Tinnitus can happen unexpectedly at anytime in minutes and can leave you writhing in bed with severe pain. Earlier specialists were also not sure about why or how tinnitus happens. But now researchers have discovered that dispatching controlled electromagnetic pulses into the brain can help patients.

Researchers called the process of dispatching controlled electromagnetic pulses into the brain as 'transcranial magnetic stimulation' (TMS).

Robert Folmer of the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Oregon Health and Science University said that tinnitus more likely occur in people that suffer from hearing loss or people who had a lot of noise exposure. Therefore, he said the condition is associated with damage to the auditory system.

"It's the magnetic field that penetrates the scalp and skull and interacts with brain tissue. When we deliver one pulse per second of TMS, that low rate of TMS stimulation can suppress neural activity in that region", Folmer said.

This therapy has been approved for the treatment of depression in the United States, he added. Folmer also stated that some people responded quite well. He said that they were surprised to see that people maintained their improvement throughout the six months of follow-up.

Approximately 56 % of the participants who received TMS got better after 10 sessions while only 22 had improved after the same number of sessions with a control treatment, researchers noted.

Another research published a year ago had discovered that women who drink more coffee are less prone to have tinnitus issues.

The findings of the study were published in JAMA.