Last Updated on January 22, 2026
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If you’re wondering how to stop tinnitus… that awful, annoying ringing in your ears that makes it hard to hear and even sleep, this is the episode for you! This persistent condition differs from hearing loss and affects more than 10% of the U.S. population.
While most people think tinnitus is just a minor nuisance, it’s actually a critical early sign of not only more permanent hearing loss, but also more serious health imbalances brewing under the surface.
Because tinnitus isn't just a problem with your ears — it’s deeply tied to your brain, nervous system, and even your long-term cognitive health. Until more recently, doctors told patients wondering how to treat tinnitus that there was nothing they could do.
But as science catches up, there's now a real path to tinnitus relief!
In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Ben Thompson, AuD, an audiologist and founder of Treble Health, a leading telehealth company specializing in tinnitus and hearing loss care. Through evidence-based therapies and personalized coaching, he has helped thousands of patients reduce symptoms of tinnitus, improve sleep, and reclaim peace of mind. His mission is to raise awareness of the vital role of hearing health in brain health and overall well-being.
Dr. Ben’s YouTube channel has 150K+ subscribers and is focused on educating and empowering people to find real solutions for tinnitus and hearing challenges.
Join us as we unpack what causes tinnitus, who’s at risk for tinnitus and hearing loss, which big health concerns it’s connected to, and the proven strategies to retrain your brain so you can reduce or even stop that constant ringing!
Or, listen on your favorite app: iTunes (Apple Podcasts) | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn | Subscribe on Android
In This Episode:
- What causes tinnitus (ringing or hissing in the ears)
- How tinnitus differs from hearing loss — and how they’re connected
- How to pronounce tinnitus (it’s not pronounced how you think)
- Surprising links between tinnitus, kidney health, and cardiovascular risk
- Who is at greater risk for developing tinnitus
- The connection between tinnitus, dementia, and cognitive decline
- How to stop tinnitus (so the ringing in your ears doesn’t keep you up at night)
- How to treat tinnitus (proven strategies to cut symptoms by 50%)
Quotes
“Tinnitus, ringing, hissing in the ears is the loudest, it's the most bothersome, in a quiet place. So sleep is a big challenge for tinnitus patients.”
“If someone has hearing loss, hearing things better… leads to a reduced risk of dementia.”
Links
Find Dr. Ben online | Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTube
Tinnitus and hearing loss in people with dementia
Tinnitus Is Associated With Improved Cognitive Performance in Non-hispanic Elderly With Hearing Loss
Tinnitus and Its Comorbidities: A Comprehensive Analysis of Their Relationships
Association of Chronic Kidney Disease with Prior Tinnitus: A Case–Control Study
409: How To Stop Tinnitus (What Ringing In Your Ears Warns About Your Health) w/ Dr. Ben Thompson {FULL TRANSCRIPT}
Jennifer Fugo (00:16.064)
Dr. Ben Thompson, thank you so much for joining us today to talk about, well, I'm gonna say tin-NI-tus, but I have a feeling that might not be the right way to pronounce it. So welcome to the show to discuss how to stop tinnitus.
Ben Thompson (00:27.406)
So happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Jennifer Fugo (00:29.366)
So how to pronounce tinnitus, I think it's tin-NI-tus. Is it tin-NI-tus?
Ben Thompson (00:35.47)
Tin-NI-tus.
Jennifer Fugo (00:36.574)
I mean, because, right, hearing, like you have this awful ringing in your ears.
Ben Thompson (00:40.814)
Yeah, most people say tin-NI-tus and most doctors say TIN-nitus. The correct pronunciation is TIN-nitus, but both are totally okay. Tomato, tomahto. I'll continue by saying TIN-nitus as, for people who go deeper into the condition, they typically explain it with that word.
Jennifer Fugo (00:57.964)
So can you describe for us what exactly tinnitus is? Because my impression, and the way I always thought of this, was like, you go to a concert and you don't wear any hearing protection because you're a teenager or 20-something and think it doesn't matter. You come out and you just hear this constant ringing in the ears. Is that similar? What is the person experiencing when you actually are dealing with tinnitus?
