Millions of people around the globe experience the symptoms for tinnitus
. The ringing in the ears which characterizes this complaint is especially common in the towns and cities of the industrialized western world. Until recent times those sounds of tinnitus had been more prevalent amongst blue collar workers than perhaps they were amongst office staff or agricultural workers.
At least for the most part the days of mass employment in vast noisy factories have all but disappeared. Mechanization and the advent of workers rights to reasonable standards of health and safety monitoring have considerably reduced the exposure to the best known cause of ringing ears for working people constant and unacceptable levels of noise in the workplace.
However, the noise from the workplace has now been replaced by the ever more intrusive sound caused by high volumes of traffic. Not only is this noise more intense but most of us are obliged to listen to it and to live closer to it. As the volumes of traffic continue to rise and the highways get ever bigger to cope with that traffic they gradually encroach closer and closer on our living space. Our ears are constantly under attack from the sounds of traffic on the road, in the air or on the railways.
We add to that the often self inflicted stress put on our delicate hearing system caused by listening to music at vastly excessive volume levels. These sounds are being delivered all around us from more and more sophisticated speaker systems. If thats not enough, many people now deliver music at high volume directly into their ears through the use of headphones and even worse, earphones. Many people compound the problem still further when they shut the front door on all that noise outside only to turn on and turn up the often constant and loud presence provided by that television set lurking in the corner of their living space. The building blocks for this condition that we call tinnitus which will manifest itself as a constant ringing in the ears and will quite possibly be there for life are being willingly put in place one by one.
When tinnitus comes to live with you it usually does so by stealth. Gradually and almost unnoticed at first it makes its home in your head. It is usually a case of a gradual awareness of a constant ringing in the ears that are the sounds of tinnitus rather than a sudden realization of their existence in your life. Once you are aware there is a noise in your head that wont go away it becomes a focus. The more you focus upon it the more invasive the sound becomes. This is the point at which you put a name to it. Tinnitus is in your life and you will need to deal with it.