Most estimates put the amount of people impacted by tinnitus in the millions or around one out of every seven people. That’s… a lot of people, both in actual terms and in relation to the general population, and in several countries, the amount of the population who experience tinnitus is even more alarming.
True, tinnitus isn’t always chronic. But in those instances where ringing, buzzing, or humming in your ears is hard to get rid of, finding an effective treatment can very quickly become a priority. Luckily, there is a remedy that has proven to be quite effective: hearing aids.
There are some connections between hearing loss and tinnitus but they are actually separate conditions. you can have hearing loss without tinnitus or tinnitus without hearing loss. But both conditions coexist often enough that hearing aids have become a dependable solution, managing hearing loss and stopping tinnitus in one fell swoop.
How Can Tinnitus be Managed by Hearing Aids?
According to one study, 60% of individuals who suffer from tinnitus observed some measure of relief when they started using hearing aids. For 22% of those people, the relief was considerable. Despite this, hearing aids are actually designed to manage hearing loss not specifically tinnitus. Association appears to be the principal reason for this benefit. So if you have tinnitus and hearing loss then that’s when your hearing aids will most successfully treat the tinnitus symptoms.
Here’s how hearing aids can help reduce tinnitus symptoms:
- Everything gets a little bit louder: When you experience loss of hearing, the volume of the outside world (or, at least, certain frequencies of the world) can fade away and become more silent. The ringing in your ears, then, is a lot more noticeable. It’s the loudest thing you’re hearing because it is not decreased by your hearing loss. The ringing or buzzing that was so obvious will be obscured when your hearing aid boosts the external sound. Tinnitus becomes less of a problem as you pay less attention to it.
- Conversations become easier: Contemporary hearing aids are particularly effective at identifying human speech and amplifying those sounds. This means having a conversation can become much easier once you’re regularly wearing your devices. You will be more engaged with your co-worker’s story about their kids and better able to participate with your spouse about how their day went. The more you connect with others, the more social you are, the less you’ll notice your tinnitus. At times, tinnitus is intensified by stress so being able to socialize can helps in this way also.
- Your brain is getting an auditory workout: When you experience hearing loss, those portions of your brain tasked with interpreting sounds can frequently suffer from fatigue, stress, or atrophy. Wearing a hearing aid can keep the audio centers of your brain flexible and healthy, which in turn can help decrease certain tinnitus symptoms you may be experiencing.
Modern Hearing Aids Come With Many Benefits
Modern hearing aids are smart. To some extent, that’s because they incorporate the newest technologies and hearing assistance algorithms. But it’s the ability to personalize a hearing aid to the distinct user’s needs that makes modern hearing aids so effective (sometimes, they recalibrate according to the amount of background noise).
Customizing hearing aids means that the sensitivity and output signals can effortlessly be calibrated to the specific hearing levels you may have. The better your hearings aid works for you, the more likely they are to help you cover up the buzzing or humming from tinnitus.
The Best Way to Get Rid of Tinnitus
This will most likely depend on your degree of hearing loss. If you haven’t experienced any hearing loss, you’ll still have available treatments for your tinnitus. That could mean custom-made masking devices, cognitive-behavioral therapy, or medication.
However, hearing aids might be able to take care of both situations if you have tinnitus and hearing loss at the same time. Stop tinnitus from making your life miserable by treating your hearing loss with a good set of hearing aids.