The cause of tinnitus, a persistent ringing or buzzing in the ears, has long puzzled scientists. Hearing specialists, however, do agree that tinnitus is more prevalent in people who also have hearing loss.
Some of the primary factors that contribute to hearing loss are genetics, age, and lifestyle. And while many people think of hearing loss as being obvious, the reality is that some mild hearing loss can go unobserved. Unfortunately, your risk of experiencing 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 aids can manage both hearing loss and tinnitus in ways that can minimize symptoms and improve one’s quality of life. As a matter of fact, the similarities between hearing loss and tinnitus are rather remarkable.
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 encounters. For instance, somebody who hears high-pitched ringing from tinnitus might suffer from high-frequency hearing loss. Some people believe this parallel to be a consequence of the brain attempting to compensate for a lack of acoustic stimulation at that level by producing 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 associated with tinnitus.
Reduce symptoms of tinnitus with specialized hearing aids
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 experience particular stimulation again by boosting noises like the rattling of a ceiling fan or the din of a dinner party.
But other combinations of strategies like sound stimulation, counseling, and decreasing stress can also be utilized to augment those amplification efforts and supply a more complete treatment approach.
Some hearing aid manufacturers attempt to reduce tinnitus symptoms by using irregular rhythms of fractal tones. Tinnitus sufferers typically hear tones that are constant and regular which can sometimes be interrupted 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 supply a soothing 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 particular 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.
It’s true that there is no cure for tinnitus, but for at least some of the 50 million dealing with the condition, hearing aids provide an attractive possibility to reduce symptoms and improve quality of life.
Want to talk about your tinnitus with a hearing specialist?
If you’re experiencing ringing or buzzing in the ears, take a look at our tinnitus section for more information on ways to reduce symptoms.