Tinnitus is a common symptom that affects millions of people in the UK. In most cases, tinnitus isn’t dangerous or a serious health concern. However, if left untreated, it can become more severe, especially if your symptoms are impacting your sleep and quality of life.
Some potential causes of tinnitus require investigation and could be linked to an underlying medical condition that requires treatment—we’ll summarise these shortly. In any case, having your hearing and ear health checked is essential to controlling your tinnitus.
If tinnitus develops after an injury or accident, we recommend seeking help from a medical professional or audiologist as soon as possible to rule out any damage or trauma to your ears that may be causing the tinnitus. Likewise, if your tinnitus has materialised suddenly, is very severe, or is accompanied by other problematic symptoms like vertigo, it’s worth booking an appointment with your GP at your earliest convenience.
Key Takeaways:
- Tinnitus is a prevalent symptom; in most cases, it isn’t dangerous or due to any concerning health condition—but if you have any concerns, you should raise them with a medical professional.
- Some issues, diagnoses, and injuries can trigger tinnitus, making it essential to have your hearing and ears checked. These include head injuries, high blood pressure, earwax blockages, and infections within your ears.
- A comprehensive hearing assessment may help rule out potential causes or identify the underlying reason for your tinnitus, which allows our audiologists to determine the right treatment options for you.
Understanding Tinnitus as a Symptom
Let’s start by clarifying that tinnitus itself isn’t a medical condition, nor is it always an indication of a more serious healthcare concern. Instead, tinnitus is a symptom that means you hear sounds within one or both ears that nobody else can hear.
Tinnitus can be caused by a huge variety of things, including:
- Exposure to loud noises
- Age-related hearing issues
- Medication side effects
- Infections and blockages in your ears
- Injuries to your head, neck or jaw
While some medical conditions present with tinnitus as one of the symptoms, it is rare for tinnitus to be related to anything dangerous or that requires emergency treatment. Untreated tinnitus can, though, become more severe over time and begin to impact your daily life.
Possible Causes of Tinnitus That Can Be More Dangerous
Depending on the underlying causes of tinnitus, other symptoms or changes to your hearing, it may be possible to pinpoint a condition that is contributing to your tinnitus. The same caveat remains – even if tinnitus is associated with a condition, most are treatable and are not considered dangerous.
Examples include the following:
- Injuries or damage to your head, neck, or jaw that has caused trauma to the structure or small bones within your ear. Injuries can also impact the delicate nerves or the areas of your brain that interpret and respond to sounds.
- Problems with blood pressure or blood vessels, such as hypertension, blockages, or artery hardening, can affect the way blood flows to the ears.
- Some types of tumours, most often acoustic neuromas, which are non-cancerous tumours that can develop on the nerves connecting the brain and inner ear.
Tinnitus is also reported as a possible side effect of several chronic conditions – long-term conditions that are usually treated with a combination of lifestyle and nutritional changes, medications and therapies.
Chronic health conditions associated with tinnitus include migraines, diabetes, anaemia, autoimmune disorders, and issues impacting the function of your thyroid. Tinnitus may self-resolve following successful treatment of the underlying health condition or remain an ongoing symptom.
Common and Mild Causes of Tinnitus
We’ve mentioned that tinnitus isn’t usually harmful and can be associated with a broad variety of causes, factors and contributing scenarios. All are widely benign and best controlled with tailored, professional tinnitus therapies and treatments following a comprehensive ear and hearing assessment.
At Regain Hearing, the most frequent triggers of tinnitus we see are:
- Excessive or very loud noise exposure, such as heavy machinery, music played at volume or attending sporting events.
- Age-related hearing changes or tinnitus as a standalone symptom, with or without simultaneous hearing loss.
- Medications, with many everyday medicines and some prescription drugs that can potentially cause tinnitus in people with a sensitivity.
- Buildups of earwax – often resulting in impacted earwax – or infections in the ear are very common causes of tinnitus that can be quickly and effectively treated.
- Issues with the jaw, including clenching and grinding your teeth when you sleep.
As always, it’s worth having your tinnitus properly evaluated, even if the symptoms are reasonably mild or you are confident there is nothing serious going on elsewhere – bringing your tinnitus to a manageable or undetectable level before it worsens.
What do our audiologists say?
When to Seek Medical Assistance for Tinnitus
Tinnitus could be benign but can also become harder to live with over time. Most causes aren’t dangerous but won’t be corrected without proper treatment because a problem like an ear infection will need to be resolved before the tinnitus can go away.
During a consultation, we’ll also run through all the relevant information, such as:
- Your medical history
- Any conditions you have been diagnosed with
- Medications you might be taking
- How tinnitus is impacting your well-being and rest
- Other symptoms you are experiencing
From there, mapping your tinnitus to get an exact idea of the sound, pitch and frequency, how often symptoms occur, and whether they affect one or both ears can help us further narrow down the causes.
The right solutions could include advising you to change medication, providing treatment to clear up an infection, removing earwax blockages using a sensitive-ear-friendly microsuction technique, recommending ear protection devices, or suggesting alternatives like gum shields which can reduce the effects of jaw grinding.
If, however, there are any indications that there could be a medical cause behind your tinnitus or you have had previous or concurrent symptoms that point towards a healthcare concern, we’ll explain our findings and ensure you know how to take action and can communicate the results of your ear assessment and hearing tests to your GP or other practitioner.
