Tinnitus: The Causes, Effects & How To Manage It

Tinnitus! The screeching, whizzing, hissing noise in our ears that just won't buzz off, however much we wish it would.
 
I'll talk you through the causes of tinnitus,  how it impacts us and ideas on how to manage it. There is no cure but we can learn to live along side it and, like any challenge that we have, there are always positives we can take away from it.
 
Useful Links & Codes
Tinnitus UK
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Transcript

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Hi, I'm Beth and this is my podcast, A Friend in Your Ear. Friends are so important in our lives. They support us through the good and the bad, the ups and the downs. They give us the space to grow and the grace to fail. They are our biggest cheerleaders when we are our harshest critics. They are not just here for us, but they're here with us. And that's what this podcast is all about. Being a friend in your ear. I'm a lawyer turned stylist and fashion blogger, who built a successful styling business. And now I work from home running an online business. I spend a lot of time reading books, listening to audio books and listening to podcasts. My favorite podcasts offer me advice, comfort, support, wisdom, and fun when my real life friends are busy. And this is a place where I can take what I've learned and deliver it in a way that hopefully makes your life easier, gives you something to ponder, and brings a little joy to your day. Think of this as a chat with a friend, a place where you can come to reminisce for nostalgia, a giggle, and a place to find answers to something that might be bothering you. So whether you're out on a run or a walk, on the school run, being a taxi to your kids or grandkids, on a Zoom meeting with your microphone muted, or sitting with a glass of something cold in your Welcome to the A Friend in Your Ear podcast. Hello, my friends, and welcome to another episode of A Friend in Your Ear. Aptly named because today we are going to be talking about ears. Specifically, we're going to be talking about tinnitus. And the statistics for tinnitus are incredible in terms of How many people are suffering from it? How much money it costs the country each year? And how little research there is into it? Now, for those of you who don't know, tinnitus or tinnitus, as some people call it, and I think that's probably how it's pronounced in the US, is a ringing or buzzing in the ears? You'll probably be familiar with it, even if you don't experience it on a daily basis, but that noise that you would get in your ears after you'd been to see one of your favorite bands, or you've been to a school disco and you'd wake up in the morning and there would be buzzing in your ears. And it was almost like a really nice reminder of what a great night you'd had the night before. The problem is when things go a little bit wrong and you haven't had the great night before, and the buzzing doesn't go away. What you're left with is something that is super, super frustrating and sometimes quite upsetting. Now there's different causes for tinnitus. It can be hearing loss. It can be something called Meniere's disease. It can be as a result of diabetes or thyroid or MS, anxiety or depression or the side effects of some medications. So sometimes it's possible to trace It's how it arose, where it came from and so on and so forth. But in other cases like mine, it just seemed to appear out of nowhere. I think it might have come on the back of some episodes of Vertigo that I had in around 19, 1921. Yeah. I feel that old sometimes in 2021. I'm not exactly sure how it started, but I do remember one day sitting in the car and thinking, golly, I've got this really, really loud noise in my ears, and it just wouldn't go away. And gradually the realization dawned that it was probably never going to go away. And in a minute, I'll come to how we can deal with that. For me, when I've got something like tinnitus and something's impacting on my life, I really want to know more about it. But I was also aware that the more I found out about it, the more attention I would be giving to it, so the more noticeable it would become and the more distressing it could be. So it's a really, really fine line. And for that reason, I purposefully didn't join any self help groups. I didn't do a huge amount of reading about it on the internet. The Tony Robbins quote comes to mind in this scenario where focus goes energy flows and I was just aware that there was a danger that I could become easily wrapped up in it. And so I took the view to ignore it for as long as possible. And I managed to do that fairly successfully. Only commenting when it was really, really loud and just trying to live my life as best I could. There were days when it was so loud that come 7 o'clock at night I just had enough of the day and just wanted to go to bed to try and get away from the noise and to escape from it. And some mornings I would wake up and it wouldn't be too bad and other mornings I would wake up like