Tinnitis - 1000 Crickets Partying in My Head

Tinnitis: a disease effecting the ears.

From Wikipedia; "Tinnitus (pronounced /tɪˈnaɪtəs/ or /ˈtɪnɪtəs/,[1] from the Latin word tinnitus meaning "ringing"[2]) is the perception of sound within the human ear in the absence of corresponding external sound.

Tinnitus is not a disease but a symptom resulting from a range of underlying causes that can include ear infections, foreign objects or wax in the ear, nose allergies that prevent (or induce) fluid drain and cause wax build-up, and injury from loud noises. Tinnitus can also be caused by hearing impairment and as a side-effect of some medications. Some cases of tinnitus are medically unexplained.[3][not in citation given]

I have been afflicted by this God awful ringing and chirping noises in my head (ears). At times so loud I can hardly hear, always there and hard to ignore. I believe too that its one cause of insomnia. Damn difficult to go to sleep with 1000 crickets partying in your ears, That's Tinnitis. Sometimes the din of noise is only slightly aggravating. I believe that I developed this condition during my long machinist career hearing loud noises all the time while at work and sometimes when off work. But I also have had bad sinuses since very young.

There is no treatment or cure I know of. Treatments like noise limiting machines and changing your medicines or ear wax removal did no good what so ever for me. When I was first noticing this condition, I would have a spot on my pillow where upon getting warm the wax would run out. It no longer does this and both ears roar, chirp and ring constantly. Tinnitis does not seem to me to cause a lack of hearing as much as causing the need for what I want to hear to be louder. I just cannot forget the noise in my head and listen to some one speak unless the room is very quiet and they speak a little louder than normal.

From Wikipedia: "Measuring tinnitus

The basis of quantitative measurement of tinnitus relies on the brain's tendency to select out only the loudest sounds heard. Based on this tendency, the amplitude of a patient's tinnitus can be measured by playing sample sounds of known amplitude and asking the patient which he or she hears. The tinnitus will always be equal to or less than sample noises heard by the patient. This method works very well to gauge objective tinnitus (see above.) For example: if a patient has a pulsatile paraganglioma in his ear, he will not be able to hear the blood flow through the tumor when the sample noise is 5 decibels louder than the noise produced by the blood. As sound amplitude is gradually decreased, the tinnitus will become audible, and the level at which it does so provides an estimate of the amplitude of the objective tinnitus"

Maybe one day doctors and scientist will find a cure. Although on the TV shows and in other media I have not found anything that has helped quite the noise in my head.