The trouble with many of the most prominent hearing problems is that, unlike other physical injuries, there are not as many warning signs that can assist people in changing their behaviors. While someone who has put undue wear and tear or stress onto a limb can often feel a strain before the actual injury takes place, so many people wake up one morning and can’t quite remember when they started to experience a ringing in their ears.

That ringing is actually known as tinnitus, and it is one of the most common hearing problems across age groups. What is actually happening to people when they hear any sort of buzzing or ringing is that the hear thinks it is hearing sound, when in reality, no sound is actually present. While a number of external factors, such as certain medications or an ear infection, can cause tinnitus, the most widespread reason that people experience it is due to noise-induced hearing loss.

While a number of hearing tests can measure other problems in regards to hearing, tinnitus is a little bit more difficult to pinpoint. Since there is not an actual physical test that can determine when an ear is hearing sound while sound is not there, diagnosis has to be based more on the patient explaining symptoms to the doctor. While a number of cases of tinnitus are manageable, there are some for whom sleeping is often disrupted, and other activities that require silence or quiet are extremely difficult.

While tinnitus is nowhere near life-threatening, it is extremely irritating and can definitely be debilitating. For some, the sounds come as whooshing, like waves or a breeze, while others report that the noise is more annoying, like crickets that never stop or some sort of electronic pitch that cannot be drowned out. When hearing tests are done, many people suffering from tinnatus actually cannot hear sounds in the range where they are describing the noise plaguing them.

While fixing tinnitus is a difficult endeavor involving surgeries or drugs, for most people, prevention is a much better method of handling things. All musicians, DJs, people who work in loud environments, or anyone who cranks devices up to the highest volume possible should consider either immediately changing those habits, or using some sort of protective device, like earplugs or earmuffs, to decrease the severity of the volume levels. And while it might not sound like a fun way of seeing a concert or of rocking out at home, making these sort of changes gives your ears a lot longer to hear all different tones and volume levels, rather than just an incessant ringing sound.

While hearing loss is the number one hearing problem associated with tinnitus, there are sometimes other factors at play, including potentially life-threatening tumors and diseases, as well as medicines with doses of particular chemicals that cause this sort of hearing-related reaction in some people. The best way to determine the root of the trouble is by going to a doctor and having a hearing test, which will hopefully assist in figuring out the cause of the problem.