Ben Thompson (01:26.156)
Exactly right. So, many people have gone to a concert and right after the concert, they have a little hard time hearing their friends. They put their head on their pillow to go to sleep that night and they hear a loud ringing sound. High-pitched ringing, hissing. The reason that's there is because it's a sort of phantom sound response from the auditory brain. The ears, the cochlea, which is the hearing organ, they're not sending the right signal through and that can create the possibility of this phantom sound of ringing or hissing.
Jennifer Fugo (01:57.524)
And so is this, because I mean, I've had that experience in the past, but I wouldn't say that I have tinnitus now. Is it something that comes and goes? Or is this potentially a lifelong issue, or does it build with time to create damage? Talk to us about that.
Ben Thompson (02:16.12)
For most people who have it, it's temporary, they might have it for a few hours or a day. For 10% of the population in the United States, they have constant tinnitus where if they're in a quiet enough place, they do hear ringing or hissing. And about 1% of the population has really severe tinnitus. A similar condition, hearing loss, which we can get into the differences and the similarities, that affects many people. You, Jennifer, me, everyone I've ever known, we are slowly losing our hearing over time. There's no cure to reverse hearing loss. So it's important to learn the connection between our hearing, the cognitive health, and certain neurological connections that can come from that.
Jennifer Fugo (03:04.907)
So is tinnitus like almost a precursor to hearing loss, or are they totally separate manifestations?
Ben Thompson (03:14.904)
Great question. These are both invisible conditions. So, I'm walking on the street, I'm sitting next to someone on the train, I don't know if they have tinnitus or hearing loss. I also don't know if they have gut issues or anxiety. So tinnitus and hearing falls into one of these categories of invisible, you don't really know if someone's dealing with it. The tinnitus itself is typically the first signal or the first sign, the first symptom that someone has a serious degree of hearing loss. Most people notice the ringing or the hissing before they notice difficulty understanding people's voices or speech clarity.
Jennifer Fugo (03:57.196)
Okay, and then, so, can tinnitus, is it a sliding scale where you can get better, versus hearing loss that could be actually more on the permanent side?
Ben Thompson (04:13.966)
Hearing loss, the cells of the hearing system, they don't regrow at this time.
Jennifer Fugo (04:15.979)
Oh.
Ben Thompson (04:16.518)
Scientists have been working on that for decades, but our hearing system just cannot improve at a root cause level. Tinnitus, however, can improve significantly because it's neurological. So the cochlea, the hearing organ, that has these small cells, which are called hair cells, and that processes sound from the outside world into our brain. Those cells do not regrow. So that's more physiological, or the structures of the ear. But then tinnitus is actually in the auditory brain, and it's a neurological signal that can improve and can change over time. So the two conditions are related, but they're not completely dependent on each other.
Jennifer Fugo (05:04.233)
Wow, that's really fascinating. And that's actually good to know because you're saying there's this physical part of this, but tinnitus is not necessarily a physical issue per se. This is more signaling to the brain that gets, it's almost like the signals get kind of scrambled in a sense.
Ben Thompson (05:24.342)
Yeah, that's correct. Our brain is a neural network, a network of neurons. And sometimes these wires can get crossed, or they can take on signals from certain other wires around them that we don't want them to, or they can be hyperactive. We've learned over the decades here that the brain, until the day we die, has the ability to change and evolve. So that's called neuroplasticity, as you know, and we want to induce neuroplasticity to improve conditions like tinnitus, and other neurological brain conditions as well.
Jennifer Fugo (06:01.643)
I would imagine, too, because I mean it's annoying, it's been annoying to me in the past when I've gone to a concert. I mean, I don't go to concerts anymore because I don't like all the noise and the lights, and it's late at night, so there's that. But when I have gone in the past, I feel like for the next day or two I do have a ringing in my ears and it's annoying, right? But I could imagine that if someone experienced this on an ongoing basis, it could really impact their quality of life. You work with a lot of people with this condition, what are some of the things that you see in terms of the cost, essentially, to their quality of life?
Ben Thompson (06:44.43)
It's a big cost, it's a big cost. This can be a problem. It's not in isolation as, oh, I just hear this sound coming from my ears, but it quickly can affect anxiety, stress, sleep. And what we know about cardiovascular health, stress and cortisol levels, the importance of sleep, I mean, the research, it's becoming so obvious that, hey, getting your health right, for most people, isn't that hard. Focus on the fundamentals, good sleep, good diet and exercise, social connection, keeping your stress in check. If most people do that, that's a really good health outcome for their life. But if someone develops something, whether it's tinnitus or one of the other conditions that you talk about with your clients, skin, gut, et cetera, it can create anxiety, it can create stress, maybe it affects their sleep, and then we're dealing with this sort of global health issue that is a huge problem and can lead to some negative downstream outcomes.
