Crickets chirp inside Tania Dubonnet's head sometimes. Either that, or a distant teakettle whistle whines. Or an electronic tone bleats. Or a hiss of air, like that from a deflating balloon, intrudes.

Incessant and insidious, the cacophony of noises has no on/off switch for the 58-year-old Sacramento woman who suffers from tinnitus, an inner-ear and brain condition more commonly known as "ringing in the ears."

The affliction, often related to gradual loss of hearing, can be caused by exposure to loud noises, such as on a work site, from recreational gun shooting or listening to loud music. But the biggest cause of tinnitus, says Dr. Robert Dobie of the UC Davis Health System's department of otolaryngology, is aging.

"That's also the single-largest cause of hearing loss," Dobie says. "As you age, things break down, genetically programmable or otherwise."

According to the American Tinnitus Association, 50 million Americans have experienced intermittent or permanent tinnitus. Close to 12 million have chronic tinnitus and 2 million are disabled by the affliction.

Dobie disputes this apparent widespread extent of the condition, saying a distinction must be drawn between those who have bouts of tinnitus and "accept it" and those who "suffer" from it.

"The majority of people, even those with continuous tinnitus, find it to be trivial and unimportant," Dobie says. "But if it's interfering with sleep, work and recreation, then they are suffering. That number is much smaller."

Count Dubonnet among the latter, more greatly affected, group. Her tinnitus, she says, falls between very annoying and occasionally debilitating.

Doctors determined that her tinnitus was triggered by her attendance at an outdoor rock concert two years ago. She declines to mention the band or the venue, but Dubonnet certainly recalls the moment that she says changed her life.

First, she wants people to know that, yes, she was wearing foam ear plugs at the concert.

"But it was so loud that I took one out and was trying to roll it up tighter and that's when I felt a screech in my (right) ear," she says. "The next day, I had an earache and sensitivity to noise. Then I began hearing a continuous background noise. (A few days after), I had seen a doctor and been diagnosed with tinnitus."

It was at that initial doctor's appointment – and at a subsequent meeting with an ear, nose and throat specialist – that she learned there is no cure for tinnitus. No treatment, either, other than therapy to help patients cope and lessen the severity of the ringing.

"The ENT said most people tell him (the tinnitus) gets better with time," Dubonnet says. "It's been two years, and it's still 24/7 and very annoying."

Annoying?

Try listening to this at all hours of the day and night.

"The most frequent sound is as if you were standing out in a field of crickets. You know how they sound at night?" she says. "If I'm under stress, it kind of picks up in volume and intensity. Sometimes, a glass of wine will do it. It really has a mind of its own. It goes up and down in volume. The actual noises change from day to day."

Many tinnitus patients take medication to aid sleep or antidepressants to keep stress – and, theoretically, the noise – down.

Dubonnet has opted for more natural approaches to cope. She regularly takes zinc, magnesium and Vitamin B12 supplements, as well as melatonin to help her sleep.

"I don't know (if it helps)," she says. "It's hard to say."

She does, however, say her attempts to redirect sounds help.

"The sound of water helps me," Dubonnet says. "I've got a tabletop water fountain. When it gets really bad, I just sit at the table and have the water going on the side. I go to sleep with a CD of a waterfall, like a creek sound, playing.

"I've even tried visualization to put myself in another place, sitting beside that creek. When you're thinking of something else, you're not thinking of the tinnitus."

Several therapies have attempted to reprogram the brain to tune out the tinnitus. Neuromonics uses white noise along with relaxing music to teach the brain to ignore the bleating, and tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT) involves patients wearing a small electrical device that produces low-level white noise to blot out the more annoying sounds.

"It's hard to do double-blind clinical trials to see how much it actually helps," Dobie says. "But those treatments work compared to a waiting-list control. In other words, people are better at the end of that treatment than at the beginning, while the waiting-list group hasn't improved.

"But nothing takes away the tinnitus."

To that end, research is ongoing, says Jennifer DuPriest of the American Tinnitus Association.

"There's been a lot of work showing that tinnitus is caused by the auditory system in the brain, not in the ear," DuPriest says. "The most promising thing on the horizon is non-invasive electrical stimulation to the brain – a small stimulator implanted outside the skull. It's very low doses. We're not talking shock therapy here."

Call The Bee's Sam McManis, (916) 321-1145.