A Ring Of Reality

I always walk about with my headphones in my ears. I need music and a consistent beat in my ears nowadays, I can’t do without it. Music has become a life-saver and a constant need for a good beat in my ears adds rhythm to my life and saves me from a certain chronic issue.

The reason for having to wear earphones/headphones constantly is that I have mild tinnitus.

What is Tinnitus?

Tinnitus can be described as a ringing or buzzing sound in the ears. Other ways the sound can be described are hissing, screeching, whooshing, pulsing and buzzing.

The most common cause of tinnitus is prolonged exposure to loud sounds. Up to 90% of people tend to experience some level of noise-induced hearing loss. It can cause permanent damage to the sound-sensitive cells of the cochlea in the ear.

There are two types of tinnitus. The first is subjective tinnitus and is the most common form of tinnitus. The second form is rarer and is known as objective tinnitus.

It can affect up to 15% of adults throughout their life.

Subjective Tinnitus

This is where the sound/noise is heard only by the person who experiences it and can either be temporary or chronic. It can be perceived in either one ear, or both, or even heard outside the head. It can be the same sound heard over and over again, or it can be a different sound or multiple sounds that change frequently.

Objective Tinnitus

This is heard not only by the person experiencing it, but it can also be detected by someone else. It tends to sound like a regular pulsing noise, in rhythm with the blood flow or pulse near the ear tissue.

My Bane

So my type is subjective tinnitus. This can be an irritant in daily working life. I’ve even discovered that too much noise in the background can flare up the tinnitus and trigger a migraine. The best thing for me in that situation is to scarper and find a quiet room or somewhere with solitude.

This is why, if I find myself sitting somewhere crowded alone or walking through a loud area, the first thing I’ll have to make sure is that I have my Airpods in. I’ve had to make sure to buy the noise-cancelling ones because any sound that tends to filter through can trigger automatic panic with the knowledge my tinnitus will be triggered.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m blessed I don’t experience total hearing loss and I wholly appreciate the use of my ears. Music is a wonderful thing that is both therapeutic and perfect for setting an atmosphere for the day ahead. I can’t start my day in silence. The only time I can happily have total silence is those few minutes before bed, hopefully if my overthinking brain doesn’t keep me awake at night.

But those waking moments where my tinnitus plagues me is a moment where I wish I didn’t have to put in my earphones because it’s generally in situations that require I be social. Can you imagine the difficulty of trying to listen to someone’s conversation with you only to hear a loud, painful buzzing in your ears instead and having to ask them to repeat themselves? They tend to end up thinking you’re being ignorant or just not interested in their conversation.

But it’s fine. My battle with tinnitus isn’t all the time, thankfully. I know there are thousands of people out there who have to deal with it and hats off to them, because we are all in a loud world trying to hear it instead of the constant ringing we face.

Relieving Tinnitus

There are ways in which we can relieve tinnitus. Coping with tinnitus is something we need to be able to learn and live with.

1: Learning to relax — deep breathing or yoga is generally recommended in order to help you relax. Meditation has been around for centuries and stilling the body and mind could potentially ease the harshness of the symptoms of tinnitus.

2: Improve your sleep — trying to find ways to improve your sleep can always help so trying to maybe create a good bedtime routine and cutting down on things such as caffeine in the evenings would be a big help.

3: Reduce stress factors — trying to avoid the things that make tinnitus worse would be ideal. Reducing stress factors such as loud noises or busy environments can help. Of course, if you are in a position where your environment is constantly busy or loud, then finding time and a place to have some quiet or peace would be beneficial, even if for about ten minutes at a time, or as long as a day or weekend.

We can only try to increase the things that would enable us to have a better quality of life. Reducing stress itself is not only beneficial for relieving tinnitus, but also vital for heart health and chronic disease. Being in a world where there are so many factors that could potentially cause us long-term damage or harm, we need to be able to be aware to weed those factors out or reduce them if possible.

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