[grhino]

tinnitus can be caused for other reasons than loud music, some that are not that well understood. Any sensorineural hearing loss can be accompanied by tinnitus. Autoimmune inner disease (AIED) and meniere's disease can bring about tinnitus. Tinnitus sucks. I think the best guess is nerve cells in the inner ear firing improperly and generating a random noisy signal that gets interpreted wrong by the brain.

[randlet]

I've got otosclerosis which causes tinnitus too. It sucks, but thankfully you get used to it somewhat and listening to background music brings me a lot of relief.

[logicallee]

all right - sounds like you know a lot about it. Is it fair to say most tinnitus in the world is preventable, and most (as a percentage of people suffering from tinnitus) have had as a direct cause loud noise? (So that if they had had earing protection, they would not have tinnitus.)

open-ended question.

[grhino]

Hearing protection is worthwhile. I don't know if we understand tinnitus well enough to say whether most of it is preventable.