Around one out of every seven people are estimated to deal with tinnitus. That puts the total number in the millions. That’s… a lot of people, both in absolute terms and in relation to the general population, and in a few countries, the percentage of the population who experience tinnitus is even more alarming.
True, tinnitus isn’t always recurring. But if you’re dealing with chronic tinnitus symptoms it becomes imperative to find a treatment as soon as you can. Fortunately, there is a treatment that has proven to be really effective: hearing aids.
There are some links between hearing loss and tinnitus but they are actually distinct conditions. you can have hearing loss without tinnitus or tinnitus without hearing loss. But the two conditions occur together frequently enough that hearing aids have become a practical solution, treating hearing loss and stopping tinnitus all at once.
How Hearing Aids Can Help Tinnitus
According to one survey, 60% of people who suffer from tinnitus reported some measure of relief when they started using hearing aids. Roughly 22% of everyone surveyed went so far as to report significant relief. Despite this, hearing aids are actually designed to manage hearing loss not specifically tinnitus. Association appears to be the main reason for this benefit. As such, hearing aids seem to be most practical if you have tinnitus and hearing loss.
Here’s how tinnitus symptoms can be reduced with hearing aids:
- External sounds are boosted: When you experience loss of hearing, the volume of the world (or, at least, certain frequencies of the world) can fall away and become quieter. The ringing in your ears, then, is a lot more noticeable. Hearing loss is not reducing the ringing so it becomes the loudest thing you hear. A hearing aid can enhance that ambient sound, helping to drown out the ringing or buzzing that was so forefront before. As you pay less and less attention to your tinnitus, it becomes less of an issue.
- It gets easier to engage in conversations: Increasing the volume of human speech is something modern hearing aids are particularly good at. This means having a conversation can be much easier once you’re routinely wearing your devices. You can keep up with the story Fred is telling at happy hour or listen to what Sally is excited about at work. The more you connect with others, the more social you are, the less you’ll detect your tinnitus. Socializing also helps reduce stress, which is related to tinnitus.
- Your brain is getting an auditory workout: Hearing loss has been confirmed to put stress on mental function. Tinnitus symptoms you might be experiencing can be decreased when the brain is in a healthy flexible condition and hearing aids can help keep it that way.
The Benefits of Modern Hearing Aids
Smart Technology is incorporated into modern hearing aids. To some degree, that’s because they feature the latest technologies and hearing assistance algorithms. But the effectiveness of modern hearing aids is attained in part because each device can be refined and calibrated on a patient-per-patient basis (sometimes, they recalibrate according to the amount of background noise).
Whatever your particular hearing levels are, customized hearing aids can easily be calibrated to them. The buzzing or humming is more likely to be successfully obscured if your hearing aid is dialed in to work best for you.
What is The Best Way to Get Rid of Tinnitus?
Your level of hearing loss will determine what’s right for you. There are still treatment solutions for your tinnitus even if you don’t have any hearing impairment. That could mean custom-created masking devices, cognitive-behavioral therapy, or medication.
But, if you’re one of the many people out there who happen to have both hearing impairment and tinnitus, a pair of hearing aids could 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.