At one point or another in your life you’ve most likely had some ringing in your ears. That ringing is called tinnitus. According to most studies, 15-20% of people experience tinnitus at any given time. Normally, it’s fleeting. But chronic tinnitus, a ringing that won’t go away, can be annoying and upsetting. Fortunately, there is a common and straight forward treatment for tinnitus: hearing aids.
Dealing With Chronic Tinnitus
Some of the countless reasons why tinnitus develops are fairly easy to understand, others not so much. Tinnitus can also sound like a wide variety of objective or subjective noises, from thumping to clanging to metal buzz-saw noises, whatever beautiful cacophony your ears can produce.
The noisier and more intense the sounds are, the more invasive tinnitus tends to become. Difficulty communicating, mental health declines, and interruption of your day to day life can be the eventual consequence.
Tinnitus And Hearing Aids
While there is normally no way to cure the root cause of tinnitus, hearing aids have become quite skilled at treating tinnitus symptoms. There are a variety of ways that hearing aids achieve this.
Making The Ringing in Your Ears Harder to Notice
The symptoms of tinnitus will normally appear along side of hearing loss problems. Occasionally, they have the same underlying cause, but often they don’t. Either way, as your hearing worsens, your tinnitus may become more pronounced. When you’re not hearing external sounds as well, the internal ones really stand out.
When you’re wearing hearing aids the sounds of the outside world will be louder. Once again your tinnitus will, to your relief, get lost in the details. This can help you focus on and enjoy your life.
Canceling Out The Noise
Of course, there’s a difference between masking your tinnitus and overwhelming your tinnitus. So to help handle your ringing and buzzing, many modern hearing aids use a type of noise cancellation technology. We can show you how to tune your hearing aid to emit particular white noises that help reduce your tinnitus. Essentially, by generating specific types of sound, your hearing aid can help reduce the volume of your tinnitus symptoms.
This feature isn’t available on all hearing aids, so you’ll have to talk with us to learn what will work best for you.
There’s no cure for most forms of chronic tinnitus. But you can still find ways to deal with it. The ringing, buzzing, 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 many people who live with tinnitus, hearing aids are a good choice.