Scientists still haven’t pinpointed the cause of tinnitus, a ringing or buzzing in the ears. Hearing specialists, however, do agree that tinnitus is more prevalent in people who also have hearing loss.
Some of the primary factors that play a role in hearing loss are genetics, age, and lifestyle. And while many people think of hearing loss as being obvious, the reality is that some minor hearing loss can go unnoticed. Unfortunately, your risk of developing hearing loss increases with even minor cases of hearing loss.
Hearing aids can’t cure tinnitus, but they can help treat the symptoms
Tinnitus can’t be cured. However, hearing aids can manage both hearing loss and tinnitus in ways that can decrease symptoms and improve one’s quality of life. In fact, the similarities between hearing loss and tinnitus are fairly remarkable.
The frequency range that a person loses hearing in is usually 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 attempting to compensate for a lack of acoustic activation at that level by producing a similarly pitched tone of its own.
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.
Reduce symptoms of tinnitus with specialized hearing aids
Hearing aids detect environmental sounds and amplify frequencies you have trouble hearing. Even though it might be simple in design, that amplification of noise, be it the hum of a dinner party or the rattling of a ceiling fan, is crucial in training your brain to receive particular stimulations again.
But other combinations of strategies like sound stimulation, counseling, and decreasing stress can also be used to improve those amplification efforts and provide a more comprehensive treatment approach.
Some manufacturers even utilize the irregular rhythm of fractal tones to decrease the symptoms of tinnitus. These rhythmically irregular tones can detract from the constant and regular tones tinnitus sufferers hear. The ringing is drowned out by pleasant, wind chime-like sounds produced by the most prevalent fractal tones rather than simple white noise which can also be helpful in some cases.
Blending 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 reduce your specific tinnitus symptoms..
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 suffering from the condition, hearing aids present an alluring possibility to reduce symptoms and live a better quality of life.
Have more questions about tinnitus?
For more information on reducing tinnitus symptoms, check out our tinnitus section or call for a consultation.