Tinnitus - do you have ringing in the ears?

What Rockethouse is referring to is called masking. This technique involves wearing an earpiece that emits a sound
designed to replace or "mask" the tinnitus you normally hear. All you're doing is repacing one bothersome sound (tinnitus) with what is supposed to be a less bothersome sound. These masking sounds played into your head are loud enough only to mask the tinnitus, which is not that loud compared to outside sounds, unless you're unlucky enough to have tinnitus in the 50-70db range. Whether you can hear sounds in the frequency range of the tinnitus or masker gets back to whether or not you have hearing loss in those ranges to begin with. There is something called Tinnitus Retraining Therapy which is different than masking. It involves wearing earpieces all day in both ears regardless of which ear the tinnitus is in. The volume is set just below that of the tinnitus volume and gives your brain an alternative to place it's attention on. This training or
"retraining" of the brain can take a couple of years and
occurs along with therapy sessions to deal with the psychological affects of tinnitus. This therapy has helped a majority of those who complete the program. When successful the tinnitus sufferer is no longer bothered by
the tinnitus. In fact they only notice it if they "listen"
for it. At this point the brain no longer finds the tinnitus sound interesting or threatening.

I've done a bit more research and have come across some info indicating that tinnitus could be caused by certain kinds of head trauma. It got me thinking. In mid November my wife and I went to the Philadelphia Kimmel Center to hear some jazz. As I'm pretty sure I recollect, on the way home I did not have any ringing in my ears. Just a short time after than I slipped and hit my head on a closet door. I passed out for only a few seconds, and had no bump on the head (the door fortunately popped open when I hit it, relieving some of the force). At the start of the year and our next visit to the Kimmel, it was the first time I noticed ringing as we were on our way home. Is it possible this could be causing my problem?

Larrman

You seem pretty knowledgable about the subject are you an audiologist or ENT?

Chuck

Czbbcl,
No, but I play one on TV. Just kidding.
As a sufferer of severe tinnitus I had to educated myself beyond what my audiologist even knew about it. This was out of self preservation. I needed to know everything I
could so I could at first learn methods to cope and second
develope a treatment plan to recover, which I did. None of this is easy and unfortunately as I mentioned earlier most audiologists and ENT's aren't well prepared to treat tinnitus sufferers, so we're kind of on our own.
I have tremendous empathy for anyone with severe tinnitus.

Larrman, can you tell us about any faciilties that specialize in this problem? I'm in the Philadelphia area, and I've been to two ENTs so far, with no real insight being given on what to do.