this morning and there would be a full on ringing in my ears. Now the thing about tinnitus is It isn't possible to get rid of it. There's nothing you can do. There's no magic pill you can take. It's something that you have to learn to live alongside and you have to learn to manage it like we do with lots of things. There's just no easy answer. Now the advice out there as to what you can do is to relax, do deep breathing and yoga to make sure you get plenty of sleep to keep your stress levels low and if it helps to join a support group. And for a while I thought, yes, this is all great, but actually None of it's going to make that much difference. I just need to get on with it, be quiet, and keep going. And then I happened to be talking to my next door neighbor and she also has tinnitus, probably worse than I do in fact. And she told me that she had started to wear hearing aids. And this was something that I thought about on and off. I had some hearing tests in 2021 when I first noticed the signs of tinnitus. And actually, My hearing was fine. There's some age related hearing loss at the higher frequency in the same way that there is for most of us. And then when I went back a few months ago, the tests were repeated, and in fact, my hearing hadn't got any worse. And the girl who was doing the test, who is only in her late twenties, said, actually, your hearing is better than mine in some situations. So, It's not a case that my tinnitus has come on as a result of hearing loss, but there is the option to wear hearing aids so that it can mask the tinnitus, and that is something that I have decided to do. I will soon be coming up to the end of my 90 day free trial with Boots Hearing to test these hearing aids out. And what they are, are little tiny, and they are tiny now actually, very different to how hearing aids used to look. Little tiny what I call noise cancelling headphones because to me the purpose of them is to cancel out the noise of the tinnitus and also I think, and I think this is one of the last taboos, there's something really uncool about saying that you wear hearing aids. There's lots of things as we get older that people talk about quite openly so whether that's wearing glasses and that's probably because kids do it, you know, children, people at every age wear glasses, so there's not the same taboo, but there's lots of things that we talk about and find quite funny, so We might talk about needing to wear tenor ladies, we might talk about saggy skin, we might talk about saggy boobs, we might talk about going grey, we might talk about bunions, we might talk about lots of things. But to me, hearing loss or anything to do with our ears is one of those last taboos because it feels as though it is really unsexy, but then so are varicose veins and bunions and we still laugh about those. And it's a real sign of ageing. Now I'm not actually, as I keep saying to people, I'm not actually wearing them because my hearing is bad. Although it isn't what it was. I know that and most of us know that I think as we get older we learn to lip read a bit more and it's the classic situation of being in a busy place with lots of background noise and finding it really really hard to hear what people are saying. But like I said the audiologist said to me Your hearing is just as good as mine, there's a little bit of hearing loss, but actually that's a good thing because If you didn't have a tiny bit of hearing loss at the high frequency levels We wouldn't be able to suggest the hearing aids to you So that was kind of my inroad to think ah now There might be a way that I can wear something here that is going to make a difference So eventually I decided to sign up and go for the 90 day free trial for the hearing aids, which is, I have to say, an amazing, amazing deal because these hearing aids are really expensive. They come in four different levels and I think the ones I've got are the third most expensive. I didn't need the most expensive because they are for people who work in the music industry and You know, probably either as a DJ or in a band or as a professional musician and their hearing needs to be top notch. I'm okay with the ones down from that, but between Yumi and The Gatepost, they're still expensive. I think, from recollection, they're at nearly 3, 000, but you can pay for them monthly, which is what We're doing because it's interest free, so it makes sense to do it that way. Anyway, cost aside, I wasn't going to necessarily dive into that, but I know it's something that you would probably want to know about. These little hearing aids sit behind your ear and then there's a clear wire, almost as if you're a bodyguard, like Whitney Houston in the film, the bodyguard and Kevin Costner had his little hearing piece with a clear wire that went into his ear. They look a little bit like that and, do you know what? They come in different colours. I think mine is champagne coloured, can't quite remember now but I think you can have silver, gold, Rose gold, champagne, then they do a pale green and they do