Tinnitus Patients: Why Do They Need Hearing Aids?

There are more than 50 million Americans who suffer from tinnitus. There’s usually a ringing sound in your ears that makes it hard to hear.

Hearing aids might be needed for some people with tinnitus. Here’s what you need to know about tinnitus and how hearing aids can help. Tinnitus: What Is It? Hearing ringing, honking, buzzing, hissing, roaring, or other sounds in one or both ears is tinnitus.

Subjective tinnitus happens when the sounds come from inside your own body, so no one else can hear them. It could come and go, or you might hear it all the time if you have tinnitus.

There are some cases of tinnitus that make it hard to concentrate or hear other sounds. Older adults are more likely to have tinnitus. Tinnitus affects 15% to 20% of people. Tinnitus is more often a symptom than a disease.

Tinnitus can be caused by: Damaged ears or aging can cause hearing loss Infections in the ears Ear wax buildup or blocked ear canals Head or neck injuries.

Especially for people with hearing loss, hearing aids can be a good way to manage tinnitus, since they can mask the ringing sounds of tinnitus by amplifying external noises, allowing the brain to focus on other sounds instead of the tinnitus.

By providing more auditory stimulation, they can reduce the annoyance of tinnitus. You can reduce tinnitus annoyance with amplification.

Per My Own Experience With My Tinnitus Patients:

Clinically and statistically, hearing aids reduce THI after six months. There’s a significant improvement in tinnitus severity with a reduction in THI and VAS. • After using HA for six months, there was a statistically significant reduction in minimal masking levels, and there was an inverse correlation with tinnitus duration. Tinnitus improvement depends on THI, HHIA, VAS for tinnitus annoyance, and MMLs.

Stimulation of the auditory system as external noise gets louder; the brain gets more auditory stimulation. It might be good to stimulate the brain’s auditory pathways with soft background sounds.

Communication is improved by boosting the external volume; hearing aids make it easier to hear conversations and sounds around you.

The Result Is Less Frustration And Social Isolation For Patients.

Here are two simple visual representations of tinnitus and hearing loss to help you understand how hearing aids help.

Think of the cricket as tinnitus, and the background image as background noise. In tinnitus patients, hearing aids provide two benefits: they make them less aware of the tinnitus, and they improve communication by reducing the annoying sense that sounds and voices are masked by the tinnitus.

As a result of hearing loss, we are more aware of tinnitus, and deprivation of input may change the function of auditory pathways. Depriving yourself of auditory input often causes tinnitus.

External sounds can activate the auditory nervous system enough to reduce tinnitus perception with hearing aid amplification, and it may elicit neural plasticity that can reprogram the auditory nervous system and therefore alleviate tinnitus by restoring neural function for a long time.

You should wear hearing aids in both ears, use an open ear aid with the widest amplification band, and disable noisereducing controls. It might be better to use a combination device in some cases. In order to get good results, you need not just devices, but also counseling and customization to make them fit your needs. Although the hearing aid is only one part of therapy, it has to become second nature to the patient.

To find out if your tinnitus is affecting your life, answer the THI https://ata.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Tinnitus_ Handicap_Inventory.pdf question and find an audiologist nearby.