The cause of tinnitus, a persistent ringing or buzzing in the ears, has long baffled scientists. However, there is one thing that all hearing professionals agree on, you are more likely to experience tinnitus if you also cope with hearing loss.
As you probably know, your age, genetics, and lifestyle can all play a role in the progression of hearing loss. And while many individuals think of hearing loss as being obvious, the reality is that some mild hearing loss can go unnoticed. Unfortunately, your risk of experiencing hearing loss increases with even minor cases of hearing loss.
It’s not 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 rather remarkable.
The pitch or frequency of the ringing one hears when dealing with tinnitus is usually in sync with the type of hearing loss that person encounters. For instance, a person who hears high-pitched ringing from tinnitus may suffer from high-frequency hearing loss. The concept is that the brain tries to compensate for the missing frequencies by generating 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 treated in other more advanced ways than traditional hearing aids.
Decrease symptoms of tinnitus with specialized hearing aids
Hearing aids work by collecting natural sounds from your environment and amplifying them to a level that allows you to hear. Even though hearing aids have a simple concept, they help teach your brain to experience certain stimulation again by boosting noises like the rattling of a ceiling fan or the buzz of a dinner party.
But you can improve those amplification endeavors with a blend of other strategies like counseling, sound stimulation, and stress management for a more extensive approach to treatment.
Some hearing aid manufacturers endeavor to decrease tinnitus symptoms by using irregular rhythms of fractal tones. These rhythmically inconsistent tones can detract from the constant and regular tones tinnitus sufferers hear. 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.
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 lessen your specific tinnitus symptoms..
Whether it’s through sound therapy, blending, or a white noise system, each of these specialized devices has a common aim 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 attractive feature for the 50 million people who use hearing aids.
Want to discuss your tinnitus with a hearing professional?
If you’re struggling with ringing or buzzing in the ears, check out our tinnitus section for more information on ways to decrease symptoms.