Around one in seven people are estimated to suffer from tinnitus. That puts the overall number in the millions. That’s… a lot of people, both in absolute terms and in relation to the overall population, and in a few countries, the percentage of the population who experience tinnitus is even more startling.
True, tinnitus isn’t always recurring. But if you’re dealing with persistent tinnitus symptoms it becomes imperative to find a treatment as soon as possible. Fortunately, there is a treatment that has proven to be rather effective: hearing aids.
There are some links between tinnitus and hearing loss but they are in fact distinct conditions. you can have hearing loss without tinnitus or tinnitus without hearing loss. But both conditions coexist frequently enough that hearing aids have become a dependable solution, managing hearing loss and stopping tinnitus in one fell swoop.
How Hearing Aids Can Help Tinnitus
According to one study, 60% of individuals who suffer from tinnitus reported some amount of relief when they started using hearing aids. Approximately 22% of everyone surveyed reported significant relief. Despite this, hearing aids are actually designed to deal with 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 tinnitus symptoms can be reduced with hearing aids:
- Everything gets a little bit louder: When you have hearing loss, the volume of the world (or, at least, particular frequencies of the world) can fade away and become quieter. When that happens the ringing in your ears becomes much more obvious. It’s the loudest thing you hear because it is not impacted by your hearing loss. The buzzing or ringing that was so prominent will be obscured when your hearing aid boosts the external sound. As you pay less and less attention to your tinnitus, it becomes less of a problem.
- It becomes less difficult to have conversations: Amplifying human speech is something modern hearing aids are particularly good at. So once you’re wearing your hearing aids on a regular basis, having conversations gets a lot easier. You will be more involved with your co-worker’s story about their children and better able to participate with your spouse about how their day went. The more you interact with others, the more social you are, the less you’ll detect your tinnitus. In some cases, tinnitus is worsened by stress so being able to socialize can helps in this way too.
- Your brain is getting an auditory workout: When you experience hearing loss, those regions of your brain charged with interpreting sounds can often suffer from fatigue, stress, or atrophy. Wearing a hearing aid can keep the audio regions of your brain limber and healthy, which in turn can help minimize some tinnitus symptoms you may be experiencing.
The Benefits of Modern Hearing Aids
Modern hearing aids are intelligent. They come with cutting edge hearing assistance algorithms and the newest technology. But it’s the ability to customize a hearing aid to the specific user’s needs that makes modern hearing aids so effective (they can even detect the level of background noise and automatically adjust accordingly).
Whatever your specific hearing levels are, customized hearing aids can effortlessly be calibrated to them. The buzzing or humming is more likely to be effectively hidden if your hearing aid is dialed in to work best for you.
The Best Way to Stop Tinnitus
This will most likely depend on your degree of hearing loss. There are still treatment options for your tinnitus even if you don’t have any hearing loss. Medication, cognitive behavioral therapy, or a custom masking device are some possible options.
However, if you’re one of the many individuals out there who happen to have both hearing impairment and tinnitus, a set of hearing aids could be able to do the old two-birds-one-stone thing. Treating your hearing impairment with a good pair of hearing aids can often stop tinnitus from making your life difficult.