Coping with stressful tinnitus – My accidental triumph over tinnitus – Healthy Hearing

For as long as I can remember, silence was a high-pitched tone.

Growing up, I had no idea that other people couldn’t hear what I could hear when it was quiet. I just assumed it was normal.

Glenn Schweitzer is finally at peace
with his tinnitus thanks to meditation. 

But in 2011, I was diagnosed with a rare, incurable inner ear disorder called Meniere’s disease, and the quiet tone that never bothered me became a fire alarm blaring in my ears.

For me, and for the millions of people around the world who live with tinnitus, the medical term for ringing in the ears, the sound never stops and can drive you completely crazy.

Day and night, I was tormented by the sound. But today, my tinnitus no longer bothers me at all.

A simple exercise radically altered my reaction to the noise. It changed everything.

An invisible epidemic

Technically speaking, tinnitus isn’t actually a condition itself; it’s a symptom caused by one of many different underlying conditions.

Just to give you an idea, hearing loss, head and neck injury, temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ), traumatic brain injury, infection, vestibular disorders like Meniere’s disease, acoustic neuromas and circulatory system disorders are all known to cause tinnitus. Certain vitamins, supplements and medications can too.

It’s far more prevalent than most people realize.

By most estimates, tinnitus affects nearly 50 million people in the US alone and more than 600 million worldwide. That’s roughly 10-15 percent of the population, yet most people have never heard of it.

It’s an epidemic with no public awareness, one that leaves its victims with little support and even fewer options.

Treatment

There’s no cure for tinnitus, but that doesn’t mean we’re powerless.

Some people naturally cope better than others and find that it bothers them less and less over time. But for everyone else, they’re lucky if they even learn that treatment is an option.  Way too many sufferers are told they just have to “live with it,” and that’s unacceptable to me because there is hope for everyone.

We can learn to live in harmony with the sound.

In my opinion, the most important question is: “Does it bother you?”

Because if it does, you can do something about it. It’s the one thing that you actually have the power to change.

Tuning out tinnitus

The real issue with tinnitus is the way we react to the sound emotionally, physically and psychologically.

Our brains are fully capable of filtering out repetitive stimuli, like sound, from our …….

Source: https://www.healthyhearing.com/report/52726-My-accidental-triumph-over-tinnitus