Around one out of every seven people are estimated to deal with tinnitus. That puts the overall number in the millions. That’s… a lot of people, both in actual terms and relative to the overall population, and in a few countries, the amount of the population who experience tinnitus is even more alarming.
True, tinnitus isn’t always recurring. But if you’re coping with persistent tinnitus symptoms it becomes crucial to find a treatment as soon as you can. Luckily, there is a treatment that has proven to be really effective: hearing aids.
Tinnitus and hearing loss are connected but separate conditions. It’s possible to have tinnitus with normal hearing or to have hearing loss without also developing tinnitus. But the two conditions occur together frequently enough that hearing aids have become a dependable solution, managing hearing loss and stopping tinnitus in one fell swoop.
How Can Tinnitus be Helped by Hearing Aids?
According to one survey, 60% of individuals with tinnitus reported some measure of relief when they started using hearing aids. Roughly 22% of those surveyed reported significant relief. In spite of this, hearing aids are actually made to deal with hearing loss not specifically tinnitus. The benefits seem to come by association. As such, hearing aids appear to be most practical if you have tinnitus and hearing loss.
Here’s how hearing aids can help stop tinnitus symptoms:
- Outside sounds are enhanced: When you have hearing loss, the volume of the world (or, at least, particular wavelengths of the world) can fade away and become more silent. The ringing in your ears, in that situation, is a lot more obvious. It’s the loudest thing you hear because it is not decreased by your hearing loss. A hearing aid can boost that ambient sound, helping to drown out the buzzing or ringing that was so forefront before. As you pay less and less attention to your tinnitus, it becomes less of an issue.
- Conversations become less difficult: Increasing the volume of human speech is something contemporary hearing aids are particularly good at. So once you’re wearing your hearing aids regularly, 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 socialize with other people, the more social you are, the less you’ll detect your tinnitus. Socializing also helps decrease stress, which is linked to tinnitus.
- Your brain is getting an auditory workout: Hearing loss has been confirmed to put a strain on mental function. Wearing a hearing aid can keep the audio regions of your brain flexible and healthy, which in turn can help reduce some tinnitus symptoms you might be experiencing.
Modern Hearing Aids Come With Numerous Advantages
Modern hearing aids are intelligent. They come with innovative hearing assistance algorithms and the latest technology. But it’s the ability to personalize a hearing aid to the specific user’s requirements that makes modern hearing aids so effective (sometimes, they recalibrate according to the level of background noise).
Personalizing hearing aids means that the sensitivity and output signals can effortlessly be calibrated to the specific hearing levels you might have. The buzzing or humming is more likely to be successfully hidden if your hearing aid is dialed in to work best for you.
What is The Best Way to End Tinnitus?
Your level 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 loss. That could mean custom-made masking devices, medication, or cognitive behavioral therapy.
But, if you’re one of the many individuals out there who happen to have both hearing loss and tinnitus, a pair of hearing aids might be able to do the old two-birds-one-stone thing. Stop tinnitus from making your life difficult by managing your hearing loss with a good set of hearing aids.