Causes of Tinnitus – Which One is Yours?
If you’ve just found out that you have tinnitus, it’s important for you to know that nobody has to ‘live with it’ or ‘deal with it’ like what doctors usually tell their tinnitus patients. In fact, there are ways to overcome tinnitus, even though no 100% effective medical treatment for tinnitus is available at this point of time. First and foremost, you’ll need to identify the underlying cause of your tinnitus. There are various causes of tinnitus.
Causative Factors of Tinnitus
1. Tinnitus from cochlea damage
Cochlea damage accounts for up to 85% of ringing ears among tinnitus sufferers. Tinnitus related to cochlea damage is most often noise damage, a result of continual exposure to loud noises. The types of loud noise exposure that puts you at risk of tinnitus include: MP3 players (e.g. iPod), concerts, loud stereos, industrial noise, abrupt high level of noise such as explosions.
Loud noises cause damage to parts of the inner ear (i.e. cochlea), impairing the hearing mechanisms. As a result, tinnitus develops; in serious cases, there may even be hearing loss. The condition may be permanent or temporary.
Other events that can also lead to cochlea damage include ear infection, ear wax removals, a severe blow to the head, head surgery, dental surgery, and ear or nasal passage surgery, to name a few. These types of tinnitus occur although the person has not really been exposed to loud noises.
2. Tinnitus induced by stress
Stress is the cause of ringing ears in 1 out of 10 tinnitus sufferers, making it the second most common cause for the hearing condition. What happens in this form of tinnitus is that certain parts of the brain are not able to function properly due to stress. Hypothalamus is one of them.
If you are constantly under stress, you’ll probably always hear very loud bouts of ear ringing. Chronic stress can lead to malfunction of the hypothalamus, which then severely affects the production of important chemicals for normal body function.
If your ringing ears is due to stress, then you should learn about stress management and try to relax more to help relieve symptoms of tinnitus effectively.
3. Sinus infection-associated tinnitus
Ear ringing from sinus infections is responsible for 5% of tinnitus cases. It is the third most common form of tinnitus, but can be prevented. Individuals susceptible to this form of tinnitus are those afflicted with chronic allergies, sinusitis and rhinitis.
The antibiotic and antihistamine medicines used to treat sinus infections and allergies can lead to build up of mucus in the middle ear. Mucus that accumulated in the middle ear can lead to infections and therefore ear ringing. The best way to treat this form of tinnitus is to thin down the mucus, then drain it out from the ear.
4. Meniere’s Disease
Another common cause of tinnitus is Meniere’s Disease. Tinnitus is in fact one of the symptoms of Meniere’s Disease, which is an inner ear disorder that causes the person to experience periods of dizziness, vertigo, ear pressure, tinnitus and nausea. Meniere’s Disease tend to prolong and can drain a person’s energy. People who suffer from this condition needs a lot of rest and sleep, particularly after an episode of the symptoms mentioned.
Tinnitus is annoying and even life destructing, but surely you can do something to reduce the noise, and eventually stop ears ringing by targeting the root causes of tinnitus. You can also achieve tinnitus relief with tinnitus herbal treatment without depending on drugs.