The cause of tinnitus, a persistent buzzing or ringing in the ears, is generally ambiguous. But one thing we know for sure is that if you have hearing loss your chance of experiencing tinnitus goes up. According to HLAA as much as 90 percent of people who have tinnitus also have hearing loss.
As you probably know, your age, genetics, and lifestyle can all be involved in the development of hearing loss. Often, minor instances of hearing loss go unnoticed and hearing loss, in general, isn’t always obvious. Worse, even a minor case of hearing loss increases your risk and probability of developing tinnitus.
It’s Not a Cure, But Hearing Aids Can Help Manage Tinnitus
Tinnitus has no cure. However, hearing aids will help you manage both hearing loss and tinnitus in ways that can decrease symptoms and improve one’s quality of life. As a matter of fact, one study showed that as much as 60 percent of tinnitus patients experienced relief when they wore hearing aids, with 22 percent showing significant relief.
A conventional hearing aid can essentially hide the buzzing or ringing caused by tinnitus by strengthening your ability to hear other sounds, which effectively drowns out the ringing. Luckily there are other, more sophisticated options beyond just conventional hearing aids to manage the symptoms linked to tinnitus.
Types of Specialty Hearing Aids to Reduce Tinnitus Symptoms
Hearing aids work by gathering natural sounds from the world around you and boosting them to a level that lets you hear. Even though it may be simple in design, that amplification of sound, be it the hum of a dinner party or the clank of a ceiling fan, is crucial in training your brain to receive certain stimulations again.
You can take an even more complete approach to your tinnitus management by augmenting hearing aids with other techniques, like stress reduction, sound stimulation, and counseling.
Some hearing aid makers even use the irregular rhythm of fractal tones to minimize the symptoms of tinnitus. These rhythmically inconsistent tones can distract from the persistent and regular tones tinnitus sufferers hear.
Blending the natural sounds you hear with your tinnitus sounds is the objective of other sophisticated hearing aid options. Your condition and ear have very personal needs and this strategy will use a customized white noise that will be calibrated 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 attention away from the ringing or buzzing of tinnitus.
Hearing aids can improve quality of life and reduce 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