It’s one of the more troublesome issues you can have with your hearing health. Its causes aren’t easy to find, and it has widespread effects that can dramatically decrease your quality of life. Tinnitus is an issue many people face, described as the experience of sounds that have no real source. It can be a constant trouble for years, and in most cases, there isn’t a cure that will put a full stop to it. However, there are treatments that can help you manage it, drown it out, and learn to live with it. Here are three of the most effective.

Hearing aids

A hearing health professional should be the first port of call when you realize that you have tinnitus. They can carry out a range of tests that help you find the exact pitch and tone that matches your tinnitus. From there, a hearing aid has all kinds of features that can help you better manage it. For instance, hearing aids can amplify external sound if tinnitus is so loud that is causing hearing difficulties. But they can even come with tinnitus therapy options, producing a sound to match the pitch, frequency, and tone of tinnitus to cancel it out so that it becomes less noticeable.

Therapy

Another common option is tinnitus retraining therapy. Besides the noise itself, tinnitus can go on to cause several problems with your mood and your sleep schedule. The cognitive therapy side of TRT is often used in conjunction with tinnitus masking devices, like a hearing aid or white noise machine. So, not only can you learn to drown out your tinnitus and become less aware of it from day-to-day, but it can also be important to find ways of managing your stress levels. There’s significant evidence that stress can even cause or exacerbate tinnitus, so finding a way to take care of it can be crucial to treating the actual symptom.

White-noise machines

In addition to hearing aids and therapy, white-noise machines also help provide relief for tinnitus. These machines provide a way to block out the noise and are typically used at nighttime for relief. Individuals may use these during work as well, to help focus attention away from the tinnitus sounds. These are generally recommended for individuals with mild cases of tinnitus. If you have tinnitus, visiting your hearing care provider should be your first course of action. It can take time to find the exact treatment that works for you; so the sooner you start looking, the better. In some cases, such as a tooth abscess or earwax buildup, there may be a permanent solution for your tinnitus. But in most cases, you need to find the treatment that manages the symptom.