The cause of tinnitus, a continual ringing or buzzing in the ears, has long baffled scientists. Hearing specialists, however, do agree that tinnitus is more prevalent in people who also have hearing loss.
Some of the principal factors that contribute to hearing loss are genetics, age, and lifestyle. And while many individuals think of hearing loss as being obvious, the truth is that some mild hearing loss can go unnoticed. Unfortunately, your risk of experiencing hearing loss increases with even mild cases of hearing loss.
Hearing aids can’t cure tinnitus, but they can help treat the symptoms
There is no cure for tinnitus. However, hearing loss and tinnitus symptoms can be improved as well as quality of life by using hearing aids. There are some pretty remarkable similarities between tinnitus and hearing loss, in fact.
The frequency range that a person loses hearing in is usually in sync with the pitch of their tinnitus symptoms. As an example, if somebody has hearing loss in the high-frequency range, they will often hear a high-pitched ringing from tinnitus. Some individuals believe this parallel to be a consequence of the brain attempting to compensate for a lack of acoustic stimulation at that level by generating a similarly pitched tone of its own.
A traditional hearing aid can essentially hide the ringing or buzzing associated with tinnitus by replacing it with the appropriate sounds. Luckily, tinnitus symptoms can be managed in other more advanced ways than traditional hearing aids.
Decrease symptoms of tinnitus with specialized hearing aids
Hearing aids detect environmental sounds and boost frequencies you can’t hear very well. Even though hearing aids have a simple concept, they help train your brain to receive particular stimulation again by boosting noises like the rattle of a ceiling fan or the din of a dinner party.
But other combinations of strategies like sound stimulation, counseling, and decreasing stress can also be utilized to augment those amplification efforts and supply a more complete treatment approach.
Some hearing aid manufacturers endeavor to decrease tinnitus symptoms with the use of the irregular rhythms of fractal tones. These rhythmically irregular tones can detract from the consistent and regular tones tinnitus sufferers hear. The ringing is overwhelmed by pleasant, wind chime-like sounds produced by the most prevalent fractal tones rather than basic white noise which can also be helpful in some cases.
Mixing natural sounds from your environment with your tinnitus is the goal 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 decrease your specific tinnitus symptoms..
Whether it’s through sound therapy, blending, or a white noise mechanism, each of these specialized devices has a common objective of distracting the user away from the ringing or buzzing of tinnitus.
It’s true that there is no cure for tinnitus, but for at least some of the 50 million dealing with the condition, hearing aids provide an attractive possibility to reduce symptoms and improve quality of life.
Want to talk about your tinnitus with a hearing specialist?
For more information on decreasing tinnitus symptoms, take a look at our tinnitus section or call for a consultation.
