Scientists still haven’t pinpointed the cause of tinnitus, a ringing or buzzing in the ears. However, there is one thing that all hearing specialists agree on, you are more likely to experience tinnitus if you also suffer from hearing loss.
As you probably know, your age, genetics, and lifestyle can all play a role in the progression of hearing loss. And while many people think of hearing loss as being obvious, the reality is that some mild hearing loss can go unnoticed. Unfortunately, your risk of experiencing hearing loss increases with even minor cases of hearing loss.
It’s not a cure, but hearing aids can help manage tinnitus
There is no cure for tinnitus. However, hearing aids can manage both hearing loss and tinnitus in ways that can decrease symptoms and enhance one’s quality of life. There are some fairly remarkable similarities between tinnitus and hearing loss, in fact.
The pitch or frequency of the ringing a person hears when coping with tinnitus is often in sync with the type of hearing loss that person has. For example, someone who hears high-pitched ringing from tinnitus may suffer from high-frequency hearing loss. Some people believe this parallel to be a result of the brain trying to compensate for a lack of acoustic stimulation at that level by generating 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. The good news is, there are other, more advanced solutions beyond just traditional hearing aids to manage 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 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 crucial in teaching your brain to experience certain stimulations once more.
But other combinations of methods like sound stimulation, counseling, and minimizing stress can also be utilized to improve those amplification efforts and supply a more complete treatment approach.
Some manufacturers even utilize the irregular rhythm of fractal tones to reduce the symptoms of tinnitus. These rhythmically irregular tones can detract from the consistent and regular tones tinnitus sufferers hear. While white noise devices are available, the most prevalent fractal tones are similar to wind chimes that provide a pleasant sound that overwhelms the ringing.
Blending natural sounds from your environment with your tinnitus is the aim 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 reduce your specific tinnitus symptoms..
Whether it’s through sound therapy, blending, or a white noise system, each of these specialized devices has a common objective of distracting the user away from the ringing or buzzing of tinnitus.
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, take a look at our tinnitus section for more information on ways to minimize symptoms.
