Tinnitus Management Options

Tinnitus is characterized as a condition that causes ringing, clicking or buzzing sensation in your ears. It’s something that an audiologist will treat every day, and you can have permanent tinnitus or temporary tinnitus.

Plenty of things can cause this condition, and it’s not always possible to cure. Temporary tinnitus will eventually go away, but the permanent version won’t. Having said that, there are treatment options to help you manage the symptoms of tinnitus. By trying these, you’re able to reduce the effect and possibly even mask the constant ringing in your ears.

Below, you’ll see the best and most popular management options for tinnitus:

Lifestyle modification

First things first, you should look at changing your lifestyle. Tinnitus can be triggered or made worse by multiple things. The most obvious is loud noises. If you keep exposing your ears to loud noises, then your tinnitus will just get worse and worse. Caffeine is also said to exacerbate your symptoms, as does alcohol.

So, modify your lifestyle to help calm your symptoms. Turn the volume down on your TV and car radio, stop listening to music at high volumes through headphones, limit your daily caffeine intake, and cut down on alcohol. Now, you prevent your tinnitus from being triggered or getting worse than it already is.

Hearing aids

A high percentage of people with tinnitus will also have hearing loss. Often, the ringing sensation is a by-product of your hearing loss. So, hearing aids can help manage the situation. By improving your ability to hear, you negate the feeling of tinnitus. You can hear more sounds, so your mind doesn’t focus on the persistent ringing in your ears.

Furthermore, you can get specific hearing aids with features for tinnitus as well. Sometimes, these devices can play soothing noises to help you relax and forget about your tinnitus. Or, they may have features that play a sound at a specific pitch to mask your tinnitus. Either way, hearing aids are a very effective treatment – particularly if you have hearing loss as well as tinnitus.

To find the most suitable hearing, make sure you book an appointment with an audiologist. As hearing aid experts, they’ll help you decide which features are most important for your specific issue.

Sound machines

If you don’t have hearing loss, then sound machines are a brilliant treatment option for you. Essentially, you have a device that plays different background noises. This includes white noise, pink noise, the sounds of waves crashing against the sea, the sound of rain falling, and so on. The idea is to use these sounds to help you relax and mask your tinnitus symptoms. They get your brain to focus on the other noises rather than the ringing or clicking sensations.

You can get sound machines that look like portable speakers, and you get ones with earbuds that you can wear. It will benefit you to talk to an audiologist before you buy any sounds machines as they can help you choose the best one for your tinnitus. This treatment is ideal for temporary tinnitus as it gently calms your symptoms before they eventually fade away.

Tinnitus retraining therapy

Tinnitus retraining therapy exists to give you a more permanent solution to this problem. Part of the process involves wearing devices or listening to sound machines that play different tones and noises. It’s the same concept as before; the noises mask the tinnitus and help you focus on other things.

However, tinnitus retraining therapy also involves counseling and cognitive behavioral therapy sessions too. The idea of these sessions is to train your brain to stop thinking about tinnitus. Contrary to what it feels like, tinnitus isn’t actually a noise that exists in the outside world. It’s entirely in your head, which means you can try and train yourself to ignore it or get used to it. The main goal of tinnitus retraining therapy is to reach a place where you no longer care about your tinnitus because you don’t think about it, or it just becomes a natural part of your life.

Learn more about tinnitus management options

These four options will help treat and manage your tinnitus. However, it’s important to remember that permanent tinnitus can never be fully cured. It will always exist, but with the right management, you can prevent it from being a daily problem. 

Here at Baker Audiology & Hearing Aids, we offer extensive tinnitus treatment for those in need. An experienced audiologist will test your ears and figure out the best treatment option for you. If you want to learn more about this service and how we manage tinnitus, then please give us a call at (605) 610-3466.