Most estimates put the amount of individuals impacted by tinnitus in the millions or around one out of every seven people. That’s… a lot of people, both in absolute terms and relative to the overall population, and in a few countries, the amount of the population who experience tinnitus is even more startling.
Sometimes tinnitus is temporary. But in those situations where buzzing, ringing, or humming in your ears is hard to shake, finding a reliable treatment can very quickly become a priority. Luckily, there is a remedy that has proven to be really effective: hearing aids.
Tinnitus and hearing loss are connected but distinct conditions. It’s possible to experience tinnitus with average hearing or to have hearing loss without also developing tinnitus. But the two conditions coexist frequently enough that hearing aids have become a dependable solution, treating hearing loss and ending tinnitus all at once.
How Can Tinnitus be Helped by Hearing Aids?
According to one study, 60% of people who suffer from tinnitus reported some measure of relief when they started using hearing aids. For 22% of those people, the relief was considerable. But, hearing aids are not made specifically to treat tinnitus. The benefits seem to come by association. 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 get rid of tinnitus symptoms:
- Everything gets a little bit louder: When you have loss of hearing, the volume of the outside world (or, at least, specific wavelengths of the world) can fall away and become more silent. When that occurs the ringing in your ears becomes much more obvious. It’s the loudest thing you’re hearing because it is not impacted by your hearing loss. The buzzing or ringing that was so obvious will be obscured when your hearing aid boosts the external sound. As you tune out your tinnitus, it becomes less of an issue.
- Conversations become easier: Increasing the volume of human speech is something modern hearing aids are particularly good at. So once you’re using your hearing aids on a regular basis, having conversations becomes much easier. You can follow the story Fred is telling at the restaurant or listen to what Sally is excited about at work. When you have a healthy interactive social life tinnitus can appear to disappear into the background. Sometimes, tinnitus is intensified by stress so being able to socialize can helps in this way too.
- The increased audio stimulation is keeping your brain fit: When you have hearing loss, those regions of your brain charged with interpreting sounds can often suffer from stress, fatigue, or atrophy. Wearing a hearing aid can keep the audio regions of your brain flexible and healthy, which in turn can help minimize certain tinnitus symptoms you may be experiencing.
The Perks of Modern Hearing Aids
Smart Technology is built into modern hearing aids. They include cutting edge hearing assistance algorithms and the latest technology. But it’s the ability to personalize a hearing aid to the distinct user’s needs that makes modern hearing aids so effective (they can even sense the level of background noise and automatically adjust accordingly).
Customizing hearing aids means that the sensitivity and output signals can easily be adjusted to the specific hearing levels you may have. The humming or buzzing is more likely to be successfully obscured if your hearing aid is dialed in to work best for you.
The Best Way to Get Rid of Tinnitus
Your degree of hearing impairment will determine what’s right for you. There are still treatment solutions for your tinnitus even if you don’t have any hearing impairment. Cognitive behavioral therapy, a custom masking device, or medication are some possible solutions.
However, if you’re one of the many people out there who happen to have both hearing impairment and tinnitus, a pair of hearing aids may be able to do the old two-birds-one-stone thing. Stop tinnitus from making your life miserable by managing your hearing loss with a good set of hearing aids.