Jennifer Fugo (07:48.501)
When you say “affects their sleep”, what does that mean? Like you literally can't fall asleep, or does it wake you up?
Ben Thompson (07:56.59)
Could be both, could be both. Sleep is a quiet place.
Jennifer Fugo (08:01.035)
That's true.
Ben Thompson (08:04.134)
Most people prefer to go to sleep when it's quiet. Tinnitus, ringing, hissing in the ears is the loudest, it's the most bothersome in a quiet place. So if someone's busy, it's easy to distract themselves, sometimes, throughout the day. But then when they're trying to relax, read a book on their couch, or fall asleep at night, the ringing is constant, it's loud, and you can't escape it. So sleep is a big challenge for tinnitus patients, and we can talk about some of the tools that I've seen the most successful with the patients that I've worked with, and our team has worked with, over the years. But yeah, sleep is a big issue.
And I want to highlight, Jennifer, that you'd be shocked how many people you actually know personally who have dealt with significant tinnitus. It's very common for military veterans. And this could have happened, you know, 50 years ago they had loud noise exposure in Vietnam, but still today they hear bothersome tinnitus and they don't talk about it that often. This could be people who've worked around loud noise, musicians, construction, fire department, police department, shooting guns, any sort of loud hobby, even if, again, even if it was decades ago, it could have created this constant tinnitus.
And a lot of people don't want to talk about this because they have been told, or they think, there's not much I can do about it. And a lot of people just don't want to complain about it. But this invisible condition actually does affect a lot of people. And when I open up about this, people will say, oh, yeah, that affects my father. And then their wife or their husband will look at them and go, really? I never knew that. Like, yeah, well, people don't talk about it.
Jennifer Fugo (09:48.905)
Yeah. I wanted to read some stats off because I thought these were really interesting, just connecting some dots because like you said, this can impact, which I didn't realize it could actually, I never thought of that, like it could literally keep you up and make it hard to go to sleep if you're constantly hearing noise all the time that you cannot, you know, hit a remote and switch off. There was one recent study that was published actually in February of 2025. They looked at 147 patients and found that those with dyslipidemia, so I would assume high cholesterol, were found to significantly predict bilateral tinnitus and left side tinnitus, and significantly correlated with elevated intensity values, and atherosclerosis was significantly associated with higher levels of hearing loss. So what you're saying does make sense, that there are connections all throughout health.
There was another paper that talked about the potential association with chronic kidney disease. Ironically, my sister, who's an acupuncturist, always talks about this interesting connection between the ears and the kidneys in Chinese medicine, and how tinnitus and different things that happen to the ears can potentially be a sign of some sort of energetic imbalance. And that there's a condition, I don't know if you're familiar with it, Meniere's disease?
Ben Thompson (11:17.955)
Yes.
Jennifer Fugo (11:18.536)
Because I was wondering, too, about vertigo, because I've actually had vertigo in the past, which is super scary. I was living in New York City and let me tell you, when you're trying to get on a subway and standing close to the edge with vertigo, it is not good. So I was standing really far back when I went through this. Do you happen to see a lot of patients that have Meniere's disease?
Ben Thompson (11:46.808)
Yeah, Meniere's disease is one of the top five causes of tinnitus. I can address the other causes as well. You mentioned the connection between the kidney and the ear, the cochlea, the hearing organ, and yeah, that connection is due to some shared developmental pathways. So things that affect high blood pressure, or certain kinds of toxins that are sort of kept in the body, those can manifest with kidney issues and/or hearing issues. So yeah, there is this connection there. And vertigo is part of the vestibular system, so our balance, our equilibrium. It's amazing, right, when we open up this box, we realize I take this for granted.
Jennifer Fugo (12:30.825)
Yeah.
