UnTouchableTinnitus
Tinnitus is hearing a noise that is not coming from anywhere outside you. People describe ringing, buzzing, whooshing, humming, hissing, throbbing, and sometimes music or singing, in one ear, both ears, or the head. It is usually not a sign of anything serious, and it sometimes settles on its own. It can come alongside hearing loss, Ménière's disease, anxiety or depression, some other conditions, and some medicines. See a GP if it keeps happening, is getting worse, or is affecting your sleep, concentration or mental health — and urgently if it beats in time with your heartbeat. Support ranges from sound therapy and sleep and relaxation habits to tinnitus counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy, retraining therapy and hearing aids where there is hearing loss.
This is a plain summary, not medical advice, and it is not a substitute for talking to your GP or your clinical team. For NHS information about tinnitus, speak to your GP or call NHS 111.
People who have talked about it
1 story, each one written in our own words from what the person said publicly themselves.
Jamie Laing
Jamie Laing on nine years of tinnitus, and learning not to fight it
Jamie Laing went on This Morning to talk about the tinnitus he has lived with for nine years, and the programme opened by playing the sound he hears. It started overnight. He woke one morning to a high-pitched ringing and searched the whole house trying to find what was making it, before realising the noise was inside his own head. He has described that realisation as genuinely frightening. He was later diagnosed with tinnitus and told there was no cure. He puts his own tinnitus down to never having protected his hearing — loud music and nightclubs when he was younger, with no ear protection — and now encourages other people to look after theirs. He said it gets louder when he is anxious, stressed, overworked or overtired, and that the more attention he pays it the louder it seems. Rather than fight it, he has come to treat it as what he called a really annoying friend: when it gets loud, he takes it as a signal to ask which of those things is going on. He was clear this is what has worked for him, not advice for anyone else. It has had hard stretches. Filming Celebrity Hunted, in a loud and stressful environment, it got bad enough that at times he could hear little except the ringing. He cannot sleep in silence, and uses a fan, white noise, whale sounds, or an audiobook to have something else in the room. The part he kept coming back to was how isolating it is, because nobody else can see or hear it. He said talking about it changed things for him — a friend turned out to have it too — and he invites people going through it to message him rather than sit with it alone. He appeared alongside a doctor, who set out the treatments and support that exist. Nothing in this story is medical advice. If tinnitus is affecting your sleep, concentration or mental health, the NHS advice is to see your GP.
Photographs, in order: Jamie Laing by Amy Martin Photography (CC BY-SA 4.0).