The cause of tinnitus, a continual ringing or buzzing in the ears, has long puzzled scientists. 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 contribute to the development of hearing loss. And while it might seem like the symptoms of hearing loss would be pretty obvious, when it’s still in the early phases, it often goes undetected. Still worse, even a minor case of hearing loss increases your risk and likelihood of experiencing tinnitus.
It isn’t 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 pretty remarkable.
The pitch or frequency of the ringing one hears when dealing with tinnitus is normally 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. 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. Fortunately, tinnitus symptoms can be managed in other more advanced ways than traditional hearing aids.
Decrease symptoms of tinnitus with specialized hearing aids
Hearing aids work by gathering 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 rattling of a ceiling fan, is essential in teaching your brain to experience certain stimulations again.
But you can improve those amplification efforts with a combination of other techniques like counseling, sound stimulation, and stress reduction for a more comprehensive approach to treatment.
Some manufacturers even utilize the irregular rhythm of fractal tones to lessen 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. The ringing is drowned out by pleasant, wind chime-like sounds generated by the most prevalent fractal tones rather than simple white noise which can also be helpful in some cases.
Other specialized devices try to mix your tinnitus in with the outside sounds you’re hearing. A white noise generator will be used in this approach, which can be calibrated 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 goal 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 improve quality of life, which is an alluring feature for the 50 million people who use hearing aids.
Have more questions about tinnitus?
If you’re struggling with ringing or buzzing in the ears, check out our tinnitus section for more information on ways to decrease symptoms.