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Hello, hello, this is Karen Nichol, nurse practitioner in for Ichi and Bicci.

Welcome back and I'm here with our trusted producer, Forest Wensel.

And I'm here to talk to you today about Tinnitus, which is earringing.

I had a listener, Angela, who said I started listening to the podcast this year.

Love your podcast. Can you talk about Tinnitus during perimenopause and how to deal?

So thank you, Angela, for that question and Tinnitus is a complicated little problem.

But I will do my best to give you an outline of the things that can cause Tinnitus and how it applies in terms of our hormonal issues.

So first of all, Tinnitus is how we pronounce it. Some people say Tinnitus, but the correct or medical pronunciation is Tinnitus.

And it is earringing and it is when someone hears a sound in one or both ears with no external sound present.

It affects a lot of people in the US to be precise, 50 million people and it interferes with daily activities in about 25% of those who are affected.

And Tinnitus is more common in men than in women and is more likely to occur among individuals who smoke and the likelihood of developing Tinnitus increases as we age.

Most of the time we describe Tinnitus as earringing, but some people describe it as buzzing, clicking, hissing, humming or roaring.

Tinnitus is usually caused by an underlying condition such as age-related hearing loss, an ear injury or circulatory system problems.

Hypothyroidism, which we've talked about a lot on this podcast, which is low thyroid, can also cause earringing.

Treating the underlying cause of the ringing can provide relief or reduction of the symptoms.

Some behavioral therapies to help with earringing include Tinnitus retraining therapy, we call it TRT.

This involves counseling and wearing a wearable device that emits low-level noise and environmental sounds and it must be worn for one to two years.

Studies show that up to 80% of patients find some relief of their Tinnitus with TRT.

Biofeedback and stress reduction is a relaxation technique that teaches a person to control certain body functions such as heart and breathing rate in order to change the person's reaction to the earringing.

We use masking devices and these resemble hearing aids and produce a low-level sound which helps to reduce or eliminate the Tinnitus noise in some patients.

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