Tinnitus is a hearing condition for which a person tends to hear sounds that are not actually physically present. You too might have often faced the problem where you hear a beeping sound in your ears even though nothing is causing the sound. You might also hear a hissing sound or sounds of ringing or whistling. If you hear these sounds often despite their not being physically present around you, it is likely that you have tinnitus. But no need to worry, as now there are different modern hearing aids that can help you with tinnitus.
Why and How Tinnitus is Caused
Tinnitus is a problem that can develop in people of all ages and backgrounds. But older people and people that are regularly exposed to loud noises are at more risk than others. Some of the causes of Tinnitus are given below.
Loud Noise
Being exposed to really loud music or other louder noises such as gunshots, explosions, noises of machinery or construction can cause tinnitus.
Medications
You can have tinnitus as a side effect of some medications.
Aging
As you age, you can suffer from many hearing problems including tinnitus, as the number of nerve fibers in your ears gets decreased with age.
There are also some other things that can cause tinnitus such as-
- Earwax blockage can cause tinnitus at times
- Neurological disorders might cause it
- Degeneration of bones in the middle of your ear
- Injury to ears, head or neck, and also upper respiratory infections can cause it too
How Can You Treat Tinnitus
If you are experiencing problems that refer to tinnitus, you should first visit a medical professional to rule out the causes. If there is an underlying cause or sickness that is causing you the problems, you should resort to treating them rather than tinnitus and your problems will go away. Or, if your tinnitus has been caused by embedded earwax, you can get the earwax removed. And when the blockage is cleared, you will find that your tinnitus problems get alleviated.
But, if you have actually got tinnitus and it was caused by your old age or prolonged exposure to loud noises, it is difficult to treat. If you are in this group of having tinnitus, you should know this condition can rarely be cured, instead, you tend to manage it rather than treating it. But you can surely reduce its impact, and to do it one of the most effective methods is to use hearing aids with tinnitus masking functionality.
Do Hearing Aids Actually Help with Tinnitus?
Hearing aids have helped many people with tinnitus, but they might not be fully effective for some people. But when you combine sound therapy with other hearing strategies, hearing aids can provide a great deal of help. And an extensive treatment plan can help you get highly desirable outcomes.
If you have hearing problems too, apart from tinnitus, then hearing aids are the best solution anyway, as they will help you with external sounds and understanding speeches too. However, if your problems are just hearing the hissing, buzzing, or beeping sounds, then you might need to go through a combination of tinnitus treatments. This might include sound therapy, sound maskers and others.
How Hearing Aids can Help with Tinnitus
Given the primary purpose of hearing aids, you might think that they can only be used for hearing loss. But hearing aids can also help with tinnitus, whether there is also hearing loss or not. Hearing aids that can help with tinnitus have a particular functionality, which is known as ‘tinnitus masking’. Tinnitus masking is a process that is performed by hearing aids, but rather than amplifying existing sounds, these tinnitus masking hearing aids emit new sounds. Specially broadband or narrowband noises at low levels are emitted.
Even though the idea of emitting new noises through a device for someone who is already hearing too many noises might seem odd, but the emitted noise by the device tends to act as a masking sound for the noises caused by tinnitus. As you will be continuously experiencing the noise from your hearing aid, you will be less likely to notice tinnitus-related sounds. If the tinnitus sounds are like a candle in a dark room, where it shines brightly. And the sound masking is like other lights that make the room well-lit enough to make the candle almost disappear.
Special Hearing Aids to Help with Tinnitus
Well, it has been said earlier how modern hearing aids with the ‘tinnitus masking’ functionality can help with tinnitus. Apart from the ability to amplify the external sounds, the best hearing aids for tinnitus masking also have built-in tinnitus therapy. This provides a sound therapy that can be adjusted to compensate for your hearing loss.
To help you mask the troubling sounds of tinnitus, sound therapy brings in external and specialized ear masking noises in your ears. This can also be a piece of low-level music or your own customized sound. This experience is similar to using a white noise machine that drowns out traffic sounds.
So the modern and special hearing aids that can provide you with this special sound therapy by masking your unbearable tinnitus sounds can help you manage your tinnitus problems. The impact will be reduced by a lot, even if it doesn’t get cured properly. So, while you are choosing hearing aids for your tinnitus problems, you should keep that in mind and choose one that can provide you with masking sound therapy.
Final Words
So, if you are suffering from tinnitus and have to live through the unbearable sounds you keep hearing, you should go for sound masking therapy. And for that you must choose the best hearing aids for this task, that can provide sound masking smoothly and without any problems.
Author Bio:
Mrs. Sarah Dawson is a technology enthusiast and is also a very passionate individual who loves to help people. She has been working in the hearing aid industry for several years. She really sees the power of these hearing aids in being able to transform the lives of people. It is for this reason that he shares her valuable experience with hearing technology and hearing aid devices in blog form.
