TAYLOR MAY HAVE BEEN A RARE TINNITUS SUFFERER DRIVEN TO SUICIDE BY THE NOISE IN HIS HEAD, BUT THERE ARE MILLIONS—STUDIES SAY SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 10 AND 15 PERCENT OF THE POPULATION—AFFECTED BY TINNITUS TO SOME DEGREE
The body of Kent Taylor, CEO and maverick behind the Texas Roadhouse restaurant chain, was found in a field on his Louisville, Kentucky property in an apparent suicide in March this year. His family said the 65-year-old founder of the billion-dollar global company had taken his own life to escape “unbearable”tinnitus that had worsened drastically after he battled a Covid-19 infection.
Tinnitus, or ‘ringing in the ears,’ is the phenomenon of hearing phantom noises in your ears that are not from an external source. It has a wide range of presentations, from a sound like buzzing cicadas to whooshing, wavelike effects to something like radio static in the ears. It can pulse like the sound of a heartbeat in the head, be a low hiss like an overheated radiator, or high and shrill as a dog whistle. It can come and go, be in one ear or both, change on the hour or with location or be a constant din.
The condition is most often treated as something of a non-life-threatening annoyance. A quick search online, however, reveals thousands of sufferers describing their harrowing ordeals with the condition that has robbed them of peace of mind and altered their lives.
Taylor may have been a rare tinnitus sufferer driven to suicide by the noise in his head, but there are millions—studies say somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of the population—affected by tinnitus to some degree.
Data reveal that tinnitus affects people’s job performance and concentration, and it can lead to anxiety, depression and impaired sleep.1 It frequently precedes hearing loss. Those who have it are also more likely to develop Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease.2
