Back in the ‘90’s I used to give hearing tests to factory workers and others who worked in high-noise environments. It was the best job I ever held, as I connected with thousands of people across the country. It gratified me to know that I was able to help them with some very serious, quality-of-life issues with which they were dealing.

I found that folks working in high noise environments often first complained of ringing in the ears. The ringing, called tinnitus, was often a fore-runner to advanced hearing loss. I never thought twice about letting them know that the ringing was their body’s way of telling them that some serious damage was being done, and if they didn’t want to spend their Golden Years completely deaf, they needed to start doing something about it NOW. I laid it on the line with them.

I would return every year, and many of these folks would recognize and remember me, especially the ones who had been the most shocked to learn of their impending hearing problems. My job was to ensure these folks not only knew how to use hearing protection properly on the job, but were also, actually using it! I would find out on my subsequent visits, that many of them had, indeed started using protection. I was happy about that.

But then there were those youngsters who still felt they were invincible. I’ve always had a “motherly” quality to me and this worked in my favour with this job. One of my tasks was to counsel and train, and in the course of my work, I would mention the types of hearing protection their company offered. Then I would stop, dead in my tracks, look sharply at the group and ask, point blank, “You are USING your hearing protection, right?”

The ones who dropped their heads or avoided my eye contact were the ones I knew I needed to work on. I would often engage folks whom I had counseled in years past to ask about their tinnitus problems and how things were going, and then I would turn to the “avoiders” and ask about their lives.

It never failed to become a rousing group discussion. I loved it!

Tinnitus, simply put, is a ringing or buzzing heard within one’s own head, whether or not there is any external noise present. This condition can easily become a quality-of-life issue for the affected individual, as it can disrupt normal living.

Most causes of tinnitus are well-known and documented; medicines, certain beverages, stressful living, high-noise exposure—these are all know to cause tinnitus. What is unknown at this time is how the neurophysiological mechanism of the human brain may be involved, but studies are being done that increasingly point to a pre-frontal cortex involvement.

Typically, tinnitus and hearing loss go hand-in-hand. Because of the extent of considerable overlap between hearing loss and tinnitus, it is being suggested that these two events may be inteconnected. In other words, the neuronal reaction to hearing damage may be a factor of tinnitus.

There is evidence to indicate which changes are responsible for the perception of this “auditory phantom phenomenon”. In other words, they don’t completely know, just yet, why you hear the ringing in your ears. They just know it’s there and what might be causing it.

Recent positron emission tomography studies have suggested that the brain areas involved in attentional and emotional regulation are huge factors in hearing loss and tinnitus.

A study done by Lockwood et al., investigated individuals with tinnitus who were able to enhance or reduce the perceived loudness of their tinnitus with oral–facial movements. Besides changes in auditory cortical activity contra-lateral to the affected ear, the authors of the study reported changes in hippocampal activity related to loudness changes.

The authors interpreted this as evidence for limbic system involvement.

This may sound like gobbledly-gook to you, but what it tells me is that “they,” the scientific community, are getting closer to finding a fix for this debilitating problem!