Scientists still haven’t determined the cause of tinnitus, a ringing or buzzing in the ears. However, there is one thing that all hearing specialists agree on, you are more likely to experience tinnitus if you also suffer from hearing loss.
As you probably know, your age, genetics, and lifestyle can all play a role in the development of hearing loss. And while it may seem as if the symptoms of hearing loss would be pretty obvious, when it’s still in the early phases, it often goes undetected. Unfortunately, your risk of experiencing hearing loss increases with even slight cases of hearing loss.
It isn’t a cure, but hearing aids can help treat tinnitus
There is no cure for tinnitus. However, hearing aids can manage both hearing loss and tinnitus in ways that can reduce symptoms and enhance one’s quality of life. In fact, the similarities between hearing loss and tinnitus are fairly remarkable.
The pitch or frequency of the ringing a person hears when dealing with tinnitus is often in sync with the type of hearing loss that person encounters. As an example, if someone has hearing loss in the high-frequency range, they will usually hear a high-pitched ringing from tinnitus. The concept is that the brain tries to compensate for the missing frequencies by producing tinnitus sounds in the same frequency range.
A traditional hearing aid can essentially hide the ringing or buzzing associated with tinnitus by replacing it with the appropriate sounds. The good news is, there are other, more advanced solutions beyond just traditional hearing aids to treat the symptoms produced by tinnitus.
Reduce symptoms of tinnitus with specialized hearing aids
Hearing aids work by gathering natural sounds from the environment around you and boosting them to a level that allows you to hear. Even though hearing aids have a simple concept, they help teach your brain to receive certain stimulation again by boosting noises like the rattling of a ceiling fan or the din of a dinner party.
But other combinations of strategies like sound stimulation, counseling, and minimizing stress can also be utilized to improve those amplification efforts and supply a more complete treatment approach.
Some manufacturers even use the irregular rhythm of fractal tones to reduce 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 produced by the most common 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 aim of other specialized devices. This strategy will typically use a white noise signal that a hearing specialist can adjust to ensure proper calibration for your ear and your condition.
Whether it’s through sound therapy, blending, or a white noise system, 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 present an alluring possibility to reduce symptoms and live a better quality of life.
Want to talk about your tinnitus with a hearing professional?
For more info on decreasing tinnitus symptoms, check out our tinnitus section or call for a consultation.