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Tinnitus
Tinnitus - A Sound of Silence
How does
it appear in your head ?
It may become obvious when the surrounding
is silence. It may sound like echo, buzzing, ringing,
airplane landing, forest insect, (cengkerek di hutan)
water rushing, hissing sound (when you switch on radio
in between station) or anything……..It can
be continuous or pulsating. These are what we called
tinnitus. Most of the time tinnitus is a functional
disorder rather than the actual disease. Most of the
sufferers can live with it or had learnt to live with
it after some assurance. Tinnitus is a common phenomenon
and surveys in several countries shown that 1 in 5 adults
had noise in their ears.
How your
brain process acoustic information
When the physical sound reach the ear,
its parameter slowly disappear, whereas the meaning
becomes more and more prominent, the simple sound pressure
curves slowly give rise to the content of the sentence.
When we listen to music, it is the melody that is finally
perceived. Sound is very important to animals as well
for their survival. A simple physical sound of a faint
of rustling of leaves may be perceived by animals as
either an indication of a predator, a prey or a sexual
partner. A mother wakes up whenever her baby is crying
although a louder sound might not interfere with her
sleep. If the loved one such as your wife is mowing
the grass in the garden the noise will become tolerable.
However if your hated neighbour decides to mow his own
lawn while you are sleeping or reading book, you might
find the noise is intolerable. The sound of a car may
bring delight to your family when you reach home whereas
to your neighbour it might sound like a Russian army
tank. A railway worker during his off-shift hour, might
be sleeping soundly even during the old locomotive is
passing by but a waiting passengers who are sleeping
at the waiting room will probably be woken up by the
noise.
These examples show that a physical sound not only
carries meaning but also generates emotions or what
we called sensation. Similarly, tinnitus which is produced
at our subconscious level of brain are brought to our
conscious level for hearing, and it depend on how we
perceive and react (sensation) to it. Like screen of
a computer, our conscious perception can only handle
a data of 3 bytes per second. Tinnitus is an example
of unnecessary perception and it occupies your perceptual
capacity of 3 bytes per second and no wonder tinnitus
sufferer find it difficult to think and to concentrate.
How could
you help yourself to fight tinnitus ?
First of all you have to see your ENT doctor
to evaluate your problem and further investigate it.
You need also to do audiometry test to evaluate your
hearing threshold. Your audiologist can measure your
tinnitus - the tone and the intensity of the tinnitus.
Your doctor should finally be able to provide more information
about your tinnitus and discuss with you the treatment
strategy. For more information, you can always call
or e-mail us and we will help
you. You can send us your name and address for registration
with the TINNITUS HELP GROUP.
The registration is e-mail.
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