Tinnitus

Do you have Tinnitus?

Have you ever left a nightclub or a concert and been aware of a ringing, whistling or hissing noise in your ears?

Perhaps you are aware of sounds in your ears or your head when the world around you is quiet, like when you are trying to fall asleep? If so, you have experienced Tinnitus. At any one time around 10% of the population experience tinnitus and it can be experienced at any age.

The experience of Tinnitus varies from quiet background noise to quite disturbingly loud noise. It can be intermittent or continuous, temporary or permanent, easy to ignore or quite distressing.  Most patients with tinnitus experience an acute phase of distress when the tinnitus is first detected, followed by an improvement over time.  For a small number of patients, the distress is ongoing, and more specialist support can be helpful.

What causes Tinnitus?

Tinnitus is a noise generated in our own auditory pathways, and despite its commonality, the cause of tinnitus is not completely understood.

What is clear is that it often occurs following exposure to loud noise, including music.  If you suffer with tinnitus, protecting yourself against any exacerbation is recommended.

We also know that most people who experience hearing loss also experience tinnitus. This lends some weight to theory that the damage that has occurred in the inner ear to cause the hearing loss may also be the root cause of the tinnitus.

There is currently no consensus to the exact cause of tinnitus, which might explain why there is no formal “cure “so far. However, at True Hearing, we have seen the impact of tinnitus drastically reduced for those who have sought our help, and we can guide you through the myriad of options that can be explored to manage tinnitus.

Hearing Aids and Tinnitus

It is well known that most people with hearing loss also report experiencing tinnitus.  While the exact correlation of these two conditions is not fully understood, the treatment options have been shown to successfully overlap.

If you have a permanent hearing loss, hearing aids are best placed to maximise your hearing potential.  Hearing aids are designed to amplify ambient sounds, appropriate to your hearing loss, and it is this amplification that can provide the key to also supporting tinnitus management.

For many tinnitus sufferers, being able to “mask” out the internal tinnitus sounds provides the necessary relief from their tinnitus, and if a hearing loss is also present, then this can be achieved with the use of hearing aids.

For some people, just wearing the hearing aids on the appropriate settings for their hearing loss provides sufficient masking of the tinnitus, such that it is not perceived at all during hearing aid use.

If this is not sufficient, there are additional technology options built into many hearing aids today that provide a dedicated tinnitus masker or masking program within the hearing aid settings.

Studies have shown that for some patients with hearing loss, the experience of relief from tinnitus while wearing hearing aids continues even after the devices are taken off for the day.