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Tinnitus: The Annoying Ringing Or Buzzing In Your Ear!

It's not uncommon, now and again, to hear a ringing or buzzing in the ear. The condition is called tinnitus, and it can be caused by a number of things such as ear infections, allergies and even as a medication side effect.

Tinnitus

For most people, tinnitus is temporary. But for some, it's a chronic, debilitating condition. Tinnitus caused by noise induced hearing loss is particularly difficult. When hearing is damaged, the brain sometimes compensates by creating its own noise, so to speak. But the problem is that the noise can take the form of a high decibel whistle, or static.

A Health Concern?

At its worst, chronic tinnitus can make relaxing and sleeping nearly impossible, which can lead to a range of stress related health problems.

Now, there's no cure for tinnitus, but there are some good treatments. In fact, in recent years audiologists have come up with some ingenious therapies.

One of these involves using music to trick the brain into muting or at least lowering the volume on tinnitus.

Here's How It Works...

Basically, the audiologist embeds musical tracks with a frequency specially designed to mask and cancel out the patient's tinnitus. The patient then listens to the music for a few hours every day. And over several months, the frequency in the music causes the brain's audio cells to rewire themselves in a way that makes the tinnitus less audible.

So the ringing is technically still there, but over time it fades.

Read More: Tinnitus (MedicineNet)

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