Story by Grace Wood – BBC News, Yorkshire | For Dr. James Jackson there’s no such thing as a quiet night’s sleep. Instead his head is filled with the sounds of church bells, out of tune oboes and WW2 bombers. Diagnosed with tinnitus as a child, he is one of an estimated 7.6m people in the UK to have the condition. He spoke to the BBC about his experience as part of Tinnitus Awareness Week.
“They are just there all the time,” the 51-year-old academic says of the “cacophony” of “random and spontaneous” noises floating around his head.
Having developed tinnitus aged six following a bout of measles, Dr Jackson says he thought the ever-present noises were just normal to begin with.
But when he suffered catastrophic hearing loss in both ears aged 19, resulting in severe deafness, the condition became problematic.
Initially, he says, he turned to drinking in a bid to drown out the noises, before he was able to find other coping mechanisms.
“I used to rely quite heavily on alcohol,” he says.
“I saw [tinnitus] as an invader in my own head [and] it was much easier to drink heavily and hope I fall unconscious than it actually was to try to go to sleep.”
‘People lock themselves away’
Tinnitus is the name for hearing noises that do not come from an outside source. The sounds can come and go but for some they are there all the time.
It is not clear what causes tinnitus but it is often linked to hearing loss, conditions such as diabetes, thyroid disorders or multiple sclerosis and can be a result of anxiety or depression.
After completing a PhD in Psychology, Dr. Jackson now studies and researches the condition at Leeds Trinity University.
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Read the rest of this very informative and educational article here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/there-s-a-life-before-tinnitus-and-a-life-after-it/
Photo: Tinnutis sufferer
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