Between 10 and 17% of people live with a partner sharp noise. They define it as a beep, a buzz, a whisper, a hiss, even a mains noise. On some occasions they can be a true ordeal because they disturb sleep, they are an impediment to concentration and to carry out daily activities. If the patient does not rest well, or is more irritable because he cannot concentrate, will irreparably affect your quality of life.
They usually appear for a failure in our ears or in the ear-brain connection. It is important not to confuse them with somatosounds, which are noises produced by structures inside the ear. It seems that inside the ear there is no life but we have a whole universe inside. There are blood vessels, there are nerves, and there are muscles. And everyone has their vidilla.
Let’s give an example of a somatosonido (even if it’s a bit scatological): there are times when we make efforts in the bathroom we hear a noise in the ear and that’s because one of the great veins of our brain passes very close. Muscle tics that can occur inside the ear can also generate sounds. These examples have a cause that is tangible in some way and we know them as somatosounds. The difference with tinnitus is that it is only heard by the patient and we cannot hear or see it in any test.
One of them is the worst disease of all: age. As with our eyes (we get cataracts), there is also deterioration in our ears and we are losing hearing. In short: the cochlea is getting old.
We could say that the cochlea it is the microphone that we have inside our ear. Tinnitus is related to this degeneration and is therefore more common in older people, although it can also appear in young patients. In children and adolescents it is rare.