words
I’m annoyed and ready to disappear
The headache never goes away
I’m so lousy, in the eyes of a round dance
Turn off your fucking songs
I better scream all over the place
[Chorus x4]
Headache
It’s a headache (pain)
Headache
It’s a headache (pain)
Headache
It’s a headache (pain)
It seems to me
I don’t care, oh
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90,000 Seven things to know about your voice
Photo author, Getty Images
Each voice is unique.We hear ours every day, but how much do we know about how it works?
Our voice is amazingly versatile. With it, you can chat, sing or call for help. We use this tool every day, but what do we know about how it works?
The BBC Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry has studied the structure of the voice and made several discoveries for itself.
1. You had accent since birth
Photo author, Getty Images
Photo caption,
Chinese babies cry differently from French or Icelandic
Children subconsciously imitate their parents’ accent while still in the womb.
Scientists have found out by studying the crying of French and German babies, the notes they make when crying, correspond to the tonal features of their native language.
They proved that children from different countries cry in different ways.
2. Voice begins with a “buzz”
Photo author, Getty Images
Photo caption,
As these 19th century engravings show, scientists have long been interested in the structure of the vocal apparatus
Your voice originates in the chest when passing air from the lungs through the larynx.
Two folds of muscle tissue – the vocal cords – vibrate as air passes through them, making a strange buzzing sound.
It is this sound, passing through other “manipulators” – lips, jaw, tongue and soft tissues in the throat – and becomes your voice.
3. Why the voice breaks
Photo author, Getty Images
Photo caption,
Entering puberty, children lose the ability to easily pick high notes
Male voices break during puberty, when the vocal folds grow and thicken.A portion of the vocal apparatus moves down in the throat and becomes visible through the skin to form the Adam’s apple.
The distance between the ligaments and the mouth increases. The longer the trumpet, the lower the sound it makes, so the man’s voice becomes lower.
Women go through similar changes, albeit less dramatically, when they go through menopause. In some cases, the female voice may also become lower.
4. You imitate those you like
Photo author, Getty Images
Photo caption,
The next time you speak to someone you like, notice how your voice changes
The more you like someone, the more you will try to imitate that person’s intonation.
For example, if a man likes a woman, often in a conversation with her he will unconsciously raise his voice a little.
5. When the ligaments age
Photo author, Getty Images
Caption,
As you age, your voice can change beyond recognition.
As you age, like other muscles, your vocal cords become weaker. Air passes through them even when they are closed, so the voice takes on a hoarse sound.
This also means that a person loses the ability to speak in long phrases – they simply do not have enough breath.
Also, as the muscles weaken, the voice may become higher.
6. Voice keeps youth longer
Photo author, Getty Images
Photo caption,
You will always sound younger than you look
The good news is that the voice ages more slowly than its native speaker.
When trying to guess the age of a person by voice, people, according to statistics, are almost always mistaken, underestimating the age of the speaker by several years.
7.How to keep your voice healthy
Photo author, Getty Images
Photo caption,
Singing often is good for your voice
Like the whole body, the vocal apparatus needs regular training.
To keep your ligaments in shape, try the following exercises:
- Stand with your feet hip-width apart. Fold your arms over your head. Breathe in through your nose, lean back slightly, and slowly leaning forward, pronounce the sounds “ah-eh-oo”, while exhaling.
- Take a deep breath and exhale through your mouth as if you were gargling with water. At the same time, turn your head to the left without lowering your gaze. Repeat turning your head the other way.
- Inhale deeply and exhale slowly with a hum. The mouth is closed. Tap the wings of your nose with your fingers.
- Bring your chin to your chest and exhale slowly, mooing on a low note.
By doing these exercises regularly, your voice will remain healthy and strong.However, you will achieve the same result, for example, by joining the choir.
what to do if I hear voices and what are the reasons
I’m spinning from side to side in bed, tired of the buzzing of thoughts in my head, of a day spent aimlessly and suffering for a long time from insomnia … A light breath takes my consciousness, and the buzz of thoughts and voices in my head falls silent. Long-awaited dream …
Suddenly, at the most pacified moment, very clearly and suddenly, a man’s voice calls out to me by name and asks something.
“Huh ?! What?!” – I jump up in horror. The body trembles, the heart jumps out of the chest. I don’t understand what’s going on … Sticky sweat stuck me to the crumpled sheet.
This happens every night. It’s scary to go to bed. It is difficult to deliberately delay sleep because of the fear of sudden incomprehensible voices. Frightens, strains, haunts.
Feeling insane
I was one of those who are able to “communicate with people” without opening my mouth. The presence of the interlocutors themselves is not even necessary.I talked to them in my head. Sometimes they themselves spoke without my “invitation.”
I had the “ability” to play music without playing it in real mode. She’s in my head. Either the classical one whirls in a big way, then the rock yells and rumbles. The chaotic mixing of internal dialogues mixed with music caused terrible discomfort. The head from this became heavy, buzzing, like a bee swarm of voiced thoughts in my head.
Strange things were happening in my apartment.From time to time there were rustles or sounds of falling dishes, the creak of a door. Or a loud male voice might call me from the kitchen. When I came to the kitchen, the voice called again, but from the room …
At some point I realized that I was hearing voices in my head. The sounds and voices were so realistic they were intimidating. My mind refused to believe, but the increase in cases with polyphony in my head forced me to figure out what was happening. And the more I thought about exterminating the voices, the louder and more intense the endless dialogues scrolled inside.
I had dreams at night. Noisy, mocking, rolling. I heard voices and indistinct booming accompaniment. It was unclear in half asleep where reality was, where sleep was.
