The 2 Million That Are Severely Disabled

I have asked you 2 questions already without introducing myself. I'm sorry for that. Hi Dr. Nagler my name is Jason. I live in northern Indiana and am 32 years old. I am confined to a wheelchair due to a birth defect so I found fun and leisure playing video games with friends. Today everyone uses headphones and thats how I developed T. Cranking loud music directly into my ears created a continuous loud siren in my left ear. It has really done alot to my happiness and joy as the sound now interferes with my games and movies. I had no idea loud sound could change your brain. That and I learned later that Vicodin ruins your hearing as well which ive been taking for years due to shoulder pain. I have 2 questions for you. The first is just out of curiosity. How did u develop your t? The primary question is I was watching a video with you on youtube from 1997. You said that 2 million are disabled by this condition. Does that mean that they re not handling it well or can the sound become that severe? Thanks again for your time.

 

Hi Jason. I live in Atlanta, but I went to college at IU Bloomington. So I am sort of a Hoosier! Good to meet you.

Well, that's hard to say. For the longest time I blamed it on an idiosyncratic reaction to Relafen (nabumetone), which is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agent. I had been on the drug for four or five days when I first noticed my tinnitus. But as I look back on it, I used to run marathons (many many beers and pizzas ago), and when in training on my long runs, I would play cassette tapes through my Sony Walkman (yea, I said it was a while back), listening though headphones with the volume pretty high. So even though I was not in training at the time of the onset of my tinnitus, it might have played a role.

Uh huh. I had hair back then.

Well, there are some people with very loud tinnitus who really aren't bothered by it much at all. And there are some people with not-so-loud tinnitus who are all but incapacitated by it. So I don't think the disability is entirely related to loudness. Nor do I think that it has much to do with how you "handle" your tinnitus on a conscious level. I am simply not a fan of tinnitus-related disability's being a matter of how "tough" you are or some such thing. Indeed, I have known some very powerful men and women - captains of industry - who have been reduced to lumps of clay by their tinnitus. So I don't think that the disability is predominantly based on conscious elements like loudness or how you handle it. Rather, I think that the disability is related to subcortical elements like (1) how your brain processes your tinnitus between its point of origin and the point of conscious perception in your auditory cortex and (2) how you react to your tinnitus, neither of which is under conscious control. You simply cannot will your tinnitus to take a different neurological pathway or will yourself not to react to your tinnitus. If you could, we would not be having this discussion at all!

You are most welcome. I hope my responses clarify more than confuse!

stephen nagler