Ben Thompson (12:36.2)
I didn't know that my balance could be taken away, or my silence could be taken away, but they can. The vestibular organ, which looks like these semicircular canals, these sort of hula hoops, tiny, tiny inside of the ear, that's connected to the same capsule inside of our skull as our hearing organ, the cochlea. So these are not in the brain, but they're in the head, encased in skull. And right next to those is actually the three smallest bones in the human body. For those who are on video, I actually have some of these right here.
Jennifer Fugo (13:06.218)
Wow.
Ben Thompson (13:10.252)
These are about, each of these, the size of a grain of rice, and this sits right behind the eardrum. So sound pushes to the eardrum, the eardrum vibrates those three small bones, and that pushes the sound waves into the cochlea, the hearing organ, which gets coded in this very intricate pitch perception. And then we can, in our brains, hear Beethoven and Bach and it sounds wonderful. So it's quite amazing how the hearing and balance systems work of the inner ear.
Jennifer Fugo (13:38.697)
And so one thing that I had no idea that even existed as a potential association or correlation was this possible link of hearing loss. You did mention that this is sort of like a neurosignaling thing, so maybe the connection with cognitive health makes sense. But as I had shared with you, I am genuinely interested and fascinated in cognitive decline and cognitive health because I have my own family history of it, in helping elderly relatives who unfortunately became shells of themselves. And I had no idea that there is a possible connection between the two. Can you speak to that?
Ben Thompson (14:26.04)
Absolutely. The shocking results over the last 10 years or so was that research found that for adults who have some risk of getting dementia, that there are certain behaviors they can make, or behavior changes they can do, to prevent or slow down their rate of dementia, or risk of dementia. And identifying hearing loss, and treating hearing loss with better hearing and hearing aids and clarity of speech, that was one of the top preventable risk factors for dementia. So that was shocking because it makes us realize, wow, communication and social engagement is so crucial to our cognitive and brain health. I think previous to that we used to think, oh, the body is a system of inputs and outputs, so exercise and food and sleep equals good health. But there's this big emotional stress, meaning component. And that's been proved out by the Blue Zones where they looked at, okay, these populations of people are living long, healthy lives, how are they doing it? Well, they all have significant social engagement, social activities during the day.
But yeah, if someone has a hearing loss, hearing things better, wearing hearing devices for better communication and speech understanding, that leads to a reduced risk of dementia. Why exactly? The theory as to why is that if my relative, my aunt, let's say, has hearing loss and she does not wear hearing aids, well, she first of all can't hear things that clearly. If she's in a social situation, she'll spend more mental energy, like she'll have a higher cognitive load, of trying to understand people because it's stressful to her. Her brain's trying to make out with only 70% of the information, what's being said. With that hearing loss, we might withdraw from going to the restaurant, going to meet up with our friends, going to a place that's noisy with a lot of background noise because we can't hear it. So, there was a study in 2023, I'll just add this, it was a randomized control trial and it was called the ACHIEVE study. And it found that for older adults who were at a risk for dementia, that wearing hearing aids reduced the rate of cognitive decline by 48% over three years.
Jennifer Fugo (17:23.478)
Wow. Wow. That is, so you probably don't know this, but my dad was an ophthalmic surgeon and I worked in his office for probably about 10 years-ish. And I worked with his patients and everything, and most of the people, because he was doing cataract surgery and glaucoma, they were elderly. And so one of the really interesting things that I saw and witnessed again, and again, and again, was as people who, in this age group, began having hearing issues and lost kind of their drive to go out and be in community, like they kind of stopped going to the senior center, they stopped going out, like you said, for lunch, they were really only going to doctor's appointments and that was pretty much it. You notice this really big decline over a period of maybe five to eight years of that person becoming, again, I hate to use the word, but almost like a shell of themselves. And they became, they would really be challenged to have interactions anymore, becoming extremely grouchy, very frustrated, easily agitated, they just wanted to go home. They really didn't, they really struggled being around people.
And that was something that I witnessed on a daily basis for years with my dad's patients who were, they're in this population where a lot of times people are, you know, they've got their hearing aids, and the hearing aids are buzzing, and all sorts of things. So it is really fascinating that, and it makes sense, that if we can't hear a lot of what's being said, we would naturally start to become quiet, and withdraw, and not show up to those social, community-oriented experiences because you can't understand what's being said, and thus you can't participate.
