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Tinnitus clinic
The Little things, make a big difference.
What is Tinnitus?
In its simplest form, tinnitus is just the sound of your body doing its job.
Everything we hear, see, feel, smell and taste sends electrical signals flying through our bodies. Every muscle movement is electricity, every thought is electricity. Our bodies hum constantly. This constant noise started before each of us was born and will continue until we die.
Because that hum has been there all of our lives and is relatively constant our brain normally labels it as a meaningless sound. When we label a sound as meaningless, our brain can file it away into the background so we don’t really notice it.
But then something changes. Often it might only be a slight change in our hearing, but our brain notices this drop in the amount of electrical activity coming from our ears. Our brain then subconsciously makes up for this drop in our hearing, by letting the meaningless hum of our body fill in the area where our hearing has dropped.
At this stage we become aware of the sound and we then need to decide if it is still meaningless, which allows us to ignore it, or if it might be a meaningful sound. If you've heard stories from your family and friends about how bad someone's tinnitus was, then your brain is naturally going to focus on it. It is at this point that tinnitus can start to become disturbing.
Want to find out more? Watch our video below.
Why is my tinnitus so loud?
When there is a change in our hearing our brain them switches focus to listen to what might be going on. That might be a permanent change or a temporary change, but it can be enough for our brain to notice that background hum or our body. If your brain then labels the tinnitus as being an important sound, then it will start to listen for it and focus on it.
For a few percent of adults, this leads to their tinnitus becoming disturbing. The more disturbing the tinnitus becomes, the more we are inclined to focus on it, and the louder we perceive it.
What can be done?
If you have disturbing tinnitus, then we start with a thorough assessment of your hearing and auditory system. We then want to measure the characteristics of your tinnitus. We look at the pitch and loudness of the tinnitus, the minimum amount of sound needed to block it out, the different impacts its having on a range of aspects of your life.
With this information we can start to work on a program to give you relief from your tinnitus. For some people, the reassurance that there is nothing nasty going on, is enough to help them unwind the negative side of the tinnitus.
When this first step isn't effective we may need to look at ways of providing them with more sound through apps and/or hearing devices. Other therapy options can include hypno-therapy, psychological support and tinnitus retraining therapy.
There is rarely any quick fix with tinnitus, but if you're looking for support to help get it back under control, we can help.
Learn to live with it?
That’s kind of true. We cant stop the electrical noise of our bodies. We need those electrical signals to give us all of our sensations, movements, thoughts and feelings.
So you do need to learn to live with the sound, but like most things in our lives, we can benefit from support to help us learn HOW to live with it.
That’s where we come in.
Want to find out a little more?
If Tinnitus is interrupting your life, book your Tinnitus Consultation online, or contact us to find out how we can help.
We look forward to
hearing from you
Contact us today to book your appointment
with our one of audiologists, Ben or Tom.