Military and tinnitus — noise or not

Hi I just wanted to say there are a lot of vets coming back from Iraq/afghan with tinnitus. There are also a lot of exmil personnel with tinnitus from lifetime using guns etc. Most people would assume all the gunfire etc is the primary cause.

However as exmilitary service myself for 10 years and serving in several warzones my own view is noise induced loss may be a trigger but I think other factors must be at play. Though some places over there are terrible, simple fact is average soldier is not seeing heavy fighting( like compared to ww1, ww2 or even Korean war) or really being exposed to worse noise than say city worker on a jackhammer or even regular hunters and target shooters.

I mean most 1st world countries only losing 10-50 soldiers a year, which is terrible, but indicates fighting is only intermittent skirmishes, insurgencies, random bombings etc not protracted battlfields like the old days. I can verify this.

Compare this to a ww1 soldier who stood all day firing and receiving incoming artillery shells. Or a ww2 bomber pilot in an aircraft with no sound supression and quad mounted machine guns blazing out of the cockpit.

So why is tinnitus the major complaint now for US soldiers making claims so I have heard.

Being cynical my first thoughts its maybe easier to lie about tinnitus to get a claim-since no one knows what you are hearing in your own head(or maybe it can be tested with brain graphs?).

If not and they really have tinnitus what is the cause? For myself I am thinking long term possible sort of brain damage from too much adrenalin. Has there been research on the brain regards this. Another thing that sets military apart is all the many innoculations they get. Another thing is large amount of magnetic fields etc- a lot of weapons platforms and bases have large arrays of transmitting equipment, some can burn you if you get in front of them. Many armored vehicles carry transmitters which continually block all incoming cell phone signals so as to prevent an insurgent from setting off bombs underneath the road.

Anyway I just thought some governments now seeming to address this problem will be at least a step in the right direction. More money than before will probably go into research, pharmaceutical giants chasing long term treatment options for their own pocket will probably be more ''induced'' by the governments to go for actual cures( a policy not seen in a long time) so they don't have to keep paying for the veterans ongoing expenses. Also this research would also have to target the brain or internal wiring aspect of tinnitus , not just ear or noise research, as this I believe is not the only cause.

Thoughts anyone?

 

Gun fire even on the rifle range. IED's. Being in a chopper without any hearing protection. Even normal everyday noise can be harmful depending on the circumstances. Stress and anxiety serving overseas in some shithole especially in the middle east where you might be on edge watching out for some nutjob suicide bomber. There are many causes of tinnitus and I doubt that ex vets would put themselves through a lot of grief and a lot of bureaucratic nonsense to try to get compensation if their condition wasn't real. I'm actually not surprised about the level of tinnitus in ex vets. After WW1, WW2, Korea and Vietnam the ex vets were poorly treated and often completely disregarded by successive governments.

 

I know 3 guys with tinnitus from the army. One of them is my brother who instructed urban combat 5 days a week. Guns and grenades all day long. Yikes.