a pale pink now. So actually, they look quite funky, they're okay to wear, they're not a problem, they're not uncomfortable. And the way that they work is basically, they magnify all the other sounds around you so that you can't really hear your tinnitus anymore. It really is a case of masking the tinnitus by making everything else a bit louder. So what I tend to find is there's certain things that are magnified hugely. I've been in supermarkets and people have rustled a package on the other side of an aisle to me and I've thought that they're standing behind me making a really really loud noise. And the thing that I notice more than anything is how a lot of the packaging has been changed these days. It's got less plastic in it and it's less sort of bendy and squishy and it's more brittle. The noise of that gets hugely magnified so that you've got that going through your ears. If you're running a tap, that is really loud. So that goes through your ears when you put the key in the front door. That's very loud. The indicators in the car, there's all these noises that you're hearing so much more clearly than you did before that actually what it does is mask the sound of the tinnitus. So that's really how they work, and they're so clever because they work via an app, which you can have on your phone, but also the audiologist, has it as well, and she can change all the levels and she can put the volume up. She can put the volume down. You can have different settings for different environments you're in. So whether you're in a restaurant or in a bar or in a pub or at home or at a nightclub, you can have all these different settings. I just tend to keep them on the. Same setting the whole time. I know this is starting to sound a little bit of a plug for hearing aids and boots But it's not I'm just talking you through what I'm using at the moment. I'll come on to some other things as well So that's one of the ways that you can use the hearing aids or the noise cancelling headphones To mask the sign of the tinnitus. The other way that you can use them is that they're Bluetooth So you can listen to podcasts through them your phone can come through them You Funny story about that in a minute, and you can stream YouTube sort of anti tinnitus sounds, if you like, music that will cancel out all sounds that will cancel out the tinnitus. I actually haven't found one that works yet. If anything, they just add to it and drive me even more nuts. But sometimes it is nice just to have a little bit of music playing through. And I know my next door neighbor uses hers at night when she's going to sleep. I don't wear mine overnight. I charge them overnight. They only take three hours to charge, but I don't need to wear them at night. I can still fall asleep without them in. But she wears them overnight. So they're really the two ways that they work. One through distraction, because everything around you is so much louder than it would otherwise be. And two, you can actually Bluetooth sound directly into your ears, which leads me nicely into my funny story. So a couple of weeks ago, I was round at my friend's house one evening. We were doing some work and her husband was there as well and I was just chatting to him and all of a sudden I get this real loud blasting in my ears which of course nobody else can hear. So, it's my phone ringing, I jump out of my skin. I'm not really sure whether he noticed or not, but I felt very self conscious. And then I have to scrabble for my phone to try and switch the noise off. Not only that, but I'd got a new phone and somehow, and I don't know how this had happened, but the ringtone had changed to, I'm just a teenage dirtbag baby, so I'm sitting there. Trying to have a conversation and all of a sudden, I'm just a teenage dirtbag baby blasts into my head and makes me jump out of my skin and I still haven't taken it off that I really need to look into it. So sometimes it can catch you a little bit unawares. Now you don't have to Bluetooth your phone through your noise cancelling headphones. It can forget the device and you just go about your usual business. But if you do want to have the music coming through, then obviously you do need to have it connected, but you do have those options. So there are funny, things that go on as well. Sometimes a text message will come in or a ping or a ding from somewhere. And I'm like, Oh Lordy me, what's going on? There's all this noise around me. So sometimes at the end of the day, I'm quite happy to get to the end of the day. Just to take the headphones out to give me a bit of peace, even though what it means I'm left with is the noise of the tinnitus. So in some ways they're a bit of a double edged sword. Anyway, what happens when you get to the end of the 90 days is you can either hand them back, and get all of your money back, which is phenomenal. Or you can keep them and have them forever more. