Why Do We Accept That HL and Tinnitus Are the 3rd Most Prevalent Chronic Diseases in the World?

[Genevieve]

The answer to this is very complicated. But in general the tinnitus you experience after a rock concert comes from overstimulation of the cells of hearing (hair cells, neurons, support cells). They all get damaged, but they do have some ability to repair themselves, just like when you scrape a knee.

However if a gun is fired next to your ear, or you were drunk, dehydrated, and smoking at the rock concert, that can result in overwhelming inflammation in the cochlea that causes permanent hearing loss. This is akin to cutting off your leg or arm and getting phantom limb pain. So your brain has to fill in the blanks using the last signal it had, which was tinnitus.

Tinnitus are closely intertwined, so its not as simple as chicken or egg. Early tinnitus is just a sign of an insult to the cochlea. Long-term tinnitus is often your brain filling in the blanks for hearing that you've lost.

Thank you for the explanattion @ResonanceCEO I am very impressed by your research, in fact you have become an expert to the subject of Meniere disease! But I have a question that bothers me a lot since the onset of my T, how is it possible that some people have great hearing loss but no T? And on the other hand, how is it possible that there are people who have T but who do not have hearing loss?

 

[cornelius]

Two causes which came first in my mind. Because hearing loss and tinnitus are invisible health issues and because when you are old and sick almost no one cares therefore there is no consideration since you are obsolete for the still healthy majority. The ironic but realistic solution : That those troubles become torrential with the aging population and the teenagers destroying their ears with concerts and earbuds. Look at Hiv, Ebola etc, they are deadly and widespread threats and treatments are developed though not 100% safe and fixed yet.

 

[Sarah Russett]

Well certainly invisible health issues are not taken very seriously by the public, and also there are certain conditions that are just painfully ignored by the medical community whether they are benign or not; however, being young and sick is no better. I would argue that being young and sick is worse. There is this idea we have that bad things won't happen to us and that young people are all healthy. That if they look a certain way they couldn't possibly be sick. Most chronic genetic conditions aren't able to be well managed and as someone who is supposed to have your whole healthy life ahead of you it's absolutely terrifying. \at least when you're older people believe you when you say you're in pain (not you in particular, just in general).

But in the case of tinnitus obviously it does not matter. Young or old you are ignored.