Tinnitus is normally a ringing sound in one or both ears. That said, the "ringing" isn't like a telephone ring. It's more often a high pitched whining or buzzing or hissing sound. It can also manifest as a clicking sound or indeed pretty much any other sound that appears to come from inside your ears.

The causes of tinnitus are wide and varied. Typically it is associated with some other kind of ear infection but it can also be brought on by drugs such as aspirin.

As any tinnitus sufferer will tell you, the volume of the sound can vary as well. The fortunate sufferers will only hear the tinnitus noise when there is little or no external sound to drown it out. Unfortunate sufferers will hear little or nothing other than the sounds in their head.

One of the biggest problems with tinnitus is that it is difficult to measure objectively. After all, how do you get inside someone's ear drums to measure what they are hearing? This means that the seriousness of the tinnitus problem is often related to the side effects that occur, such as insomnia or interference with regular day to day activities.

Current medical thinking is that tinnitus is incurable, although there are a number of tricks that modern western medicine can pull out of its bag to help reduce the symptoms. More on this later.

That said, prevention is better than a cure. Prolonged exposure to loud noises is thought to be one of the causes of tinnitus, so it would be sensible to reduce your exposure. Although loud rock concerts are often linked with hearing problems, it's more common nowadays for in-ear headphones to expose people to long periods of loud noises. If you regularly wear headphones, check the volume level often. It's very easy to turn up the volume when there are other loud noises around and then forget to reduce it again.

In extreme cases, it may be possible to cure your tinnitus with an operation. Doctors will often prescribe various drugs to help relieve your tinnitus symptoms as well.

You can also help yourself by being careful with your diet. The usual suspects crop up: caffeine, alcohol, nicotine and salt. Reducing your intake of some or all of these will likely help your tinnitus condition.

Reducing your levels of stress can also help. So consider some form of relaxation technique, such as meditation or yoga.

You can often also reduce the symptoms of tinnitus with the use of a natural white noise generator, such as a CD with natural sounds of the ocean or rainfall.