Many people disregard tinnitus as harmless, reasoning to themselves that it’s faint, intermittent or temporary. With that mentality, it’s easy to delay getting a professional tinnitus evaluation, as they continue to believe that they can manage their tinnitus on their own. Maybe that’s true for some, but also, you don’t have to suffer through tinnitus. If you’ve been putting off a tinnitus evaluation, here are some signs that it might be time to seek help.
What Is Tinnitus?
Tinnitus is the perception of sound; there is nothing physical (i.e., outside of your body) that is making the sound. Instead, your brain generates the sound of tinnitus. It is extremely common, affecting at least 25 million people. It can vary wildly from person to person, ranging from loud to quiet, shrill to low-pitched, intermittent to constant, and so on.
Interestingly, tinnitus is not a condition in and of itself. It is always a symptom of some other condition, such as hearing loss, head trauma or a problem with the cardiovascular system.
Signs You Need to Seek a Professional
If you’re wondering when tinnitus is considered severe enough to warrant medical attention, here are some signs to watch out for:
Sudden Onset
If the ringing in your ear came on suddenly and forcefully, it should be treated as a medical emergency. In fact, any time you experience sudden changes to your hearing (as in within 72 hours), it’s a medical emergency. The hearing organ is highly sensitive to blood flow, so sudden changes to hearing or sudden tinnitus could indicate that there’s an issue with your cardiovascular system. It’s imperative to determine what caused such dramatic harm in so short a period of time.
It’s Been a Week
Tinnitus can sometimes occur during or after a head injury or a bout of illness, especially if an ear infection was involved. If you developed temporary tinnitus after an injury or infection, that may not be an immediate cause for a professional tinnitus evaluation, but if it’s been seven days of ear-ringing and it hasn’t stopped, even though the infection has cleared up, it’s time to see a doctor. It could be that the trauma or infection caused greater damage to your hearing organ or auditory nerve.
Accompanied by Dizziness or Vertigo
Our hearing and balance systems are intimately connected, as both systems have their central organ in the inner ear. Some conditions that affect one system can affect the other due to their proximity, such as Ménière’s disease and other vestibular disorders. Without treatment, these can interrupt daily routines, impair mobility, decrease independence and increase fall risk.
It’s Affecting Your Sleep
In the quiet hours, your brain doesn’t have any other stimuli to focus on, bringing the perception of tinnitus to the forefront of your attention. This makes it hard to fall asleep, as the sound is intrusive and constant. If you’re lucky enough to fall asleep, sometimes, tinnitus can wake you back up, and the cycle repeats. Sleep deprivation can have many cascading effects on your health and wellbeing, not to mention that poor sleep quality can make tinnitus worse. Break the cycle, seek help and get the sleep you need.
With Your Heartbeat
If your tinnitus sounds like a swooshing or whooshing sound and it happens in time with your heartbeat, that’s probably pulsatile tinnitus. Pulsatile tinnitus is a specific subtype of tinnitus in which the sound has a physical source: your heart. You’re hearing the sound of blood pulsing through the veins and arteries around your ear. It has a variety of causes, so it’s important to get it checked out to determine the root cause. The good news is that cure rates for pulsatile tinnitus are relatively high, once the underlying cause is determined.
It’s Affecting Your Quality of Life
Frankly, if tinnitus is causing you daily frustration, distraction, distress or anxiety, then you shouldn’t continue to try to deal with it on your own. You don’t have to suffer through tinnitus.
With medical assistance, you can manage tinnitus quite successfully with a number of different tinnitus management strategies, which a professional can help you with.
Give Us a Call
We proudly help the Ocala community with all their hearing-related needs, and that includes tinnitus. We want to help you find relief from the ringing in your ears. Start the process of managing your tinnitus by calling Beneficial Hearing Aid Center and scheduling a tinnitus evaluation.