If you ever experience ringing in your ears, it might be from a condition called tinnitus. While not a medical condition on its own, tinnitus is a term used to determine if there is another condition of your ears you need to be concerned about.
✔️ What is Tinnitus?
Tinnitus is the medical term for phantom ringing you hear in your ears. This means that the noise is not happening in your environment. For instance, no one can hear the ringing but you. Tinnitus is common because it affects about 1 in 5 individuals. Although it affects your ears, it is not a medical condition. It is classified as a symptom resulting from an underlying medical condition. An underlying medical condition is classified as a disease, infection, or disorder of some type.
If you have tinnitus, you may suffer from one of two types of medical symptoms: subjective and objective tinnitus. Subjective tinnitus can only be heard by you. Subjective tinnitus is the form of tinnitus people commonly develop.
It can develop because you have medical problems with your inner, middle, or outer ear. In addition to hearing problems, your auditory nerves may also be affected. Your auditory nerves, located in your brain, are responsible for interpreting the nerve signals that you hear into sounds.
Objective tinnitus is phantom noise your physician can hear while they are examining your ears. This is a rare form of the condition. It is often caused by issues with your blood vessels, muscle contractions, or a medical condition in your middle ear bone.
The ringing in your ears is bothersome. However, it is not serious and is not fatal.
There is no cure for tinnitus. With treatment and identifying the underlying cause of tinnitus, you may notice improvement in symptoms.
✔️ Signs and Symptoms
- The most obvious symptom of tinnitus is the ringing in your ears. You may not experience ringing in the ears, but a different sound such as buzzing, clicking, humming, roaring and hissing. The noise may occur intermittently.
- This means you may hear the ringing in your ears, then it will stop just as suddenly as it started. You may experience throbbing and pain in your ears. The sound is a high-pitched sound that is continuous. Decreased hearing may also occur when you have tinnitus.
- You may experience symptoms that are not directly related to the buzzing or ringing in your ears. These symptoms include depression, anxiety, difficulty sleeping, and lack of concentration.
✔️ What Causes Tinnitus?
Researchers cannot find the exact reason why Tinnitus occurs. However, numerous health conditions can worsen the ear problem. From what researchers have gathered, inner ear cell damage is the common cause of tinnitus. The delicate, small hairs located in your inner ear sway according to the pressure of the sound waves you hear.
Your ear cells are triggered to release the transmitted electrical signal to your auditory nerve and then to your brain. Your brain is responsible for interpreting the electrical signal as sounds.
Any time the delicate, small hairs in your inner ear become broken or bent, they do not work properly. Instead, they create electrical impulses that are randomly sent to your brain. Your brain is responsible for interpreting these sounds. This is how you hear ringing or buzzing in your ears when no one is ringing a bell.
✔️ The most common causes include:
- Being in an environment with extremely loud noise. At a concert, listening to music too loud and heavy equipment can cause tinnitus when you are exposed to loud noise.
- Hearing loss that occurs because of age. Loss of hearing typically starts when you are 60 years old.
- Changes in your ear bone. Your ear bone in your middle ear can stiffen and changes the way you hear.
- Earwax blockage. Earwax blockage occurs because of wax buildup in the ear.
✔️ Medications and Tinnitus: What You Need to Know
One of the leading causes of tinnitus is medication. Certain drugs can either trigger the condition or make it worse. In general, the higher the dosage, the more intense the ringing in the ears becomes. Fortunately, the phantom noise often disappears once the medication is stopped.
Several types of medication are known to cause or worsen tinnitus, including:
- Antibiotics and antidepressants – Some may contribute to tinnitus.
- Aspirin (in high doses) – Can lead to or worsen ringing in the ears.
- Quinine-based medications – Commonly used for malaria treatment, they can cause tinnitus.
- Diuretics (water pills) – Often linked to increased tinnitus symptoms.
- Certain cancer treatments – Drugs like vincristine and mechlorethamine may cause ear ringing.
✔️ Other Potential Causes of Tinnitus
While less common, some medical conditions can also lead to tinnitus:
- Head or neck injuries – Trauma can damage the brain or hearing nerves, often affecting only one ear.
- Acoustic neuroma – A noncancerous tumor on the cranial nerve that can cause ringing in one ear.
- Blood vessel disorders – Though rare, conditions like atherosclerosis, high blood pressure, and turbulent blood flow can contribute to tinnitus.
✔️ The Risk Factors Associated with Tinnitus
Any person can develop tinnitus in one or both ears. However, certain factors can increase your risk of developing the condition. For instance, exposure to loud noise can increase your chances of developing tinnitus. Cardiovascular problems, such as high blood pressure or atherosclerosis, can increase your risk of developing this condition, as said by our functional medicine Studio City experts. Smoking and age can both increase the risk of developing tinnitus. Men typically develop tinnitus at a higher rate than women.
✔️ Possible Complications
Every medical condition has complications. Tinnitus is no different. These complications can be serious because they affect individuals differently. In fact, it may change your quality of life. Some complications that can occur if you have tinnitus include, but are not limited to, memory problems, stress, fatigue, problems sleeping, and fatigue. You may feel irritable for no reason.
Treating the underlying condition that causes tinnitus can relieve the symptoms that develop because of the complications.
✔️ How Tinnitus is Diagnosed
If you think you have tinnitus, avoid self-diagnosing. Instead, schedule an appointment with a physician recommended by our functional medicine Burbank specialist. Your doctor will evaluate whether you have tinnitus and identify its underlying cause.
✔️ What to Expect During Your Examination
During your physical exam, your physician will check your ears, neck, and jaw for signs of tinnitus. You may also undergo imaging tests, such as a CT scan, to help pinpoint the cause.
Additionally, movement tests may be performed to determine if the ringing in your ears is linked to an underlying disorder. These tests could include:
- Moving your neck, arms, and legs
- Clenching and unclenching your jaw
- Looking in different directions without turning your head (to assess potential eye-related issues)
A hearing test, known as an audiological examination, may also be ordered.
✔️ Identifying the Cause of Tinnitus
The type of sound you hear can help your physician determine the possible cause:
- Clicking sounds – Often caused by muscle contractions in and around the ear.
- Low-pitched ringing in one ear – May indicate Meniere’s disease, especially if accompanied by dizziness or a spinning sensation.
- High-pitched ringing – Could result from prolonged exposure to loud noise or a past ear injury. In some cases, it may be linked to an acoustic neuroma (a benign tumor on the hearing nerve).
Getting an accurate diagnosis is the first step toward managing tinnitus effectively. If you’re experiencing persistent ringing in your ears, seek professional medical advice as soon as possible.
For more information about health and wellness or about our functional medicine, please contact our functional medicine doctors at Functional Medicine Los Angeles.