It is generally recognised that people who experience ringing in the ears are experiencing tinnitus - a name that derives from tinnire a Latin word which actually means 'ringing'.
The numbers of people suffering from tinnitus has been multiplying at an alarming rate from the beginning of the 20th century and this alarming increase has been attributed to the changes to people's lifestyles during that period.
Workers in factories have been subjected to increasing volumes of noise, soldiers have been exposed to deafening explosions and gunfire, alcoholism has increased to gargantuan proportions and of course people are living longer.
But help is at hand.
Many thousands of medical personnel today specialize in developing strategies that help people to cope with ringing in the ears or tinnitus.
In many cases they actually succeed in putting a stop to the noise and invariably there is a positive result from their interventions.
Pioneers in the field of medication intervention are currently developing medications that get to the root cause of the awful complaint.
Having recognised that the main cause relates to the over production of the neurotransmitter called glutamate, as a result of damage to the hair cells of the inner ear, the scientists have developed a number of medications that show promise.
A number of these glutamate inhibitors have proved successful in clinical trials but the cessation of the tinnitus has proved only temporary in most of the cases.
Other professionals take a more holistic approach and their modus operandi it to try to manage the tinnitus using various strategies such as masking, psychotherapy and lifestyle changes.
The masking is done by the use of acoustic therapy - using audio devices to produce competing sound with a higher decibel count that suppress the tinnitus noise.
The other methods seek to relieve the tinnitus by removing the stresses that may be causing the tinnitus e.
g.
depression, alcohol abuse etc.