Voice hallucinations
I asked some close friends if they had such states. I tried to calm myself down, thinking that every normal person hears something like that and there is nothing unusual about it. Having asked a couple of acquaintances, I realized: I hear voices alone. And you cannot find a person in the world who will understand me and say: “I myself am like that” – and will tell me the secret truth of the origin of voices.
It was becoming problematic to talk to people. As soon as I asked a question to the interlocutor, I immediately stopped hearing the answer: the internal dialogue resumed and gave absolutely no chance to concentrate. A person speaks – answers me, and at this time I look through him and have been conducting an internal conversation for a long time. Sometimes an attentive interlocutor saw my indifference, disconnection from the conversation and safely retreated.
Who would like to communicate with a person who does not listen to you. The reasons for my acquaintances’ avoidance of my person are obvious.Have excellent hearing and not hear people. This caused me great internal contradictions. Hear voices in your head, but not real people.
I hear voices in my head: what to do
Telling someone, asking for advice that I hear voices, is the same as admitting that I am stupid. It’s like saying: “I’m eccentric, I hear voices. Do not shy away from me, please. I just got a little crazy! ”
Day after day, hundreds of dialogues were scrolling through my head, many of them really sounded.I even answered aloud to the questions that were asked to me. From the outside it looked like a dialogue without one interlocutor. But what about? I have to answer the questions that have arisen – they ask me …
It is common knowledge that those who speak to themselves and hear voices are included in the “lists” of madmen. In any case, their heads are definitely out of order. I am sick – mentally sick – the only thing that arose and was fixed in my understanding.
I hear voices in my head what to do if there is no one to ask because of fear … Textbooks on psychiatry do not answer my question about voices, reasons and methods of getting rid of.
Doctor, help!
My appearance at the psychiatrist’s appointment was an encouraging fact of my story. From my words in the “complaints” he wrote down: apathy, depression, insomnia, followed by prolonged sleep, panic states, voices in the head, irritability. The pills were bought and carefully prescribed by the doctor. Medicines with three different names should have helped me.
After two weeks, there was no improvement, and after a month, too. To this state was added even greater indifference to the life happening to me.I wanted to sleep more, I had neither the strength nor the desire to wake up. The daily state of weakness, sleepy existence, unwillingness to eat. Inability to concentrate on simple actions, memory impairment, exhaustion of the body and emotionlessness.
I did not stop hearing voices, on the contrary, loud and arguing conversations appeared in my head. There were more frequent moments when I plugged my ears with my hands and, pressing them down, tried to cut off endless voices mixed with thoughts. The meaning of life in an exhausted, depressed form began to disappear.Why live if it is so long, painful and bad from despair?
Voices in the head: there are reasons and there are answers
Once, quite by accident, one of my acquaintances told me about the System-Vector Psychology of Yuri Burlan. About the knowledge that gave him great discoveries in knowing himself, allowed him to understand what a person’s unconscious means. He said that, having understood the unconscious, we automatically find the answers to our questions, we understand the causes of any human condition.
What I need! An hour later, I was already reading articles on Yuri Burlan’s portal, and two weeks later I was sitting in front of the monitor, waiting for the start of the online lecture.
When I got to the training on system-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan, I listened attentively to the words of the lecturer. Gradually the voices died down, their own thoughts calmed down. A different process of thinking began to appear, a clear, clear algorithm of the necessary actions to return to normal life appeared in my head.
Not every person will be able to imagine what my relief was after so many torments, wanderings, attempts to escape from voices, when Yuri Burlan, in a matter of hours, explained in simple human language about the reasons and the way out of the unfortunate situation.
Sound vector. It was he who made him suffer, walk at the edge of life. And now it gives a previously unknown pleasure from filling – realization.
Sound people are people with abstract thinking and subtle hearing. They, like no one else, are able to listen attentively to the subtle varied sounds of the tones of music, meanings of words, intonations of sound.
They need comprehension of themselves and life around them like air. And they are not accidentally created that way, they are needed to occupy their niche in society.Voices can arise when the pain of the traumatized psyche of the sound engineer deprives him of the ability to concentrate on the world outside.
A thousand meanings instead of votes
It was not difficult to recognize yourself and understand the state of the unrealized sound vector. Yuri Burlan clearly pronounced the causal relationship from the root cause to the very end. The reasons and origin of audible voices became clear. I understood why there was a need for many hours of sleep, why insomnia and apathy.Why there was irritation for loud sounds, noise. The secrets of this terry depression have been revealed.
I understood a lot. The urgent task of the sound engineer is his natural ability to focus on the thought process, knowing himself, his role in this life, the essence of the existence of all living things. Potentially, such people, with proper fruitful development, can be talented musicians, scientists, physicists, philosophers, surgeons, teachers of higher mathematics.
In the voices in the head, the reasons lie only in the opposite use of abstract intelligence.Involuntarily (but always) a person with a sound vector is looking for the meaning of life, trying to cognize, comprehend the root cause of the Universe. Involuntarily, as if thinking “into oneself”, getting hung up on his own thoughts, he thinks that he is about to stumble upon answers. And he doesn’t. Not today, not tomorrow, not in a few years. The sound engineer simply does not know about finding the answer outside.
At the training on system-vector psychology by Yuri Burlan, the sound specialists reveal what they were looking for, they become able to restore the lost concentration from the outside.And the voices go away. Both depression and suicidal thoughts go away.
As of today, I have neither intrusive internal dialogues nor voices. They are gone forever. Sleep is normal and adequate. The energy appeared to live, to do things. There is no room for apathy. I managed to find that sphere of activity that fills the voids of the sound vector, gives an impetus for mental work.