Hi
@martin12!
I hear you, but unfortunately, Science also has yet to cure many maladies of the mind -- and ultimately, whatever else might cause Tinnitus, it is ultimately a
neurological disorder. While neurologists and ENTs ultimately disagree on everything about how Tinnitus functions, they do agree that, whatever the underlying cause may be, it's the misfiring of the auditory nerve in the brain that is ultimately to blame for the phantom sounds that we hear. Note that cases where Tinnitus isn't expressed neurologically, but instead as a vascular or circulatory problem -- such as Pulsatile Tinnitus, with its trademark clicking, thumping, whooshing sounds -- medical science absolutely has cures because it's easy to narrow down and identify the phenomena that are causing the auditory disturbances. In fact, most doctors can even hear it, too.
Doctors cannot "hear" classic Tinnitus - the high-pitched ringing, chiming, hissing, or chirping sounds that plague most of us. Science cannot really diagnose, beyond seeing that the brain is expressing in neurological patterns what does not exist, a definitive cause. That said, there has been a lot of research into Tinnitus over the past decade for several reasons:
- Most tinnitus is caused by damage to the auditory organs, especially the cochlea, and is a condition that disproportionately affects a growing plurality all servicemen and servicewomen in the Armed Forces.
- The advent of mobile devices and the ever-present earbuds with commuters listening to music at full-blast for hours a day is beginning to cause millions of young adults to start contracting tinnitus from over-exposure.
- The growing obesity epidemic in the world is leading people to higher stress levels, poor sleep, and terrible posture, amplifying the likelihood that people contract tinnitus due to neuromuscular inflammation, like that encountered in TMJ or Head and Neck muscular injuries or strain.
The current approach that Science is taking is to try to trick auditory organs to stop sending phantom requests to the brain, which trigger the Tinnitus sounds. Many injectable drug trials are moving towards secondary and tertiary phases of clinical studies on humans, and there is measured improvement for tinnitus suffers. That said, like any other chronic condition, the best hope for people who suffer from Tinnitus -- and it's an estimated 2% of the entire planet's population that has Tinnitus at any given time, and a tenth of that population that has it persistently to disrupt their daily lives -- is to overcome it by "tuning it out." This is, of course, easier said than done, but habituation -- as a natural process that the brain guides us through -- ultimately provides relief for most sufferers, and even those of us who had acute outbreaks many months ago find ourselves significantly improved today.
I truly hope that we are approaching a scientific breakthrough. With the added research and public exposure to what tinnitus is, I am anxious that we will discover a shared mechanism and a way to suppress it with medication. In the meantime, this community for me, at any rate, is an oasis of tranquility in a sea of auditory storms.
Kaelon
Member
. I didn't have noticeable T at that that time but I would often walk around with a cellphone in my breast pocket. My father was dying, so I had to keep it on and with me. It wasn't a smartphone and I added the longer-lasting battery to it. It always made that part of me red. 
