Tinnitus is caused by pressure on the inner ear, either it can be by sound waves, someone hit you, the middle ear bones grew to big for some reason, or by liquid building up in the middle ear causing a pressure on the inner ear, caused by an infection. It sounds like different reasons, but they are all the same: pressure on the inner ear.
Next step one should consider is: how to get rid of tinnitus? Then I look at what created it. What created it? Pressure on the inner ear. How do I resolve tinnitus then?
Do I turn on white noise?
Do I care about what I eat?
Do I exercise hard?
The only sensible thing to me would be to let the inner ear take a rest from all sorts of additional pressure. Remaining in silence so that no sound waves disturb the inner ear. You think tinnitus is not getting better by remaining in silence? Did you try? Yes you did. Let me illustrate: You broke your arm, but instead of putting a bandage around your broken arm, you just avoiding heavy lifts. But you kept writing with a pen and do the easy things. Did your arm ever heal? Of course not! You then noticed that your tinnitus could never heal if you avoided loud noise. But did you ever try sitting in a sound isolating chamber for several weeks in a row? Probably not.
Here is a good counter-argument: deaf people with tinnitus hear nothing except their tinnitus, yet their tinnitus does not go away. This proves that remaining in perfect silence over an extended period of time, has no effect on tinnitus.
Really? So sound waves do not create any pressure on the inner ear for deaf people? Only for people who are not deaf? That sounds strange to me. Even if all middle ear bones were removed, sound waves would still go into the inner ear through the skull. I am not convinced by that argument until those deaf tinnitus people were put in a sound isolating chamber for several weeks in a row and then reported how their tinnitus was affected by that experiment.
Why do no doctor suggest the sound isolating chamber, nor even make an experiment to check whether the method works or not? I believe there are two reasons:
1. People are not interested. Staying in silence is difficult in our stressful society, it is not fun (all the fun goes on in the noisy environments, coffee shops, pubs, offices, ... rather than at home in the arm chair), it is painful to sit in silence and listen to just the tinnitus, and nobody believes it makes things anything better, especially not so as no health care provider would ever mention this as a strategy to resolve tinnitus. Quite the contrary this may cause hyperacusis and should be avoided by any means.
2. Health care is not interested, since it would cost too much money for our society to deal with a not serious health condition as if it was a serious health condition.
Therefore the short cut is imposed on tinnitus patients. They are urged to never take even a short break from their job due to a recent on-set of tinnitus, and they are instead urged to try to ignore their tinnitus. Then here comes the excellent argument (which is false): If you don't do as the doctor says, then you will be in trouble, since then you will have a harder time to get used to your tinnitus, which by the way will never go away.
I wonder for how many years this will go on. This lie is incredibly persistent. One reason it can go on for a very long time, is because most people who get tinnitus, really like noise. So they are happy to follow the doctors advice. The last thing they want to hear is that they shall remain in silence. Simply because silence is painful for them. It is easier to be in noisy places where one is not bothered by tinnitus. It is very tempting to follow the advice of the health care of today.
So how long can this go on until someone wakes up and realizes that we are all getting fooled?
Next step one should consider is: how to get rid of tinnitus? Then I look at what created it. What created it? Pressure on the inner ear. How do I resolve tinnitus then?
Do I turn on white noise?
Do I care about what I eat?
Do I exercise hard?
The only sensible thing to me would be to let the inner ear take a rest from all sorts of additional pressure. Remaining in silence so that no sound waves disturb the inner ear. You think tinnitus is not getting better by remaining in silence? Did you try? Yes you did. Let me illustrate: You broke your arm, but instead of putting a bandage around your broken arm, you just avoiding heavy lifts. But you kept writing with a pen and do the easy things. Did your arm ever heal? Of course not! You then noticed that your tinnitus could never heal if you avoided loud noise. But did you ever try sitting in a sound isolating chamber for several weeks in a row? Probably not.
Here is a good counter-argument: deaf people with tinnitus hear nothing except their tinnitus, yet their tinnitus does not go away. This proves that remaining in perfect silence over an extended period of time, has no effect on tinnitus.
Really? So sound waves do not create any pressure on the inner ear for deaf people? Only for people who are not deaf? That sounds strange to me. Even if all middle ear bones were removed, sound waves would still go into the inner ear through the skull. I am not convinced by that argument until those deaf tinnitus people were put in a sound isolating chamber for several weeks in a row and then reported how their tinnitus was affected by that experiment.
Why do no doctor suggest the sound isolating chamber, nor even make an experiment to check whether the method works or not? I believe there are two reasons:
1. People are not interested. Staying in silence is difficult in our stressful society, it is not fun (all the fun goes on in the noisy environments, coffee shops, pubs, offices, ... rather than at home in the arm chair), it is painful to sit in silence and listen to just the tinnitus, and nobody believes it makes things anything better, especially not so as no health care provider would ever mention this as a strategy to resolve tinnitus. Quite the contrary this may cause hyperacusis and should be avoided by any means.
2. Health care is not interested, since it would cost too much money for our society to deal with a not serious health condition as if it was a serious health condition.
Therefore the short cut is imposed on tinnitus patients. They are urged to never take even a short break from their job due to a recent on-set of tinnitus, and they are instead urged to try to ignore their tinnitus. Then here comes the excellent argument (which is false): If you don't do as the doctor says, then you will be in trouble, since then you will have a harder time to get used to your tinnitus, which by the way will never go away.
I wonder for how many years this will go on. This lie is incredibly persistent. One reason it can go on for a very long time, is because most people who get tinnitus, really like noise. So they are happy to follow the doctors advice. The last thing they want to hear is that they shall remain in silence. Simply because silence is painful for them. It is easier to be in noisy places where one is not bothered by tinnitus. It is very tempting to follow the advice of the health care of today.
So how long can this go on until someone wakes up and realizes that we are all getting fooled?
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