DR MARTIN SCURR
lying on your front, or if (as in your case) a limb is flexed, or if a tight tourniquet is needed to stem bleeding (and the pressure irritates a nerve). Your symptoms should improve within weeks and resolve fully within a year.
In the meantime, anti-inflammatory painkillers may help with discomfort, and avoiding prolonged elbow flexion by wrapping a towel around each elbow at night may hasten the resolution of the symptoms. FOR the past two years I’ve had tinnitus — a continuous hissing and whining in my ears, of varying loudness and intensity. It
AT least 15 per cent of us will experience tinnitus at some point.
For many, it is a temporary problem that clears within weeks or months. But for a minority, it becomes a permanent symptom that adversely affects the quality of life. Tinnitus is where you hear sounds such as whooshing without there being any external cause of the sound. It’s thought to occur as a result of a change in the amount of sound-related information reaching the brain that may result from age-related hearing loss, or damage to the ear caused by noise exposure.
It is believed extra information is sent through, resulting in the ‘noise’ of tinnitus. Other possible triggers include a build-up of earwax, an ear infection, some medications that may lead to ear damage, and a head injury.
I’m afraid there is no straightforward cure: the goal of treatment is to reduce the impact of tinnitus on your life.
The human brain is hugely complex and tinnitus, is, for the most part, a brain problem.
I am reminded of Charles Bonnet syndrome, when people with partial or complete blindness ‘see’ things that aren’t there, due to the brain creating hallucinations, which to the individual are very real even though there is no input from the eyes. Tinnitus is similar.
We know that anxiety and fatigue worsen tinnitus. So relaxation techniques such as meditation and antidepressant drugs can help. Cognitive behavioural therapy can also be effective by altering negative thought patterns to ease the impact of the condition, though I accept that it requires much practise. The more an affected individual focuses on the unwanted noise, the worse and more intrusive it becomes. Simply having background noise on — for example, the radio — can help.