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to keep mine, if only for the fact that on the days when my tinnitus is really bad, I know that I've got something that I can try that will act as a distraction, even if that in itself can sometimes be a bit annoying. And in fairness. To the headphones, earphones, hearing aids, call them what you will, that's not their fault. That's operator inefficiency, inability, and inadequateness, if that's a word, to set them up properly. At least they make me laugh. It is really helpful knowing that they're there if things get really bad, even if it just means I play some music through them. And of course you can say, well, just put some AirPods in. And I have thought that to myself, I could just wear AirPods, but actually now I try and wear AirPods. They feel so huge and they do block out lots of other sound as well that I actually much prefer the hearing aids. In terms of other things that have helped me, I mentioned on the last podcast episode I did about doing my miracle morning routine, and that has definitely made a difference. If you haven't listened to that podcast episode, briefly, just to recap, Good Friday was a really, really bad day for me. I think it was March the 29th. I was a bit overwhelmed, a bit stressed, the weather wasn't great, my Ears were so loud and it made me really miserable. It hasn't made me get to the stage where I want to cry that often, but it has happened two or three times. And I just thought, I can't be doing with this anymore. So, I took it upon myself to do the Miracle Morning routine. And it's made such a difference. Just the time that I spend each morning doing a bit of meditation, doing a bit of affirmation setting, doing a bit of journaling, doing a bit of reading. I do dive into it more in the last episode of this podcast has made a real difference. And I figure that. If I can work on keeping my mindset as strong as possible, if I can look after myself, if I can go to bed early, if I'm eating well, if I'm resting, then that's as much as I can hope of myself. There's a couple of things that I think make it a bit louder. I think when I run, Um, it makes it louder, which is a bit of a shame because I'm not going to give up running and I do it quite a lot. But, I am not prepared to give that up until my body tells me that there is no other choice. But, I haven't reached that stage at the moment so I shall continue. And then the other thing, I do think if I'm a bit tired, if I'm a bit stressed, Maybe if I've had something to drink, possibly. I'm not a big drinker. All those things combined can be a bit of a recipe for a very noisy day. In which case I will pop in my headphones, which I haven't done today, which I really need to do because it's blimmin driving me bonkers. Switch something on and get distracted by it all. But it is a really funny thing how Even when it's loud for the whole day, sometimes you notice it and sometimes you don't. And it has a lot to do with distraction. So if I'm really engrossed in something that I'm doing work wise, then I, sometimes I don't notice it. And then I stop and kind of come back into the everyday world and come out of the flow that I've been in. And I think, Oh wow, that's loud. Let me dive back into something else. Then other days it's loud the whole day and it doesn't seem to matter what I do. Then it's, it's there and I can't get away from it. It did really upset me on occasion to start off with. I do remember thinking I am never, ever going to just be able to be peaceful ever again. I can't sit in silence because I've always got this screaming in my ears. But the funny thing is when I do my morning meditation, which only lasts for about 10 minutes, I do feel quite peaceful and it doesn't seem to bother me then. you So there are ways that we can tune out of it and zone out of it. Probably like we do with our husbands sometimes, I did not say that, or with children, you know, you just have that skill. Some days you have that skill where you're like, yeah, I've just zoned you out, and other days it doesn't matter what you do. The noise is just there. Something that is recommended is CBT. So I think that can work for some people. There are different kinds of therapies. I was just reading about how you can get apps with CBT on it. There is the tinnitus UK website. So it's worth having a look at that. If you're suffering from tinnitus, if you know anybody that is. Sometimes I think if someone around you is suffering from tinnitus, it's really hard to know how to react. I first came across it when I was quite a young child. My stepmom had tinnitus. She'd been cabin crew and she flew a lot with my dad, who was a pilot, actually. That's a bit of a cliched story, isn't it? And she had very bad tinnitus and It was talked about a lot. I think it really, really bothered her and it would make her very upset and very down. And I was chatting to my sister about this the other day and she said that it was the air pressure that used to make her tinnitus worse. I don't know that I've noticed that, but again, like I say, I've tried not to give it too much attention because then there's the danger that I start to look at the weather and see