3 Causes of Tinnitus

It may surprise you to learn that tinnitus has a multitude of different causes. As a consequence, anyone can suffer from tinnitus, no matter how old they may be. It’s important to understand the main causes of tinnitus if you start experiencing the typical symptoms associated with this condition. This helps determine how serious your case is, while also helping to dictate the treatment.

Please find three of the most obvious causes of tinnitus in the blog post below:

Loud noises

The majority of people diagnosed with tinnitus will have been exposed to loud noises. This is a highly common cause, and it’s one that’s easy to avoid. When you’re exposed to loud noise, it can damage hair cells in your ears. This causes the persistent ringing sound you’ll soon become accustomed to when you have this hearing condition. There are two main ways that loud noises cause tinnitus. The first is if you’re around loud noises for a prolonged period of time. As an example, someone that works on construction sites where there’s constantly something making a lot of noise. Gradually, your hair cells suffer more and more damage until tinnitus occurs. The second instance is when you’re exposed to extremely loud noises over a shorter period. The best example of this is when listening to loud music. The damage is so extreme that it can cause temporary tinnitus right away.

Earwax

Believe it not, but your earwax can cause tinnitus symptoms. Our body produces earwax for a good reason – it’s meant to help clean your ears. However, some people can produce a lot more than others. When this happens, you end up with a buildup of earwax in your ear canal. Often, when there’s too much wax, it gets forced back through the ear and can touch your eardrum. In doing so, this will cause the telltale symptoms of tinnitus.

Hearing loss

It’s commonly mistaken that tinnitus causes hearing loss. In reality, it's the other way around; hearing loss causes tinnitus. Again, this stems from damage to those small little hair cells inside your ear. They’re extremely sensitive cells that pick up sounds. As your hearing gets worse, these cells become weak and damaged. Consequently, you can easily experience the same tinnitus symptoms as you would when a loud noise damages your cells. The problem with tinnitus caused by hearing loss is that it’s permanent. The cells will no longer repair themselves, so you end up with the ringing sound in your ears at all times.

There are a few other causes of tinnitus, but the majority of sufferers get theirs from one of these causes. Tinnitus caused by earwax is normally temporary and can be quickly fixed by removing the wax from your ears. However, tinnitus that’s caused by loud noises and hearing loss is often irreversible and stays forever. Thankfully, there are treatment options, and the best course of action is to talk to your audiologist. It’s likely they’ll fit you with a hearing aid that can help dull the constant ringing sound caused by your tinnitus.