The cause of tinnitus, a continual ringing or buzzing in the ears, has long baffled scientists. However, there is one thing that all hearing professionals agree on, you are more likely to experience tinnitus if you also suffer from hearing loss.
Some of the primary factors that play a role in hearing loss are genetics, age, and lifestyle. And while many people think of hearing loss as being obvious, the truth is that some slight hearing loss can go 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 manage tinnitus
Tinnitus can’t be cured. However, hearing loss and tinnitus symptoms can be improved as well as quality of life by using hearing aids. As a matter of fact, the similarities between hearing loss and tinnitus are fairly remarkable.
The pitch or frequency of the ringing one hears when coping with tinnitus is usually in sync with the type of hearing loss that person has. For instance, somebody who hears high-pitched ringing from tinnitus may suffer from high-frequency hearing loss. Some individuals believe this parallel to be a consequence 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. The good news is, there are other, more advanced solutions beyond just traditional hearing aids to treat the symptoms produced by tinnitus.
Decrease symptoms of tinnitus with specialized hearing aids
Hearing aids work by collecting natural sounds from the environment around you and amplifying them to a level that allows you to hear. Even though it may 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 certain stimulations once more.
But other combinations of methods like sound stimulation, counseling, and decreasing stress can also be used to improve those amplification efforts and provide a more comprehensive treatment approach.
Some hearing aid manufacturers attempt to decrease 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. The ringing is drowned out by pleasant, wind chime-like sounds generated by the most common fractal tones rather than simple white noise which can also be helpful in some cases.
Blending natural sounds from your environment with your tinnitus is the objective of other specialized devices. A white noise generator will be used in this approach, which can be calibrated by a hearing specialist to help lessen your specific tinnitus symptoms..
The common goal of these methods is to help the user disregard tinnitus symptoms whether it’s through the use of white noise mechanisms, sound therapy, or blending.
Though tinnitus can’t be cured, hearing aids can help decrease the severity of the symptoms and enhance quality of life, which is an attractive feature for the 50 million people who use hearing aids.
Want to talk about your tinnitus with a hearing professional?
If you’re experiencing ringing or buzzing in the ears, check out our tinnitus section for more information on ways to decrease symptoms.