Tinnitus has been around for a long time. But perhaps it’s new to you, like a noisy used car you can’t return. A relentless ringing or buzzing is usually how tinnitus manifests but not always. The sound can be, at times, really loud. Regardless of how tinnitus is experienced by you, this point is probably true: if tinnitus is troubling you, you may be looking for some new ways to control your symptoms.
In that, you’re lucky because while tinnitus doesn’t yet have a universal cure, there are a few new treatments that can help you deal with symptoms. Your tongue is even involved in some of those treatments.
Most Recent Approaches to Tinnitus
Possibly the most novel tinnitus treatment that we’ve seen appears to offer a lot of promise, even if it seems a little strange at first. Both the tongue and the ear are stimulated with this device designed at the Trinity School of Medicine in Dublin. Bi-modal neurostimulation is the technical term for this approach.
Based on the first tests of this device, the results were pretty optimistic. Most individuals received treatments for twelve weeks or so. Those same people noticed a significant decrease in their tinnitus symptoms, and the results lasted up to twelve months. But until the testing phase is completed it won’t be extensively available.
What Can I do Now to Get Tinnitus Relief?
Of course, it takes a while for devices to go from research and development to patient accessibility. So how can you manage your tinnitus right now?
There are, fortunately, some tinnitus management technology that has recently come onto the market. And one of the best new ways to manage tinnitus is something you’ve probably already heard of: your hearing aid.
Here’s how it works:
Your hearing aid can provide you with something else to listen to. When you start to lose your hearing, external get quieter and that can make the internal sounds of tinnitus get louder. A hearing aid can boost the volume on the rest of the audio spectrum. By increasing the volume of external sounds, your tinnitus sounds will often fade into the background.
There is a sound masking device comparable to a modern hearing aid. A masking device might be the way to go if your hearing loss is mild. A masking device basically looks like a hearing aid. And masking technology can be combined with modern hearing aids. Your tinnitus symptoms can be masked by sounds produced by this kind of technology. In some cases this will be a tone, in other cases, it may be some white noise. Whatever is going to best hide the humming in your ears.
This is, obviously, only the beginning. We can show you devices that work best with tinnitus. Contact us.