I also wonder too, if it would create, and maybe you know this, would only potentially hearing 70% or 50% of what's being said, creating this gap where your brain's trying really hard to fill in the gaps, would that potentially also create a level of maybe fatigue? Where your body, because I just remember, and this is not the same thing, but when I was in Italy for six weeks trying to understand somebody speaking fluent Italian quickly, for me, at my rudimentary level, was like piecing together things, only catching parts, and it was exhausting also. I just physically felt exhausted trying to piece together somebody's sentence that I didn't understand all the words. So I wonder if that might be kind of like a similar experience, if you literally can't hear everything that's being said.
Ben Thompson (20:20.984)
Yeah, I believe it's very similar, and that's a good analogy for other people who have a second language or are learning a second language. It's cognitive load, where the brain has to work harder to decode the sound.
Jennifer Fugo (20:34.219)
And it's just exhausting. It's so exhausting. I will share too, there was a study that came out in January of 2025, actually, that they looked at 187 dementia patients and they said that 37.43% of those patients complained of tinnitus. And I thought that was just really interesting, that there might actually be some type of red flag in terms of like, if we start experiencing this on an ongoing basis that perhaps we should look deeper into it. So you mentioned before about some evidence-based therapies that you really have found to be helpful for your patients. Can you speak to some of that?
Ben Thompson (21:15.758)
Absolutely, yeah, and hearing you describe the importance of this, I want to address that there's this movement happening, I would say right now, I think it's in the infancy of it, which is the longevity movement, which is that people are wanting to live longer. They're realizing that with certain protocols, with the rate and growth of technology, medical technology, potentially with AI accelerating that in the next two decades, we will see that there's a real shot that we can live a lot longer with our life expectancy. But that's not guaranteed, and a lot of it is based on our behaviors. Hearing loss prevention, hearing loss treatment seems like an important one. If my body can last until 120, but my brain is gonna give out at 85, that's an issue, right? So it's body and brain. I think hearing and tinnitus are actually not too often discussed as being important for, if someone has those problems, getting them taken care of.
So how do we get them taken care of? I'm a doctor of audiology, so graduate doctorate program, and then have been working with hearing aids, working with patients with tinnitus for the last 10 years. The treatments for tinnitus include a combination of medical devices typically worn on the ears, plus different cognitive strategies that the brain can change its reaction to the sound. So another way to explain that is sound therapy devices on the ears, sometimes hearing aids on the ears, programmed specifically for tinnitus treatment, alongside one-on-one strategies and coaching, typically falling under either cognitive behavioral therapy techniques that the patient is doing, they're actively practicing things that help their brain reduce the tinnitus, or a guided breathing approach, a mindfulness approach, which settles the nervous system, settling the mind, settling the nervous system in the body, that all these things together help reduce tinnitus.
And in our program working with patients for tinnitus treatment, we found that the average person who starts with us, the average patient, reduced their tinnitus problem by 50% during the course of our program. So it's not a cure, it's not completely eliminating it, but for people who say, hey, this is the worst problem I've ever dealt with in my life.
Jennifer Fugo (23:55.232)
Yeah.
Ben Thompson (24:01.697)
I would do anything to take the edge off of this, an average 50% reduction really can be life-changing, and that's the kind of work that we do. At Treble Health, which is the practice that I started, we see patients via telehealth, we also have physical clinic locations in California, Florida, North Carolina, and more to come.
Jennifer Fugo (24:19.827)
Awesome. So what you're saying is that these ear devices, these ear, I don't remember how you described them, but like the hearing devices?
Ben Thompson (24:30.081)
Yeah,they're called hearing devices for tinnitus treatment. They're either sound therapy devices or they're hearing aids for hearing loss treatment. They're hearing aids.
Jennifer Fugo (24:37.799)
Okay. So when I imagine hearing aids, again, if we flashback to probably 15 years ago, I always remember having like the old guy come into the office, and his hearing aids are turned up so loud that you just hear this high pitched squeal coming from it, and he can't hear it, I can hear it. Is that, have we come a long way from things like that?
Ben Thompson (25:05.966)
Yeah, I think you're describing, I would say, the 80-year-old elderly patient who, 20 years ago, had a big hearing aid for their severe hearing loss. That still exists, but the average person that we work with is between 55 and 65.
Jennifer Fugo (25:24.34)
Oh, wow.
