Around one in seven people are estimated to suffer from tinnitus. That puts the overall number in the millions. In some countries, the numbers are even higher and that’s pretty startling.
Sometimes tinnitus is goes away on it’s own. But in those instances where buzzing, ringing, or humming in your ears is difficult to shake, finding a reliable treatment can very quickly become a priority. Luckily, there is a remedy that has proven to be really effective: hearing aids.
There are some links between tinnitus and hearing loss but they are actually distinct conditions. you can have hearing loss without tinnitus or tinnitus without hearing loss. But the two conditions coexist often enough that hearing aids have become a dependable solution, treating hearing loss and ending tinnitus in one fell swoop.
How Hearing Aids Can Treat Tinnitus
According to one survey, 60% of people who suffer from tinnitus noticed some amount of relief when they started using hearing aids. For 22% of those people, the relief was considerable. But, hearing aids are not made specifically to handle tinnitus. The benefits appear to come by association. As such, hearing aids appear to be most effective if you have tinnitus and hearing loss.
Here’s how hearing aids can help reduce tinnitus symptoms:
- External sounds are boosted: The volume of some of the frequencies of the world become quieter when you are suffering from hearing loss. When that occurs the ringing in your ears becomes a lot more noticeable. Hearing loss is not reducing the ringing so it becomes the loudest thing you hear. The ringing or buzzing that was so prominent will be obscured when your hearing aid boosts the outside sound. As you tune out your tinnitus, it becomes less of a problem.
- Conversations become easier: Modern hearing aids are particularly effective at identifying human speech and raising the volume of those sounds. This means carrying on a conversation can be much easier once you’re regularly wearing your devices. You will be more involved with your co-worker’s story about their kids and better able to participate with your spouse about how their day went. When you have a balanced interactive social life tinnitus can seem to disappear into the background. Socializing also helps decrease stress, which is associated with tinnitus.
- Your brain is getting an auditory workout: Hearing loss has been confirmed to put stress on cognitive function. Tinnitus symptoms you may be experiencing can be decreased when the brain is in a healthy pliable condition and hearing aids can help keep it that way.
Modern Hearing Aids Come With Several Benefits
Smart Technology is built into modern hearing aids. To some extent, that’s because they feature the newest technologies and hearing assistance algorithms. But it’s the ability to customize a hearing aid to the specific user’s needs that makes modern hearing aids so effective (they can even sense the level of background noise and automatically recalibrate accordingly).
Personalizing hearing aids means that the sensitivity and output signals can effortlessly be adjusted to the particular hearing levels you may have. The better your hearings aid works for you, the more likely they are to help you cover up the humming or buzzing from tinnitus.
The Best Way to Stop Tinnitus
This will probably depend on your degree of hearing impairment. There are still treatment solutions for your tinnitus even if you don’t have any hearing impairment. Cognitive behavioral therapy, a custom masking device, or medication are some possible options.
But, if you’re one of the many individuals out there who happen to suffer from both hearing impairment and tinnitus, a pair of hearing aids could be able to do the old two-birds-one-stone thing. Treating your hearing impairment with a good set of hearing aids can often stop tinnitus from making your life miserable.