Tinnitus is not new. But perhaps it’s new to you, like a noisy used car you can’t return. Usually, though not always, tinnitus presents as an incessant buzzing or ringing in the ears. Often, the sound is really overwhelming. Symptoms fluctuate considerably, but here’s the point: if tinnitus is bothering you, you may be searching for some new ways to control your symptoms.
In that, you’re in luck because while tinnitus doesn’t yet have a universal cure, there are a few new treatments that can help you manage symptoms. Your tongue is even involved in some of those therapies.
Most Recent Approaches to Tinnitus
Perhaps the newest tinnitus therapy to hit our radar does indeed offer quite a bit of promise, even if it seems a little strange initially. Both the ear and the tongue are stimulated with this device developed at the Trinity School of Medicine in Dublin. Bi-modal neurostimulation is the technical term for this technique.
According to the first tests of this device, the results were fairly striking. 12 weeks was about the duration that most people were treated. Over those 12 months, those same people noted a dramatic decrease in tinnitus symptoms. But until the testing phase is completed it won’t be extensively available.
How Can I Get Tinnitus Relief Now?
Unfortunately, it will most likely be quite some time before novel solutions like this are broadly accessible. So maybe you’re wondering what you can do now to help manage your tinnitus.
Fortunately, there are some newer tinnitus therapy devices on the market today. And the most common way to manage your tinnitus is a modern hearing aid.
Here’s the way it works:
Your hearing aid can give you something else to listen to. One reason why tinnitus is more noticeable as your hearing wanes is that the stays loud while everything else gets quieter. A hearing aid can boost the volume on the rest of the audio spectrum. By boosting the volume of outside sounds, your tinnitus sounds will often vanish into the background.
There is a noise masking device similar to a modern hearing aid. A masking device might be the answer if your hearing loss is minor. A hearing aid has a comparable appearance to a masking device. And masking technology can be incorporated into modern hearing aids. This technology will produce sounds designed to mask your tinnitus symptoms. Whatever sound will best mask the ringing in your ears will be used, from white noise to a specific tone.
This is, obviously, only the beginning. We can demonstrate devices that work best with tinnitus. Contact us.
