Jamie Laing has opened up about his debilitating health issue and confessed: “I just thought, this can’t be happening to me right now.”
The former Made In Chelsea star has revealed he was diagnosed with tinnitus eight years ago and “hasn’t heard silence” since.
The 35-year-old compared the noise he hears to a dog whistle surrounded by a whooshing sound.
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In a video posted to Instagram, Jamie explained how the invisible illness has impacted his life.
He wrote: “Lots of you may not know this but I haven’t heard silence for 8 years – because of tinnitus. Like millions of others around the world, it’s debilitating.”
“But I’m a huge advocate for people talking about their feelings and when you talk about something like tinnitus you actually start to gain some relief.”
The 35-year-old added: “Today is #tinnitusweek, so I wanted to work with @rnid_uk to help raise awareness of their support and research, to help find a cure for the 1 in 7 people in the UK who have tinnitus.”
“Remember you’re not alone in it. To find out more check my link in my bio, Jamie x”
In the video, Jamie admitted that Tinnitus caused him to scream and cry with frustration and left him feeling he wanted to rip his ears off.
The NewlyWeds podcast host has blamed his illness on spending too much time in “loud nightclubs” and “not protecting his ears.”
Jamie also believes that his anxiety was also a contributing factor in worsening his Tinnitus.
In the video on Instagram, he said: “I haven’t heard silence for eight years. The very first time I ever heard tinnitus, I woke up one morning and I got out of bed, and I could hear this ringing noise.”
“This whooshing, ringing noise and I was thinking, looking around, thinking where the hell is this noise coming from.”
“Then it suddenly dawned on me that it was inside my own mind, inside my head. That for anyone who has ever experienced tinnitus is a really scary moment.”
“So I went to an audiologist and the audiologist said, “Yes, you have tinnitus”. And I sat on my sofa and I just thought, this can’t be happening to me right now.”
“You cannot imagine how debilitating it is. There’s no more silence.”
Jamie continued: “So you think you’re ever going to sleep again. You think you’re never going to hear anything again apart from this ringing and that’s a pretty scary place to be.”
“I would spend a lot of time in nightclubs but I never wore anything to protect my ears, ever. I should have done and anyone should be protecting their ears.”
“And second, I think my anxiety caused it to go even more. So I think mine was a combination of the two.”
“So my tinnitus sounds like a dog whistle but with a whooshing noise surrounding it as well.”
“It takes me a lot to cry and I was shooting a television show called Hunted and in it my tinnitus was so bad. People were asking me questions and I couldn’t hear what they were saying because the ringing was just so overbearing,” he added.
“You’re always so scared that tinnitus is suddenly going to take over and your whole mind, all you’re going to hear is ringing for the rest of your life and you won’t hear anything else.”
“And it was so loud, I was like, well this is the moment. This is the moment where tinnitus is going to take over.”
“You want to scream. You want to literally rip your ears off.”
“What I realised with tinnitus is that you have to try and treat it like a fan in the room or aircon in the room. You can hear them but you don’t lean into it.”
He added: “To hear silence again and get rid of the ringing, I would almost do anything.”
“The noise sounded like a static buzz of a television in another room. Once I’d started to hear it, the constant humming remained in my head.”
“My GP said there were a number of possible causes but exposure to loud music in nightclubs was the most likely one in my case,”
“My GP explained there was no cure, but it would probably go away eventually on its own as I got used to it. There were treatments available to help me come to terms with it, until it did”
“At first I couldn’t believe I could have tinnitus, I thought it only affected older people or people who were exposed to loud bangs — but it’s more common than people think.”
“I’d been to festivals and concerts and listened to music on headphones — the louder the better when I was younger.”
“But I’d never stood next to the speakers at concerts, or been in a band — I’d probably been to a few too many festivals where the music was loud and never worn ear plugs.”
Jamie preached: “I wish I had now — protecting your ears against loud noise is so important.”