Ben Thompson (25:27.827)
My parents are 68, 69 years old, and I don't think of them as old. They certainly don't think of themselves as old.
Jennifer Fugo (25:30.495)
Right. No.
Ben Thompson (25:34.498)
So actually, a lot of people who have a hearing loss and get treatment are two decades younger than that kind of archetype that you just described.
Jennifer Fugo (25:43.637)
Wow.
Ben Thompson (25:45.382)
And modern devices are sleek, nearly invisible, they do not squeal and make whistling sounds anymore.
Jennifer Fugo (25:51.253)
Thank goodness.
Ben Thompson (25:52.431)
They now have rechargeable batteries. They connect to your iPhone.
Jennifer Fugo (25:54.248)
Oh my gosh.
Ben Thompson (25:56.028)
You can be discreetly adjusting them. You're probably talking to people who in your life who have them, and you don't even know they have them because they're pretty much invisible.
Jennifer Fugo (26:01.247)
Wow, we've come a long way in all these years. It's wonderful. It's so cool to see how much science and all of the things in the medical world and whatnot shift and change, especially the more we know, the more we can do about it. So what you're essentially telling us is that while there's no, we can't say there's a cure for how to stop tinnitus, there's this perfect cure where we can flip a switch and just shut the tinnitus off. However, we can, we do have the power to adjust and reduce that mis-signaling, essentially if we know how to treat tinnitus. Because I would think, if we're just talking about music level, if it was so loud that I really can't think straight, being able to turn down that noise by 50% is a fairly significant, I mean, at that point, it might be to a level where you can hear other people, you can have a conversation, you can function, and it's not like, oh my gosh, this is the only thing that I can hear and I can barely make out what somebody's saying in front of me. And it's also something you're training your brain. Like this is literally, like you said, it's adjusting the signaling of the brain and how it's, is it how it's transmitting the signals, so to speak?
Ben Thompson (27:29.295)
Yeah, I have a good way to show this. So those who are watching on video, I'll use my hands, but for those who are listening, I'll speak it out the best that I can. So here's an interesting research study, was ran many years ago, I believe in the 1960s. They took a hundred people with normal hearing and they put them into a sound booth where it's very, very, very quiet. And they told these people, hey, listen for some sounds, let us know if you hear anything. On their way out, they asked them, did you hear anything? 90% of people said, I heard ringing, or I heard buzzing, I heard hissing, I heard electrical noise. There was no noise played in the room. This was their brain, this is the buzzy charge of their electrical brain that, in a quiet enough place, we perceive sound. So that shows us that some degree of a buzzy charge of the brain, picking that up with the hearing system, is normal, right?
Now everyone pretty much has that, but the brain filters it out where I never really think about that, I'm not in a quiet enough place to really hear that. So that's going there, sort of in the background, at a very low level. And typically we have this auditory filter in the brain, which suppresses neutral unimportant signals, so I don't pay attention to neutral sounds that don't mean anything.
Jennifer Fugo (28:55.619)
Okay.
Ben Thompson (28:57.229)
If they're always there, well, prove it. Okay, what about the sound of your breathing? Do you ever think about your breathing?
Jennifer Fugo (29:05.322)
No.
Ben Thompson (29:08.371)
No. But if you take a breath right now, even a normal breath, quiet breath, you can hear it, right?
Jennifer Fugo (29:11.983)
Correct.
Ben Thompson (29:12.472)
The feeling of your heartbeat, the vibration of your heartbeat, tune in for a second. You might be able to pick that up slightly, but you never think about it. So the brain has habituated to that sound, and it's decided that's neutral, it's in the bucket of neutral, not important, Ben doesn't need to spend his energy aware of that. Okay, well, that auditory filter, which helps us out, that can get out of balance, that can be weakened. So when a filter is weakened, the signal is perceived as stronger. So that's how tinnitus can suddenly get a lot louder, kind of become a big issue, is the auditory filter in the brain weakens and the tinnitus becomes stronger, intrusive, louder.
And then the person tries to go to a doctor to get it fixed, they go online to learn more about it and they see, sorry, there's no cure for this. Most doctors say, hey, you have this because of hearing loss, there's not much we can do for that, sorry. So it then creates anxiety, stress, and triggers the fight or flight system, which only makes the filter weaken more and the sound get louder. So that's how, in most cases, tinnitus becomes a problem. And the treatment for it is essentially reverse engineering the system by bringing back the filter to homeostasis. And when that happens, the sound decreases over time.
