dear friends, there are statements that tinnitus was not such a significant problem several decades ago. i've spoken to many veterans of world war 2 and to older hunters, who heard hundreds of blasts and they never knew such a problem.
what is the difference between the health status of our generation and theirs?
i have two suspects:
1. our modern, fast and nervous life
2. some immune background for tinnitus, that became common for new generation (some viruses like herpes and allergy)
This is a difficult question. While I agree that the incidence of tinnitus is probably increasing across the population, I would think that is due to the general increase in environmental noise pollution. I know it is dangerous to jump to conclusions because correlation does not equal causation. However, the link between noise exposure and tinnitus is too great to ignore.
As far as our current generation being more susceptible to tinnitus, I disagree with that. There are multiple factors at play. People live longer than ever, meaning that their hearing deteriorates. An older population in general will almost always mean higher rates of tinnitus. The numbers point to that. Compounding that problem, as I said above, is the drastic increase in environmental noise. If it's not on the street, it's in our cars; if it's not at home in front of the TV, it is at work. If we aren't exposed to noise in our leisure time, we're often accidentally exposed. Our lives are full of sound levels that nature did not intend on a near daily basis. While noise was definitely present 50-100 years ago, it was definitely not at the levels of today.
Furthermore, tinnitus was even less known in the past than it is now. It wasn't even a recognized injury or disability by the US DoD until just a few years ago. I would bet that soldiers returning from previous wars have had similar rates of tinnitus and/or hearing loss. One also has to consider what kind of an effect misinformation and lack of awareness has. Imagine living in the 50's. You go to the doctor because your ears are ringing. You are told nothing can be done, to go home and live with it. The doctor then was your best source of medical information. There was no internet to turn to for reading about the condition. There was no American Tinnitus Association. You took the doctor's advice, and you learned to live with it. Tinnitus has been described in very ancient texts, it's been with humanity for as long as we've had writing, and I would bet much longer than that. We just have an amazing tool now for sharing knowledge with millions of people around the world from our living room now.
In conclusion I would agree that tinnitus is increasing in incidence because of a general increase in noise pollution, and aging of the world population. Most of the population growth expected over the next 40-50 years is not because people in third world countries are having 7 children per woman, but because 6 of thost children no longer die by the age of five. People are living much longer. As a result you can expect to see people dying of age related illnesses increase quite a bit (cancers, heart attacks, stroke, alzheimers, etc.), while the incidence of mortaility due to starvation, communicable diseases, infant mortality and other problems decrease. Along with that trend towards age related mortality, disorders associated with aging and exposure (read tinnitus) are almost sure to increase as well.
I seriously doubt any broad change has occured to the human species within a couple generations. I suspect the change is what we are doing to ourselves.
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