Tinnitus: Quieting The Unwanted Orchestra In Your Ears

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Life seems to speed up as we age—and there’s a neurological reason for that (see today’s video for details and studies)

• Tinnitus can be annoyingly disruptive to life, and can be caused by a lot of things, but common causes include:

  • Noise exposure (e.g. concerts, some kinds of industrial work, war)

  • High blood pressure

  • Head/neck injuries

  • Ear infection

  • Autoimmune diseases (e.g. Type 1 Diabetes, Lupus, Multiple Sclerosis)

• There are some remedies that may help, though—see today’s main feature for those!

• As we age, our collagen levels tend to get depleted more easily

  • Collagen is important not just for youthful good looks, but also for the health of bones and joints

    • Today’s sponsor NativePath are offering high-quality collagen without additives or harmful impurities

• Regular chocolate consumption has been linked to a slightly lower risk of mortality in women

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

Why Life Seems to Speed Up as We Age

And no, it’s not just because of the “a year used to be a large percentage of time lived so far, and now each year is only a small percentage” thing. Here’s a great video exploring (in a little over 7 minutes) the psychology and neurology of chronoception:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Bonus: there are also numerous scientific papers cited as sources—click here (and then “more”) to see them underneath the video

🔕 MAIN FEATURE

Tinnitus—When a “minor” symptom becomes disruptive

Tinnitus (typically: ringing in the ears) is often thought of less as a condition in and of itself, and more a symptom related to other hearing-related conditions. Paradoxically, it can be associated with hearing loss as well as with hyperacusis (hearing supersensitivity, which sounds like a superpower, but can be quite a problem too).

More than just ringing

Tinnitus can manifest not just as ringing, but also as whistling, hissing, pulsing, buzzing, hooting, and more.

For those who don’t suffer from this, it can seem very trivial; for those who do… Sometimes it can seem trivial too!

But sometimes it’s hard to carry on a conversation when at random moments it suddenly sounds like someone is playing a slide-whistle directly into your earhole, or like maybe a fly got stuck in there.

It’s distracting, to say the least.

What causes it?

First let’s note, tinnitus can be acute or chronic. So, some of these things may just cause tinnitus for a while, whereas some may give you tinnitus for life. In some cases, it depends on how long the thing in question persisted for.

A lot of things can cause it, but common causes include:

• Noise exposure (e.g. concerts, some kinds of industrial work, war)

• High blood pressure

• Head/neck injuries

• Ear infection

• Autoimmune diseases (e.g. Type 1 Diabetes, Lupus, Multiple Sclerosis)

So what can be done about it?

Different remedies will work (or not) for different people, depending on the cause and type of tinnitus.

Be warned also: some things that will work for one person’s tinnitus will make another person’s worse, so you might need to try a degree of experimentation and some of it might not be fun!

That in mind, here are some things you might want to try if you haven’t already:

• Earplugs or noise-canceling headphones—while tinnitus is an internal sound, not external, it often has to do with some part(s) of your ears being unduly sensitive, so giving them less stimulus may ease the tinnitus that occurs in reaction to external noise.

  • A great option (that this writer uses personally and considers a life-changer) is silicon earplugs that live in a little case on a keyring when not in use—no more heart-racing fleeing from supermarket checkout boops or pedestrian crossing bips or traffic noises or babies crying or (etc)

• White noise—if you also have hyperacusis, a lower frequency range will probably not hurt the way a higher range might. If you don’t also have hyperacusis, you have more options here and this is a popular remedy. Either way, white noise outperforms “relaxing” soundscapes.

• Hearing aids—counterintuitively, for some people whose tinnitus has developed in response to hearing loss, hearing aids can help bring things “back to normal” and eliminate tinnitus in the process.

• Customized sound machines—if you have the resources to get fancy, science currently finds this to be best of all. They work like white noise, but are tailored to your specific tinnitus.

Good luck!

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🌎 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• Chocoholics rejoice: Regular chocolate consumption linked to lower risk of mortality in women

• Hallucinations in the movies tend to be about chaos, violence and mental distress. But they can be positive too

• Humans are unique but not exceptional species of mammal

• Alien hands and walking corpses among some of the world's rarest mental conditions

• Gut check: our microbiome's vitamin factory could redefine personal health

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-to Book - by Dan Harris

If you already meditate regularly, this book isn't aimed at you (though you may learn a thing or two anyway—this reviewer, who has practiced meditation for the past 30 years, learned a thing!).

However, if you're—as the title suggests—someone who hasn't so far been inclined towards meditation, you could get the most out of this one. We'll say more on this (obviously), but first, there’s one other group that may benefit from this book:

If you have already practiced meditation, and/or already understand and want its benefits, but never really made it stick as a habit.

Now, onto what you'll get:

• A fair scientific overview of meditation as an increasingly evidence-based way to reduce stress and increase both happiness and productivity

• A good grounding in what meditation is and isn't

• A how-to guide for building up a consistent meditation habit that won't get kiboshed when you have a particularly hectic day—or a cold.

• An assortment of very common (and some less common) meditative practices to try

• Some great auxiliary tools to build cognitive restructuring into your meditation

We don't usually cite other people's reviews, but we love that one Amazon reviewer wrote:

Bottom line: if you're not already meditating daily, this is definitely a book for you. And if you are, you may learn a thing or two anyway!

Click here to get your copy of Meditation For Fidgety Skeptics from Amazon today!

May your days be peaceful and productive,

The 10almonds Team