Tinnitus is one of the most common hearing problems people experience, but it is often ignored for many years. The search for the best treatments for tinnitus has sparked a great debate among audiologists, otolaryngologists and others. Hearing aids have been reported to relieve tinnitus in up to 60% of participants, study finds. "Wearing hearing aids" often helps reduce tinnitus symptoms, according to Ramachandran.
Hearing aids can increase the volume of external noise to the point of covering (masking) the sound of tinnitus, making it more difficult to consciously perceive and helping the brain to focus on external and environmental noises. This masking effect is particularly strong for patients who have hearing loss in the same frequency range as tinnitus. Unfortunately, only a small fraction of people with hearing loss will receive long-lasting relief from tinnitus. It's very important to choose an audiologist who offers personalized, evidence-based treatments.
Hearing aids are a great starting point for people who suffer from tinnitus and also have hearing loss. Usually these are people who have difficulty hearing external sounds at a desirable volume and expect those sounds to be amplified. Hearing aids help many people with tinnitus, but they don't work for everyone. When combined with tinnitus retraining therapy and other strategies, a comprehensive treatment plan can produce highly desirable results.
An audiologist will recommend a combination of treatments for tinnitus that may include sound therapy, sound maskers, counseling, medications, and others. Sound therapy helps to "rehabilitate your hearing system" and change the way you hear the world around you. It often includes several exercises that can help retrain the brain and begin to gradually reduce the intensity of tinnitus. While the relief it provides is not always immediate, most patients report positive progress after a few months.
It's also important to note that while the two are only sometimes used together, sound therapy and hearing aids are not mutually exclusive. Maskers can be used in the short term to cover up the problem of tinnitus, but are NOT effective in providing long-term benefits. For a long-term solution, the brain must "see tinnitus" to reclassify it as neutral and desensitize to its presence and impact.A hearing aid can help relieve tinnitus if you have hearing loss. An audiologist can help you find and use the hearing aid that best fits your needs.
Automatically adjust to a variety of listening environments, including crowded rooms and windy conditions. The success of hearing aids in treating tinnitus depends on how well you can get background sounds to mix with tinnitus.In this roundup, we'll go over some of the best tinnitus hearing aids and explain how they work. Like most tinnitus treatments, hearing aids may work best when combined with a structured tinnitus education program and other strategies.
