The cause of tinnitus, a continual 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 suffer from hearing loss.
As you most likely know, your age, genetics, and lifestyle can all contribute to the development of hearing loss. And while it might seem as if the symptoms of hearing loss would be pretty obvious, when it’s still in the early phases, it often goes unnoticed. 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. There are some rather remarkable similarities between tinnitus and hearing loss, as a matter of fact.
The frequency range that a person loses hearing in is often in sync with the pitch of their tinnitus symptoms. As an example, if someone has hearing loss in the high-frequency range, they will usually hear a high-pitched ringing from tinnitus. Some people believe this parallel to be a result of the brain trying to compensate for a lack of acoustic activation at that level by generating a similarly pitched tone of its own.
Tinnitus sounds can be effectively “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.
Specialized hearing aids to decrease tinnitus symptoms
Hearing aids work by collecting natural sounds from your environment and amplifying them to a level that allows you to hear. Even though it may be simple in design, that amplification of noise, be it the din of a dinner party or the rattle of a ceiling fan, is crucial in teaching your brain to experience certain stimulations once more.
But other combinations of methods like sound stimulation, counseling, and reducing stress can also be used to enhance those amplification efforts and provide 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 constant and regular which can sometimes be interrupted by the irregular rhythms of these fractal tones. The ringing is drowned out by pleasant, wind chime-like sounds generated by the most common fractal tones rather than simple white noise which can also be helpful in some cases.
Other specialty devices attempt to mix your tinnitus in with the natural 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 aim of these methods 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 tinnitus can’t be cured, but for at least some of the 50 million suffering from the condition, hearing aids present an attractive possibility to reduce symptoms and improve quality of life.
Want to talk about your tinnitus with a hearing professional?
For more information on decreasing tinnitus symptoms, check out our tinnitus section or call for a consultation.