Jennifer Fugo (30:39.405)
Oh, wow. Wow, that's awesome. This is so cool. Thank you so much for this. Is there, just for all of us listening who, like I'm in my 40s, is there anything that you can suggest just that we should maybe do now, or be mindful of, if we want to try to avoid tinnitus and how to stop tinnitus before it shows up? I mean, I'm sure your practice is amazing. This is awesome.
Ben Thompson (31:10.362)
You don't want to see me if you don't have to.
Jennifer Fugo (31:13.487)
I know, like I always say that to people, like, I wish you didn't have to come to me, like I wish this wasn't happening for you. So is there something, is there anything that you can tell us for those of us who don't have this right now, like a tip, a strategy, natural remedies for tinnitus, or just something to try to help avoid getting this?
Ben Thompson (31:30.563)
Yeah, prevention, super important. So prevention of hearing loss and tinnitus. Typically preventing hearing loss is by wearing hearing protection, wearing earplugs. Research has actually been leaning more towards this theory recently, which is it's not necessarily that we lose our hearing because we get old per se. It might be a lot about we're exposed to so many sounds over the course of our lifetime. So preventing loud noise exposure can preserve your hearing so you have more of it as you age.
Jennifer Fugo (32:07.904)
So if you are a regular concert goer, that you should rethink not wearing any type of hearing protection at the shows.
Ben Thompson (32:17.796)
Yes, concert goer, using power tools. Oh, earmuffs, no, I'm just cutting this one piece of wood, you know, wear the earmuffs. Playing loud, amplified music, firing guns at a gun range, anything in that realm, definitely wear earplugs. And then in terms of preventing tinnitus, tinnitus is typically caused by hearing loss, and/or stress on the central nervous system, and/or high amounts of certain medications that can be toxic to the ears. So keep your stress levels in check, prevent hearing loss with earplugs, and be mindful of certain medications. Typically these are pretty extreme medications for things like chemotherapy or certain kinds of similar, serious health conditions. So just be mindful of certain medications you're taking, maybe look at the side effects. Those would be ways to prevent getting these conditions.
Jennifer Fugo (33:24.458)
Yeah, awesome. Well, do you want to share with everybody how they can find you?
Ben Thompson (33:30.33)
I would love to, I would love to. Yeah, so I'm happy to share that we've created Treble Health. Treble Health is our practice that specializes in tinnitus and hearing. We have four locations across the country, and growing, in California, Florida, North Carolina, Washington, and more. And we also have a strong telehealth practice where we've seen over 2,500 patients through a comprehensive treatment. So if you are interested in that, we have a discovery call that's available to you guys and it's at treblehealth.com. Or if someone has tinnitus and they wanna learn more about what they can do for tinnitus, they can also go to tinnitusquiz.com, where I've worked with some other doctors to create a self-guided questionnaire that then gives a recommendation on next steps the patient can take.
Jennifer Fugo (34:25.772)
Awesome. And of course they can find you on your amazing YouTube channel, because you have a ton of really great content there as well. Because I'm sure if somebody's dealing with this, whether it's for themselves, or maybe, like you suggested, it could be for aging parents, where you're starting to notice issues or they're really struggling, this is important. Like you said, it helps people stay engaged within their community, active, and I agree, I think the more we withdraw from society as we get older that really can be harmful, because we are community-oriented creatures. And so being able to engage in life is really, really crucial to being happy and healthy.
So thank you so much, Ben, for being here and sharing about how to stop tinnitus. And I hope we can chat about this again sometime because I feel like there's just so much to unpack on this topic, especially because again, while this might not necessarily have anything to do with skin issues, I do believe that skin issues are a sign of something happening under the surface. And as you've rightly pointed out to me and everybody who's listening to this, the issue of tinnitus can also be a sign of other things going on under the surface. And it's so important for that, as well as just being able to enjoy life and live a good quality of life. So thank you so much for joining us today.
Ben Thompson (35:50.639)
You're so welcome. And yeah, if anyone has any questions, you can reach out to me, Ben Thompson, AUD or Treble Health, and I'd be happy to help you. Thank you so much.
