The cause of tinnitus, a continual ringing or buzzing in the ears, has long baffled 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 play a role in the progression 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 frequently goes unnoticed. Still worse, even a minor case of hearing loss raises your risk and likelihood of experiencing tinnitus.
It isn’t a cure, but hearing aids can help treat tinnitus
Tinnitus can’t be cured. However, hearing aids can manage both hearing loss and tinnitus in ways that can reduce symptoms and enhance one’s quality of life. As a matter of fact, the similarities between hearing loss and tinnitus are pretty remarkable.
The frequency range that a person loses hearing in is typically in sync with the pitch of their tinnitus symptoms. As an example, if someone has hearing loss in the high-frequency range, they will frequently hear a high-pitched ringing from tinnitus. Some people believe this parallel to be a result of the brain trying to compensate for a lack of acoustic activation at that level by generating a similarly pitched tone of its own.
A traditional hearing aid can effectively hide the ringing or buzzing associated with tinnitus by replacing it with the appropriate sounds. Fortunately, tinnitus symptoms can be managed in other more advanced ways than traditional hearing aids.
Lessen symptoms of tinnitus with specialized hearing aids
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, whether it’s the hum of a dinner party or the rattle of a ceiling fan, is crucial in teaching your brain to experience particular stimulations again.
But other combinations of strategies like sound stimulation, counseling, and decreasing stress can also be utilized to improve those amplification efforts and supply a more complete treatment approach.
Some hearing aid manufacturers endeavor to reduce tinnitus symptoms with the use of the 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. While white noise devices are available, the most prevalent fractal tones sound somewhat like wind chimes that provide a soothing sound that overwhelms the ringing.
Blending natural sounds from your environment with your tinnitus is the goal of other specialized devices. A white noise generator will be used in this approach, which can be fine-tuned by a hearing specialist to help lessen your specific tinnitus symptoms..
Whether it’s through sound therapy, blending, or a white noise mechanism, each of these specialized devices has a common objective of distracting the user away from the ringing or buzzing of tinnitus.
Though tinnitus has no cure, hearing aids can help reduce the severity of the symptoms and enhance quality of life, which is an attractive feature for the 50 million people who use hearing aids.
Have more questions about tinnitus?
If you’re experiencing ringing or buzzing in the ears, take a look at our tinnitus section for more information on ways to decrease symptoms.
