When consulting a dictionary, tinnitus is defined as “ringing or buzzing in the ears”. Upon further reading and also personal experience, I can tell you that there is also wooshing and humming. Tinnitus can even seem like a familiar tune or song – this is referred to as a “musical hallucination” – which sounds somewhat blissful.
The most common cause for tinnitus is noise induced hearing loss. My tinnitus was caused by damage due to a virus in my inner ear. This virus caused permanent damage to the sound sensitive cells of the cochlea. It is therefore important to note that tinnitus is not a disease but a symptom.
I was introduced to “tinnitus maskers” when I went for my first hearing test. These are tools that help the brain ignore the specific tinnitus frequency.
The literature also refers to “tinnitus retraining therapy” and this is currently where my reading is focused. Please note that I am by no stretch of the imagination a medical specialist, but it was explained to me as follows: The damage to the cells causes a lack of stimulation within those specific frequencies, because these frequencies are no longer heard. The brain gets irritated and consequently creates those sounds on its own. Again a wonderful mechanism that echoes just how wonderfully the human body was put together!
The solution provided to me for my tinnitus (that is only present in the one ear), was fractal tones, or fractal music. This sounds like music one would hear in a spa… somewhat undefined, totally unfamiliar. Fractal music is generated in such a way that the order of the melody never repeats, there is therefore no pattern and the brain cannot familiarise itself with the sound. It will never be an earworm, and you will never be able to sing along. It is because of this lack of recognition that it works as a masking technique. The brain can later simply move it to the background and even ignore it.
It also has additional properties in that it has a calming effect and aids with concentration and focus.
My hearing aid generates this music. Various programmes named lilac and sea breeze and other such pretentious phrases. I am making an effort to use the music when I struggle to calm my thoughts at night, or when I am concentrating on a project at work and I have experienced some of the positive effects. I am documenting these in my journal and hope to provide a sort of case study after I have used it for a while.