The cause of tinnitus, a continual ringing or buzzing in the ears, has long perplexed scientists. Hearing specialists, however, do agree that tinnitus is more prevalent in people who also have hearing loss.
As you most likely know, your age, genetics, and lifestyle can all contribute to the development of hearing loss. And while many individuals think of hearing loss as being obvious, the reality is that some mild hearing loss can go undetected. Unfortunately, your risk of developing hearing loss increases with even minor 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. In fact, the similarities between hearing loss and tinnitus are rather remarkable.
The frequency range that a person loses hearing in is typically in sync with the pitch of their tinnitus symptoms. As an example, if somebody has hearing loss in the high-frequency range, they will often hear a high-pitched ringing from tinnitus. The concept is that the brain tries to compensate for the missing frequencies by creating tinnitus sounds in the same frequency range.
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 managed in other more advanced ways than traditional hearing aids.
Specialized hearing aids to decrease tinnitus symptoms
Hearing aids work by picking up natural sounds from the environment around you and boosting them to a level that allows you to hear. Even though it may be simple in design, that amplification of noise, be it the hum of a dinner party or the rattle of a ceiling fan, is essential in teaching your brain to receive particular stimulations again.
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 manufacturers even utilize the irregular rhythm of fractal tones to decrease the symptoms of tinnitus. Tinnitus sufferers usually hear tones that are consistent and regular which can sometimes be disrupted by the irregular rhythms of these fractal tones. The ringing is overwhelmed by pleasant, wind chime-like sounds produced by the most common fractal tones instead of simple white noise which can also be helpful in some cases.
Other specialized devices attempt to blend your tinnitus in with the environmental sounds you’re hearing. 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..
The common objective of these strategies is to help the user disregard tinnitus symptoms whether it’s through the use of white noise mechanisms, sound therapy, or blending.
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 present an alluring possibility to reduce symptoms and live a better quality of life.
Have more questions about tinnitus?
For more info on reducing tinnitus symptoms, check out our tinnitus section or call for a consultation.