Hearing loss can have a significant impact on your life, from your work to your relationships to your emotional well-being. You may have considered getting a hearing aid, but you're worried about how it looks or if it will actually help. Fortunately, hearing aids can provide dramatic relief for tinnitus and can improve your hearing by amplifying sounds you have had difficulty hearing. A hearing aid works by increasing sound vibrations that enter the ear.
The surviving healthy hair cells in the inner ear detect the largest vibrations and convert them into neural signals that are sent to the brain. The more severe the hearing loss, the more amplification a hearing aid needs to make up the difference. However, there are practical limits to the amount of amplification a hearing aid can provide. In addition, if the inner ear is too damaged, even large vibrations will not be converted into neural signals.
In this case, a hearing aid would be ineffective. Hearing aids are not designed to restore normal hearing, but they can improve it by amplifying sounds you have had trouble hearing. In most cases, they are prescribed for people who have a type of hearing loss known as sensorineural, which means that some of the tiny hair cells in the inner ear are damaged. The surviving healthy hair cells pick up the sound emitted by the hearing aid and send it as neural signals to the brain through the auditory nerve.
Undiagnosed hearing loss is the leading cause of tinnitus, so it's only natural that hearing aids can be used to treat tinnitus. When the brain is busy processing signals that do exist in the environment, it is too busy to create phantom or ghost signals we call tinnitus. The results of a recent survey show that 60 percent of tinnitus patients experience some relief from wearing hearing aids and approximately 22 percent found significant relief.Hearing aids come in two main types: behind-the-ear (BTE) and in-the-ear (ITE). BTE hearing aids consist of a hard plastic sleeve that fits behind the ear and attaches to a plastic mold that fits inside the outer ear.
ITE hearing aids are smaller and fit directly into the ear canal. Just because one type of hearing aid is more expensive than another does not necessarily mean that it is better suited to your needs.In addition, some people may prefer an open hearing aid because their perception of their voice does not sound “stuffy”. Hearing aid manufacturers must request FDA approval for their products before selling them to users. This greatly reduces the risk of hearing aids carrying any safety hazards, such as being too loud or emitting dangerous frequencies.You may want to check out services offered for smartphones that allow you to answer calls and hear from both ears as if it were a headset.
Directional microphones hold great promise for making it easier for people to hear a single conversation, even when they are surrounded by other noises and voices.Hearing aids have health benefits such as reducing loneliness, delaying the onset of dementia, and improving quality of life and sense of security. Its effectiveness increases when users consult an audiologist to get the best type of hearing aid for their lifestyle and when they learn to use technology correctly.If you're considering getting a hearing aid, don't let worries about how it looks or if it will actually help stop you from taking action. Hearing aids can provide dramatic relief for tinnitus and can improve your hearing by amplifying sounds you have had difficulty hearing.
