The cause of tinnitus, a persistent ringing or buzzing in the ears, has long puzzled scientists. Hearing specialists, however, do agree that tinnitus is more prevalent in people who also have hearing loss.
As you most likely know, your age, genetics, and lifestyle can all contribute to the development of hearing loss. And while it might seem like the symptoms of hearing loss would be fairly obvious, when it’s still in the early phases, it often goes undetected. Unfortunately, your risk of developing hearing loss increases with even slight cases of hearing loss.
It’s not a cure, but hearing aids can help treat tinnitus
There is no cure for tinnitus. However, hearing loss and tinnitus symptoms can be improved along with quality of life by using hearing aids. There are some pretty remarkable similarities between tinnitus and hearing loss, in fact.
The pitch or frequency of the ringing a person hears when coping with tinnitus is normally in sync with the type of hearing loss that person has. For example, somebody who hears high-pitched ringing from tinnitus might suffer from high-frequency hearing loss. Some individuals believe this parallel to be a result of the brain attempting to compensate for a lack of acoustic stimulation at that level by producing a similarly pitched tone of its own.
Tinnitus sounds can be effectively “masked” by a hearing aid which can drown out the offending sound and replace it with one that’s supposed to be heard. Fortunately, tinnitus symptoms can be treated in other more advanced ways than traditional hearing aids.
Specialized hearing aids to lessen tinnitus symptoms
Hearing aids work by gathering natural sounds from your environment and boosting them to a level that allows you to hear. Even though it might be simple in design, that amplification of noise, be it the hum of a dinner party or the rattling of a ceiling fan, is essential in training your brain to experience particular stimulations again.
But other combinations of methods like sound stimulation, counseling, and decreasing stress can also be used to augment those amplification efforts and supply a more comprehensive treatment approach.
Some hearing aid manufacturers endeavor to reduce tinnitus symptoms by using irregular rhythms of fractal tones. Tinnitus sufferers typically hear tones that are constant and regular which can sometimes be disrupted by the irregular rhythms of these fractal tones. The ringing is drowned out by pleasant, wind chime-like sounds generated by the most prevalent fractal tones instead of basic white noise which can also be helpful in some cases.
Other specialty devices attempt to mix your tinnitus in with the natural sounds you’re hearing. A white noise generator will be used in this approach, which can be fine-tuned by a hearing specialist to help decrease your specific tinnitus symptoms..
The common objective of these methods is to help the user disregard tinnitus symptoms whether it’s through the use of white noise systems, sound therapy, or blending.
Though tinnitus has no cure, hearing aids can help decrease the severity of the symptoms and improve quality of life, which is an alluring feature for the 50 million people who use hearing aids.
Have more questions about tinnitus?
For more info on reducing tinnitus symptoms, take a look at our tinnitus section or call for a consultation.