Is this a folk tale?

[tootyfrooty]

A memory has just surfaced! When I was younger, someone told me that tinnitus was caused by damage to the little hairs in your ear that vibrate when sound waves hit them. And because of the damage, your brain substitutes the frequency that the hairs would have reacted to. Has anyone else ever heard that?

[Happyrosie]

Tootyfrooty, this is what the British tinnitus Association says:

“Whilst we do not know the exact answer to what causes tinnitus, we know that it is not a disease or an illness. It is generally agreed that tinnitus results from some type of change, either mental or physical, not necessarily related to hearing.

When we hear, sound travels into the ear and then the hearing nerves take the signals to the brain. The brain is then responsible for putting it all together and making sense of the sound. Because the ears don’t know what’s important and what’s not, they send a lot of information to the brain. This is too much information for us to process, so the brain filters out a lot of unnecessary ‘activity’ and background sound, such as clocks ticking or traffic noise.

If there is a change in the system, for example, a hearing loss or ear infection, the amount of information being sent to the brain changes. The brain then responds to this change in levels by trying to get more information from the ear, and the extra information you may get is the sound we call tinnitus. The tinnitus is therefore actually brain activity and not the ear itself! It is generally accepted that it isn’t only a change in the ear that can result in tinnitus, but it could be due to a change in our stress levels, for example, with tinnitus being noticed after periods of significant stress, a change in life circumstances or general wellbeing.”

And I think I’d heard something like what you say, too

[rabbits65 in reply to Happyrosie]

Very good explanation Happyrosie you would make an excellent teacher in tinnitus. 😊