For those who have visited Madison Square Garden in the New York City to hear Beethoven’s Symphony No.5 in C minor on a New Year’s Eve, the music must have remained with them for a few brief minutes even after it had stopped playing in the vast arena. Well, this is quite normal. Beethoven’s composition lingers long in the ears after the music has actually stopped. But if that continues till the next morning and persists thereafter that calls for a medical check up which will invariably diagnose it as a case of Tinnitus. And there is nothing outstanding or exceptional about it since millions of Americans suffer from Tinnitus and they keep suffering since no cure for tinnitus has yet been found.

Even though the word has been derived from the Latin expression tinnitus, which means ‘ringing’, the sound heard by the affected person vary a lot. It may range from hissing, whooshing, ticking, clicking to humming, droning, whining and buzzing. In short, it is enough to drive a person crazy, looking for relief from pillar to post.

What is Tinnitus and what are its various types?

Clinically speaking, tinnitus represents any ringing or buzzing in the ear not resulting from an external stimulus. However, there are several forms of tinnitus, each one of them capable of thoroughly disrupting the life of the patient. There is subjective tinnitus where the ringing or the wheezing is heard by the patient alone and objective tinnitus in which the doctor can also hear the noise by using acoustic instruments. Some of these are unilateral (can be heard in one ear) or bilateral where it is heard in both the ears. Persons suffering from Pulsatile Tinnitus can hear their own heartbeats while Somatic Tinnitus resonances lie outside the ear, probably beyond the cochlear nerves and is believed to arise from central crosstalk within the grey matters. Chronic Sinusitis Tinnitus could be a nasty customer, being caused by thickened mucus trapped within the middle ear space from which it is difficult to drain the mucus out.

Here are some of the underlying causes of tinnitus…

Atherosclerotic Carotid Artery Disease in which the arteries become narrowed due to heavy cholesterol buildup that result in uneven blood flow to the head and neck area. This gives rise to agonizing heartbeat sounds that can be heard in the ears of the tinnitus patient. Mostly associated with elderly patients having history of diabetes, hypertension, angina pectoris as well as persistent high blood pressure.

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