If you’ve never experienced it, consider yourself lucky. But for the more than 749 million people worldwide who suffer from the ringing, buzzing, pulsing noises that they hear inside their ears or head (with no corresponding external noise that anyone else can hear), the experience of tinnitus is one that can be truly distressing. In fact, a recent investigation of tinnitus presented in JAMA Neurology lays it out clearly: The global burden of tinnitus is similar to that of pain or migraine, yet there has been insufficient research on it and few effective treatment options for those who suffer. And as for suffering, while tinnitus appears to affect men and women equally, it does seem to become more of a problem as people age, so the majority of tinnitus patients are aged 65 or older. In fact, estimates are that 24% of older adults suffer from it.

Furthermore, while it can be a mere annoyance for some, for those who suffer more severely (thought to be 120 million people worldwide), it can be associated with such problems as hearing loss, sleep deprivation, depression or anxiety, with the worry that you might “never know silence again.”  (For a sense of the anguish, take a look at this descriptive poem on the subject). Tinnitus is not known to be a disease itself but rather a symptom or side effect of other illnesses. In fact, it’s associated with roughly 200 different health problems. Among those health problems is a recent determination that tinnitus has been a side effect for some who have received the Johnson and Johnson Covid vaccine (the FDA now lists tinnitus as a potential side effect of that vaccine) as well as a recent study reporting that at least a third of cancer survivors treated with chemotherapy for the most common forms of cancer report tinnitus (along with hearing loss) as a prevalent problem.

Currently, there is no cure for tinnitus, though potential therapeutic treatments are now being reported. The most recent study was published in Frontiers in Neurology. Coming out of the University of Auckland, this study involved an approach that essentially rewires the brain so that the noise from tinnitus is relegated to an irrelevant background noise for the sufferer. Specifically, the researchers created a smartphone app that the listener can hear through Bluetooth headphones, involving counseling, games, and other therapeutic interventions. Though this was a small trial, about 65% of the participants reported clinically significant improvement in their tinnitus condition. The hope is that this app will be more widely available for tinnitus sufferers within the next 6 months. To find out more, grab your headphones and read here.