Do you cough when you put a cotton bud in your ear?

I do.

My wife laughs at me a lot when I do this. I'm sure it's because I'm going in too far - but it's a legacy of anality that I went through years ago when I DID obsess about my ears. I just wanted them to be clean - I was sure it was excess ear-wax that was causing the ringing in my ears (this is before it dawned on me that it was tinnitus).

So I'd poke away with a cotton bud ('cue-tip') trying to get the last bits of wax out of there. I'd put in drops to try to dissolve the wax - and on one more stupid occasion, emptied the reservoir from those drops, filled it with warm water, and started squirting and sucking water in and out of my ear-canal so much I thought my brain would pop out the other ear!

Luckily this is the only home 'remedy' I ever tried when it came to my ears. Obviously I still try to keep them clean, and I'll admit that sometimes I do still go a little too far (not on purpose) and release a little cough - followed by a little laugh at how stupid I was (am).

As a follow on to Gemma's post, my lovely wife came home today with a story of how the person on the train three rows away was playing her iPod so loud that she could tell all of the tunes that were playing (the title of this post was almost 'Beyonce in tinnitus shocker...') - and that she felt like getting out of her seat and warning the girl that she'd end up with tinnitus. But, this being Glasgow, two things would have happened had she done so - 1) The girl wouldn't have taken it too well, and who knows what might have happened - and 2) Someone would have stolen her seat as she stood up. Sensibly, she just came home quietly and told me instead.

My view on the iPod/Mp3/walkman thing is that it's not the equipment that's dangerous - it's the people that use them. And I speak as someone who WAS that idiot who'd turn up his walkman to full volume all the time.

Sure, there's lots of equipment out there that have an AVLS setting (Automatic Volume Limiter System) but there's ways around that, and, to be honest, it also gets in the way of normal listening. But rather than limit something, I think the key is to expand on something - education.

People need to know what damage they're doing to their ears when they listen to (let's just globally call all Mp3/walkmans etc) iPods. Music is incredible. It's emotional, it helps people get through the day, it relaxes them on a commute, it inspires them (I always found listening to music I loved right before a squash match would always make me play better) it calms people (I'd also listen in between games when I was about to lose it and start throwing things!) and it gives us a distraction from everyday life - we have alone time - it's ours - no one else is part of what we have at that moment. And as such, I think that plans to 'ban' the iPod are akin to most of the EU rulings about cucumbers, bananas, and calories on menus (I frankly don't want to know how many calories my creme brulee has!).

So, rather than ban it - educate. And that's why we're here.

Chances are, most of the visitors to this blog are people who are interested because they HAVE tinnitus - what we need to do is start letting people know that they'll probably develop it if they don't back of their listening/volume habits a bit. What it needs? That's the big question.

I ask myself sometimes what it would have taken to change the listening habits of that 14 year old boy who was sure he was invincible, sure he'd never get tinnitus, was something special, it wouldn't hurt me would it.... etc. What would I have responded to? What would you respond to?

I've got a great advert in mind if anyone cares to donate several tens of thousand to the cause...