Off to BRI today to see the Audiologists. They are an interesting bunch. I rather like visiting them. They have their own little area on the far right hand end of the campus (as you look from the main entrance) and it always seems a bit more open and airy than other places. 

I visit them for my tinnitus. For this, they have given me hearing aids. You may think this is odd, as we are trying to control unwanted noise, not add more noise into the problem, but this is entirely the wrong way to think about it and this is why I find them interesting – their explanation of why this works is fascinating.

Once the nerves of the inner ear have noted the vibrations detected by the eardrum a lot happens. Much more than you might think. There isn’t a nice little link to a chunk of brain which directly interprets the sounds. Rather there is a whole chain of internal processing before the final result of analysis is given. Internal equalisers and other effects that work to enhance, clarify and otherwise filter the noise to help in the comprehension of the sounds. This part of the brain also learns and adapts, so that as your hearing changes, due to age or exposure to loud noise (in my case both[1]) or whatever, it can still do the best job possible of interpreting the sounds we hear. In my case, having lost (as is normal as we age) much of the hearing in the higher ranges, the “equaliser” in my brain is stuck with the sliders up to max for those frequencies. As a result, my tinnitus presents as a high pitched hiss, possibly I’m picking up a noise from inside my head, possibly it’s imaginary, but either way that’s what’s happening.

So, the hearing aids I have are tuned specifically to give me a boost in the ranges where my own hearing is deficient. This then has had the effect of retraining my internal equaliser to lower its own boost to those frequencies and so my tinnitus is much improved. It’s still there, but not constantly and less intrusively. I can enjoy moments of complete silence once again.

Last time I went, I had a tinnitus score of 45, this time I scored a 16. Anything less than 17 is considered as not worth treating, in effect, I am “cured”. So I won’t need to visit them again. One less doctor on my list. They will continue to supply spares and batteries for my hearing aids and we did discuss interesting possibilities for headsets with LOOP technology and such, so I might ask to see them again for that, but there’s no need to go back with continued monitoring.

It’s great to be able to say that I’ve got one less “illness” on my list, even though I can’t say it’s cured, I can say the treatment is non-invasive and non-drug and in my book that’s a victory.

[1] Rock on, but give me a comfy chair and a cup of tea afterwards