The cause of tinnitus, a persistent buzzing or ringing in the ears, is generally ambiguous. However, there is one thing researchers agree on: you are more likely to develop tinnitus if you also are dealing with hearing loss. According to HLAA as much as 90 percent of people who experience tinnitus also have hearing loss.
Your lifestyle, age, and genetics can all play a role in the development of hearing loss as you probably know. And while many people think of hearing loss as being obvious, the truth is that some mild hearing loss can go unnoticed. Even mild cases of hearing loss will raise your chance of tinnitus, making the situation even worse.
It’s Not a Cure, But Hearing Aids Can Help Manage Tinnitus
Tinnitus has no cure. However, hearing aids can help you manage both hearing loss and tinnitus in ways that can reduce symptoms and improve one’s quality of life. Sixty percent of people coping with tinnitus, in fact, experienced relief of their symptoms, and twenty-two had substantial improvement.
A traditional hearing aid can basically hide the buzzing or ringing associated with tinnitus by strengthening your ability to hear outside sounds, which essentially drowns out the ringing. And, fortunately, conventional hearing aids aren’t the only solution as more sophisticated treatment possibilities are being produced.
Types of Specialized Hearing Aids to Decrease Tinnitus Symptoms
Hearing aids boost the volume of environmental sounds to the point that you can hear them clearly. Even though it may be simple in design, that amplification of noise, be it the rabble of a dinner party or the rattle of a ceiling fan, is critical in training your brain to receive certain stimulations again.
You can enhance those amplification efforts by the combination of other strategies, like counseling, sound stimulation, and stress reduction for a more complete approach to treatment.
Some hearing aid makers even use the irregular rhythm of fractal tones to decrease the symptoms of tinnitus. The persistent tone of tinnitus can be interrupted by the uneven tones of these inconsistent rhythms.
Other specialized devices try to blend your tinnitus in with the normal sounds you’re hearing. Your condition and ear have very personal needs and this technique will use a customized white noise that will be dialed-in by your hearing specialist.
Whether it’s through sound therapy, blending, or a white noise mechanism, all of these specialized technologies have a common objective of distracting the user away from the buzzing or ringing of tinnitus.
Hearing aids can improve quality of life and lessen symptoms of tinnitus even if there isn’t any cure.
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References
- https://www.hearingloss.org/wp-content/uploads/HLAA_HearingLoss_Facts_Statistics.pdf?pdf=FactStats
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17956798
- https://www.ata.org/managing-your-tinnitus/treatment-options/hearing-aids
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6197965