You can be a hummer, a buzzer, a swisher or a ringer, you might even hear emergency sirens. In fact you might even hear any of these things so loudly inside your ear that you are unable to sleep at night. This is the reality of life for people suffering from tinnitus, as Julie Blackburn finds out.

When a group of local tinnitus sufferers get together for their monthly support meeting, the first thing you learn is that everyone experiences this debilitating condition differently.

Patrick Cavan from the British Tinnitus Association in the UK, who had come over to talk to the group, said: ’One of the problems of finding a cure for tinnitus is that there is a lack of a single definition.’

One of the ways it can differ from person to person is in its onset: for some people it can come on quite gradually but many others can pinpoint the exact moment it began, often after hearing a very loud noise like a gunshot.

Patrick said that, however it starts ’when you first go through it it can be quite a shock for most people’.

He himself suffered from it as a child. ’I used to hear drumbeats and I used to have nightmares and I found it depended on if I slept with my pillow in a certain way,’ he said.

Patrick grew out of his tinnitus: most sufferers are not so lucky. Tinnitus costs the NHS in the UK £750 million a year, and leads to 1,050,000 GP appointments.

But progress is being made and much has already been discovered. Tinnitus can now be seen and measured in the brain and researchers have found that it is worse when the body releases high levels of cortisol, the ’stress hormone’.

Stephen Griffiths, head of the audiology department at Noble’s Hospital, who attends the group to offer advice and information to sufferers, explained there are two types of tinnitus.

He said: ’One is subjective: only you can hear it. The other is objective and a clinician can hear it using a stethoscope.’

Although it can’t be cured, tinnitus can be managed, sometimes with a change of diet or lifestyle.

Lucy Buxton, 50, is the communication and support manager for the Manx Deaf Society. She has Meniere’s disease, a combination of rotational vertigo, tinnitus and hearing loss. She said: ’For me it’s stress, tiredness, caffeine and alcohol.

’When I was a new mum, my husband was away: I was surviving on very little sleep; very stressful with a newborn baby; not eating properly just grabbing a coffee or a can of Coke or a bag of crisps, all the worst things which seem to be my trigger things.’

For Lucy, moving to the Isle of Man and a slower pace of life and avoiding trigger foods and drinks has meant she hasn’t had a severe attack of Meniere’s for 10 years. The tinnitus, however remains constant. In fact she said she has never known a time without it.

’I’ve always had it. I didn’t realise that people didn’t hear these sounds all the time.

’The sound varies: at the moment it’s quite a high-pitched whoosh but I’ve heard a ticking clock. I’ve heard noises like really heavy machinery, or a very big lorry outside the house that’s made me go and look to see who’s parked outside.

’I hear emergency sirens, about three miles away in the distance but they never get very close, but I also, from time to time, get a single tone like the tone you hear when you go for a hearing test.

’That’s the one that throws me because I can be walking down the street and it knocks my balance.’

For some sufferers the very worst aspect of tinnitus is how it can prevent them from sleeping.

Lucy said: ’I’ve had two times when it has woken me up at night and that was when I could understand how it could drive someone to the edge of sanity.

’I would have hit my head against a brick wall if I’d thought that would have got rid of it. It was that loud. That was when it was tough.’

Another sufferer, Nigel Latham, 56, said: ’For me it just started in periods when it would be quiet-ish then there would be a gap and then a few hours later it would start again. It’s been continuous now for the last eight or nine years.

’For me, it’s a very high-pitched, continuous noise is how I can best describe it: just a continuous kind of whine.

’I’ve tried CBT and that’s helped. Distraction is the best thing I’ve found and it seems to be for the majority of people. Don’t think about it because, once you do, it’s loud.

’Mindfulness also helps, anything to take your mind off it, because when you concentrate on your breathing your brain can really only do one thing at once.

’It doesn’t go away but it’s pushed to the background.’

He added that ’being somewhere where there’s noise is better than being somwhere where it’s quiet. That tends to cancel it out.’

The other downside of that is that it means he can never just sit and enjoy a peaceful silence. ’It’s never silent,’ he said.

It makes you realise what a precious gift silence is...