You’ve probably heard some ringing in your ears at one time in your life or another. That ringing is called tinnitus. According to most studies, 15-20% of people experience tinnitus at one point or another. Even though most people only hear this ringing intermittently, some people suffer from chronic tinnitus that doesn’t go away. Fortunately, there is a common and straight forward treatment for tinnitus: hearing aids.
Dealing With Persistent Tinnitus
Some of the many reasons why tinnitus happens are fairly easy to figure out, others not so much. Tinnitus can also manifest as a wide variety of subjective and objective noises, from pounding to clanging to metal buzz-saw noises, whatever beautiful cacophony your ears can produce.
The louder and more intense the sounds are, the more invasive tinnitus can become. Difficulty communicating, mental health declines, and disruption of your day to day life can be the eventual result.
Tinnitus And Hearing Aids
While hearing aids don’t necessarily “cure” tinnitus they are quite good at dealing with some of the more pronounced symptoms. Hearing aids are capable of accomplishing this in a few ways.
Making The Ringing in Your Ears Less Noticeable
The symptoms of tinnitus will normally occur together with hearing loss problems. They can have the same root cause or not. But it’s very likely that your tinnitus will get worse as your hearing loss worsens. When you can’t hear external sounds as well, the internal ones really stand out.
Your hearing aid has the ability to turn the ambient volume of the world up. Your tinnitus will once again, to your relief, disappear into the background. This can help you focus on and enjoy the day-to-day.
Canceling Out The Noise
Obviously, there’s a difference between overwhelming your tinnitus and masking your tinnitus. So to help manage your ringing and buzzing, many modern hearing aids use a kind of noise cancellation technology. We can show you how to tune your hearing aid to emit certain white noises that help reduce your tinnitus. Essentially, by generating specific kinds of sound, your hearing aid can help minimize the volume of your tinnitus symptoms.
This capability isn’t provided on all hearing aids, so you’ll need to talk with us to figure out what will work best for you.
Most types of chronic tinnitus can’t be cured. But you can still find ways to deal with it. The buzzing, ringing, and other tinnitus-related noises will be gone and you will be able to experience a full life with hearing aids that are calibrated precisely. For most people who live with tinnitus, hearing aids are ideal.
