Scientists still haven’t pinpointed the cause of tinnitus, a ringing or buzzing in the ears. 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 main factors that contribute to hearing loss are genetics, age, and lifestyle. And while it might seem as if the symptoms of hearing loss would be fairly obvious, when it’s still in the early stages, it frequently goes undetected. Worse, even a mild case of hearing loss increases your risk and likelihood of developing tinnitus.
It isn’t a cure, but hearing aids can help treat tinnitus
Tinnitus can’t be cured. However, hearing loss and tinnitus symptoms can be improved along with quality of life by using hearing aids. In fact, the similarities between hearing loss and tinnitus are pretty 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 encounters. As an example, if somebody has hearing loss in the high-frequency range, they will often hear a high-pitched ringing from tinnitus. 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.
Tinnitus sounds can be essentially “masked” by a hearing aid which can drown out the offending sound and replace it with one that’s supposed to be heard. Luckily, tinnitus symptoms can be treated in other more advanced ways than traditional hearing aids.
Specialized hearing aids to lessen tinnitus symptoms
Hearing aids pick up environmental sounds and amplify frequencies you can’t hear very well. Even though hearing aids have a simple concept, they help teach your brain to receive certain stimulation again by boosting noises like the rattling of a ceiling fan or the buzz of a dinner party.
But other combinations of methods like sound stimulation, counseling, and minimizing stress can also be used to augment those amplification efforts and supply a more comprehensive treatment approach.
Some manufacturers even use the irregular rhythm of fractal tones to decrease the symptoms of tinnitus. Tinnitus sufferers usually 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.
Mixing 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 decrease your particular 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.
It’s true that tinnitus can’t be cured, but for at least some of the 50 million suffering from the condition, hearing aids provide an alluring possibility to reduce symptoms and live a better quality of life.
Have more questions about tinnitus?
For more information on decreasing tinnitus symptoms, take a look at our tinnitus section or call for a consultation.