While it’s true that there is at this time no scientifically-confirmed way to cure tinnitus, researchers are hard at work to uncover one. In the meantime, several tinnitus therapy options are available that can grant substantial relief.
Look at it in this way. When you have a headache, you take Tylenol regardless of the fact that it doesn’t “cure” your headache. Pain relievers simply make the pain diminish into the background to ensure that it doesn’t interfere with your day. In the same way, tinnitus therapy can help minimize the intensity of symptoms so that your tinnitus has little influence on your daily schedule.
Seeing that every person reacts to tinnitus in a different way, there’s no one-size-fits-all treatment. You’ll need to work with your provider to uncover the approach that is ideally suited for for you.
Here are some of those options.
Tinnitus Treatment Options
If you suffer from tinnitus, you’ll want to examine the following treatment options with your hearing care or healthcare provider.
Treatment of the underlying condition
While the majority of cases of tinnitus are not curable—and result from hearing loss or other non-reversible injury—certain cases are the consequence of an underlying physical ailment. You’ll want to rule these out prior to pursuing other treatment options.
Possible physical causes of tinnitus include jaw joint problems (temporomandibular joint, or TMJ dysfunction), too much earwax or any other blockages in the ear canal, head and neck injuries, and reactions to specific medications.
General Well-Being
The intensity of tinnitus symptoms can vary depending on overall health. Taking actions to enhance general well-being is, therefore, something tinnitus patients can get started on immediately to lessen the severity of symptoms.
Every individual is different, and what works out for someone else may not work for you. The idea is to experiment with different activities to discover what is most effective.
Strategies that have demonstrated promise include instituting a healthy diet, getting lots of physical exercise, meditating, and engaging in activities like bicycling, which can mask the sounds of tinnitus.
Hearing Aids
Tinnitus is often connected to hearing loss and hearing injury. In reaction to diminished stimulation from outside sound, the brain goes through maladaptive changes that trigger the perception of tinnitus.
By strengthening the amount of environmental sound, hearing aids can help mask the tinnitus, making the sounds of tinnitus less detectable. Hearing aids in addition supply elevated sound stimulation to the brain, which is considered to be neurologically beneficial.
Sound Therapy
Sound therapy is simply the delivery of sound in the form of white noise, pink noise, or nature sounds to minimize the perceived burden or severity of tinnitus.
Sound therapy functions by masking the tinnitus and additionally by training the brain to recategorize the sounds of tinnitus as insignificant. This twofold effect can decrease the short and long-term severity of tinnitus.
Sound therapy can be supplied through special tabletop gadgets, but also through portable media products and even through hearing aids. Medical-quality sound therapy employs custom sounds that match the pitch of the individual’s tinnitus for optimal outcomes.
Behavioral Therapies
Recall that tinnitus is the sense of sound in the brain when no external sound is present. The affliction is, therefore, very subjective, and each person reacts a unique way.
In fact, whether or not the individual perceives tinnitus as debilitating or minor is predominantly as a consequence of emotional tendencies and not to the volume or pitch of the tinnitus. That’s why cognitive/behavioral solutions to tinnitus therapy have been shown to be very effective.
Several therapies exist, including Mindfulness-Based-Stress-Reduction (MBSR) and Tinnitus-Retraining-Therapy (TRT), which blends cognitive-behavioral-therapy with sound therapy.
Drug Therapy
Although there are no current FDA-approved medications for tinnitus, antianxiety and antidepressant prescriptions are frequently used to treat the behavioral responses to tinnitus. These medications do not appear to affect tinnitus itself, but may offer much-needed relief if thought to be necessary by your doctor.
Experimental Therapies
The search for a tinnitus cure is on-going. Many experimental therapies are in development or evaluation and new techniques become available every year. If your tinnitus is significant, and you’ve achieved little benefit from existing therapies, you may be a candidate for one of these advanced treatment options.
Visit the Experimental Therapies page at the American Tinnitus Association website for additional information.
Obtain Relief For Your Tinnitus
Tinnitus is currently being aggressively researched, with brand new findings and potential treatment options introduced every year. Even now, you can find a variety of promising treatments that, while not supplying a cure, can provide significant relief. You owe it to yourself to take a look at these options, stay positive and persistent in your tinnitus care, and work together with your provider to fine-tune your treatment plan for the greatest results.