If you find yourself going through periods where there is an intense ringing in your ears, then you might have tinnitus. This can be extremely annoying because it's distracting and makes it difficult to hear and focus on people. If you think that you have tinnitus, you need to contact an ear, nose, and throat doctor right away so that you can start a treatment to reduce the severity of your tinnitus. Even though there is no way to cure this condition, there are a few ways to make the discomfort more tolerable and reduce the chances that you will go through a ringing spell.

1. Check Your Blood Pressure

Because tinnitus can be worsened by high or low blood pressure, if you are experiencing ringing in your ears, you should have a doctor check your blood pressure. This is one way to rule out a possible cause of tinnitus and tends to be an easy fix. Your ear, nose, and throat doctor will either check your blood pressure in the office, or send you to a blood pressure specialist. Increasing or decreasing your blood pressure through changes in diet, exercise, and medication can also help your tinnitus reduce in severity.

2. Have Noise In The Background

Tinnitus spells don't last forever. One way to deal with them is to simply drown them out with noise in the background. One of the biggest issues that tinnitus causes is increased distraction and frustration with the noise that appears to be in your ears. If you can lessen the amount of attention that you pay to the noise, the easier it will be to concentrate. Some ideas for reducing the problem of tinnitus is to load "white-noise" into a portable music player. Many websites offer downloads of sounds including falling rain, muted coffeehouse chatter, and waves beating against the shore. These will not distract you from the task at hand, but they will reduce the amount of attention that you pay to your tinnitus.

3. Tonal Retraining

For many people, whenever their ears ring, they ring at a certain frequency every time. When you are exposed to a sound all the time for an extended period of time, you eventually don't pay attention to it at all. You can retrain your ears to ignore your tinnitus by identifying the tone at which it rings and putting that tone into a wearable device that will broadcast the sound into your ears all the time. After wearing it for awhile, you will eventually get so used to the noise that you tune it out completely.

For more information, talk to an ear, nose, and throat doctor like Scott Callahan MD.