It’s often unclear what’s causing tinnitus (a buzzing or ringing in your ears). However, there is one thing experts agree on: you are more likely to experience tinnitus if you also are afflicted by hearing loss. According to HLAA as much as 90 percent of individuals who experience tinnitus also have hearing loss.
Your age, lifestyle, and genetics can all play a role in the development of hearing loss as you most likely know. And while many individuals think of hearing loss as being obvious, the reality is that some minor hearing loss can go unnoticed. Even worse, even a slight case of hearing loss raises your risk and probability of developing tinnitus.
Hearing Aids Won’t Cure Tinnitus But They Will Help
There isn’t a cure for tinnitus. However, hearing aids will treat both hearing loss and tinnitus in ways that can reduce symptoms and improve one’s quality of life. As a matter of fact, one study showed that as much as 60 percent of tinnitus patients saw relief when they wore hearing aids, with 22 percent showing significant relief.
A conventional hearing aid can basically hide the ringing or buzzing caused by tinnitus by improving your ability to hear other sounds, which essentially drowns out the ringing. Luckily there are other, more sophisticated solutions beyond just traditional hearing aids to treat the symptoms linked to tinnitus.
Tinnitus Symptoms Will be Reduced by These Types of Specialized Hearing Aids
Hearing aids work by gathering natural sounds from the world around you and boosting them to a level that allows you to hear. Even though it may be basic in design, that amplification of sound, be it the hum of a dinner party or the clank of a ceiling fan, is crucial in training your brain to receive certain stimulations again.
You can augment those amplification efforts by the combination of other strategies, like counseling, sound stimulation, and stress reduction for a more complete approach to treatment.
Some hearing aid manufacturers even utilize the irregular rhythm of fractal tones to minimize the symptoms of tinnitus. These rhythmically inconsistent tones can distract from the consistent and regular tones tinnitus sufferers experience.
Other specialized devices attempt to blend your tinnitus in with the normal sounds you’re hearing. This strategy will generally utilize a white noise signal that a hearing professional can adjust to guarantee proper calibration for your ear and your disorder.
All of these approaches, from white noise therapies to sound therapies, utilize specialized hearing aid technology to distract the attention of the user away from focusing on tinnitus noises.
It’s true that there is no cure for tinnitus, but for at least some individuals, hearing aids help decrease symptoms and improve your quality of life.
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References
- https://www.hearingloss.org/wp-content/uploads/HLAA_HearingLoss_Facts_Statistics.pdf?pdf=FactStats
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17956798
- https://www.ata.org/managing-your-tinnitus/treatment-options/hearing-aids
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6197965