that there's an area of low pressure coming in and start to dread that because I think my ears are going to be bad and sure enough they probably will be. Not that I'm saying that my stepmum shouldn't have figured it out, I'm sure she should and it was probably, you know, She just joined the dots over the years, but there is that fine line between living alongside it and going and hunting for things that you think might make it worse and then it taking on a bit of a life of its own. I hope that's a helpful little dive into tinnitus for you. What it is, what can cause it, what you can do to try and lessen the effect of it and then some practical steps that you can take in terms of wearing the hearing aids, noise cancelling headphones, call them what you will and And lifestyle choices that you make just to try and minimize the effect that it will have on you day to day. As with anything that starts off as being something that's really stressful, and really quite upsetting I do think there's something positive that comes out of it. I think I will always make sure that I'm doing my miracle morning routine, that I'm in a good sleep routine, that I'm looking after myself, that I'm taking time out, that I'm resting. All of those things, which we should all be doing anyway, but which we often aren't able to make time for, I have found have become really crucial to me, because otherwise it can be just so distressing. It can feel quite lonely sometimes as well, when all you want to do is cut yourself off from the world to get away from the noise. It's a really horrible place to be, so I absolutely sympathize with you if you do suffer from tinnitus and I hope that this podcast might have helped in some ways because I think there's a lot of it out there and I don't think it's talked about very openly. It's a very unsexy subject. As I said, the thought of wearing hearing aids is exceptionally unsexy, but sometimes We just have to give these things a go. And the fact that there is a free option for you to try now might make you think, do you know what, let me try them for 90 days, let me see if they make a difference. And interestingly, just before I finish, the audiologist said to me that everybody who's got a little bit of hearing loss, which most of us will have by the age of, Late forties, early fifties should wear hearing aids because there's so much research to show that they limit the risk of us getting dementia. The reason for that, and I'm not exactly sure how this works, is that because your brain is working so hard with the sounds and processing the sounds, that your cognition remains really, really good. I don't know if it can repair any cognition that's been lost up until that point in time. But there is now a lot of evidence coming out that wearing hearing aids helps to lessen the risk of dementia. So that too is something just worth bearing in mind. If you've got an elderly relative and you're desperate for them to get some hearing aids, you can tell them from me. They're actually okay to wear. They're quite cool. You can link them up. You can listen to the archers through them and Jeremy Vine and your favorite singer. 40s tracks, bit of Elvis, bit of the Beatles, and it's all perfectly doable. The technology isn't difficult. If they don't want to have an app on their phone, then the audiologist can set everything from the little audiology booth, wherever they may be. Even if that's, you know, a bit of a distance from you. If you've got any questions or any queries about tinnitus, if you're suffering and you're suffering in silence and you just want to chat to somebody or you want to know what you might do to make things better, then please Please feel free to come and find me on Instagram. You'll find me there at Beth Goodrum. And until next week or until next time, I shall wish you a fabulous day. I hope the sun shines. I hope you can get your summer clothes on. If you're listening to this in the middle of winter and you think that's slightly odd, then I am actually recording this in May. We've had a few nice days. It's gone chilly again now. Frankly, it needs to pull its socks up and the sun needs to come out again so that I can take my socks off. Anyway, I shall love you and leave you. You take care. Lots of love and bye for now. This is the place where I say all of the things which I should have said during the podcast episode, but which I forgot. So first of all, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope that you enjoyed the episode. If there's anything that you would like me to cover in future episodes, please just let me know. If there was anything that I mentioned and that you'd like more details about, whether it's a resource or a code for a product, just take a look in the show notes. I will be sure to have. Mentioned it there, and if you would like to subscribe to the podcast so that you get notified as soon as future episodes are ready, then please just hit the subscribe button now. Thanks so much once again, have a super week, and I will see you again soon. Bye for now.