The AudioNotch Tinnitus Treatment Blog

Here’s an interview where Barbra Streisand talks about her tinnitus:

There’s something important about this anecdote: Streisand acquired tinnitus years before her singing career, and despite that, became tremendously successful.

This isn’t to disparage the very real, and individually variable suffering of tinnitus patients, but to acknowledge that this suffering can be overcome with the right tools.

It’s interesting that unlike most musicians with tinnitus, Streisand’s doesn’t appear to have been caused by noise induced hearing loss (and from the interview, it sounds like she has an element of hyperacusis symptoms as well).

Unsurprisingly, the prevalence of tinnitus among famous musicians who tour and perform extensively appears to be extremely high (at least anecdotally). Consider the case of Barbra Streisand – yet another victim of what appears to be noise induced hearing loss, and subsequent sensorineural tinnitus:
Streisand, writes Mann, suffers from tinnitus, or ringing in her ears, when she’s in a stressful situation. He theorizes that the noisy audiences exacerbated the tinnitus and led to her abruptly walk off the stage in the middle of one of her numbers.

Galpern, Free Press reviewer Gene Telpner and the musicians in the … Continue Reading