article_snippet: Back home in Cardiff, Paul’s doctor referred Paul to a specialist at the University Hospital of Wales Ear, Nose and Throat Department, who diagnosed ‘high-frequency hearing loss’ after acoustic trauma, and advised Paul to limit Paul exposure to noise — and to get a new career.
article_snippet: Paul returned to the University Hospital of Wales Ear and was prescribed maskers — a hearing aid-type device that played a hissing noise in Paul ears, now more commonly known as white noise generators.
article_snippet: We were trying to retrain Paul brain into not focusing on the tinnitus
article_snippet: it was a distraction technique,’ says Tim Bord, a senior audiologist at the hospital, who has been treating Paul since the mid-Nineties.
article_snippet: But I couldn’t follow conversations or hear the television properly, because I had great big pieces of plastic in each ear,’ Paul says.
article_snippet: At one stage Paul tried ‘laser pen therapy’ — shining a torch into your ear to stimulate the growth of hair cells in the inner ear, as tinnitus has been linked to damaged hair cells.
article_snippet: You name it, I threw money at it, but money were all useless,’ says Paul, who resorted to hiding earplugs around the house to cope with the noise when Paul young son Jeff had friends round to play.
article_snippet: Paul carries custom-fitted maximum protection earplugs ‘which keep the frequencies down and cuts external noise by about 25 decibels’.
article_snippet: Paul also avoids noisy places as, like for many sufferers, background noise makes the problem worse.
article_snippet: ‘If I’m in a pub or restaurant I always try to position Paul against the wall, so I only have sound coming from one direction,’ Paul says.
article_snippet: There have been some advances in treatments since Paul was first diagnosed — such as the introduction of smaller ‘in-ear’ white noise generators, and devices that combine a hearing aid and sound generator in one.
article_snippet: We run a scheme called the Musician’s Hearing Passport, which gives comprehensive tests and advice on hearing protection by an audiologist,’ Paul says.