You learn to adjust to life with tinnitus. In order to drown out the constant ringing, you always keep the TV on. The loud music at happy hour makes your tinnitus much worse so you avoid going out with your coworkers. You make appointments regularly to try out new therapies and new treatments. Over time, you simply integrate your tinnitus into your everyday life.
Mostly, that’s because there’s no cure for tinnitus. But they may be getting close. We might be getting close to an effective and lasting cure for tinnitus according to research published in PLOS biology. For now, hearing aids can really help.
Tinnitus Has a Murky Set of Causes
Tinnitus typically manifests as a buzzing or ringing in the ear (though, tinnitus could manifest as other sounds as well) that do not have an objective cause. A disorder that impacts millions of people, tinnitus is very common.
It’s also a symptom, generally speaking, and not a cause unto itself. Basically, something causes tinnitus – there’s a root problem that produces tinnitus symptoms. It can be difficult to pin down the cause of tinnitus and that’s one reason why a cure is so elusive. Tinnitus symptoms can occur due to several reasons.
Even the link between tinnitus and hearing loss is murky. Some individuals who have tinnitus do have hearing loss but some don’t.
A New Culprit: Inflammation
Research published in PLOS Biology detailed a study directed by Dr. Shaowen Bao, an associate professor of physiology at the Arizona College of Medicine in Tuscon. Dr. Bao carried out experiments on mice that had tinnitus caused by noise-induced hearing loss. And what she and her team found points to a tinnitus culprit: inflammation.
Scans and tests done on these mice showed that the parts of the brain in control of listening and hearing typically had considerable inflammation. As inflammation is the body’s response to damage, this finding does suggest that noise-related hearing loss might be causing some damage we don’t completely understand as of yet.
But new kinds of treatment are also made possible by this discovery of inflammation. Because inflammation is something we know how to manage. When the mice were given drugs that impeded the observed inflammation response, the symptoms of tinnitus disappeared. Or, at least, those symptoms were no longer observable.
So is There a Magic Pill That Cures Tinnitus?
If you take a long enough look, you can most likely view this research and see how, one day, there could easily be a pill for tinnitus. Imagine if you could just pop a pill in the morning and keep tinnitus at bay all day without needing to turn to all those coping mechanisms.
We could get there if we can overcome a few hurdles:
- The exact cause of tinnitus will be distinct from person to person; it’s hard to know (at this time) whether all or even most tinnitus is connected to inflammation of some type.
- First, these experiments were carried out on mice. And there’s a long way to go before this particular approach is deemed safe and approved for humans.
- Any new approach needs to be proven safe; these inflammation blocking medicines will have to be tested over time to rule out side effects and any potential complications.
So it might be a while before there’s a pill for tinnitus. But it’s a real possibility in the future. If you have tinnitus now, that represents a substantial increase in hope. And various other tinnitus treatments are also being studied. Every new discovery, every new bit of knowledge, brings that cure for tinnitus just a little bit closer.
Is There Anything You Can Do?
If you have a relentless buzzing or ringing in your ears now, the promise of a far-off pill may provide you with hope – but not necessarily alleviation. There are contemporary treatments for tinnitus that can provide genuine results, even if they don’t necessarily “cure” the underlying issue.
Some approaches include noise-cancellation devices or cognitive therapies created to help you ignore the sounds linked to your tinnitus. Hearing aids frequently provide relief for many people. A cure may be a number of years off, but that doesn’t mean you need to cope with tinnitus by yourself or unaided. Finding a treatment that is effective can help you spend more time doing things you love, and less time focusing on that buzzing or ringing in your ears.
References
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000307
https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/brain-inflammation-identified-potential-target-treat-tinnitus
