Tinnitus or Ringing in the Ears: Here Are 6 Ways to Reduce It

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If you are someone who experienced tinnitus or a ringing in your ears, then it can impact your whole life. Conversation may be more difficult, relaxing or trying to sleep. 

Tinnitus impacts your life, and it could make you feel quite low and perhaps isolated. However, there is some good news. There are a number of things that you can do to help to reduce tinnitus or ringing in your ears and help you to be able to live life to the fullest. Here are some of the things that you can try.

Get a new hearing aid 

If you are someone who wears a hearing aid for hearing loss, then getting a new hearing aid can be a good way to help to reduce how much tinnitus is experienced. There isn’t a real known cause for tinnitus, but many do believe that it could be down to the lack of stimulation of the processing center of the brain. 

Having regular sounds helps your brain, and when there is nothing, when a hearing aid is either needed or needs to be repaired, then tinnitus can be experienced. That is why hearing aids can make such a difference to be able to reduce tinnitus. 

So, if you experience hearing loss, as well as tinnitus, then hearing aids are really important tool to help and stop things from getting worse, so speaking to an audiologist is a must.

Behavioral techniques

There are some behavioral techniques that don't deal with tinnitus directly. However, they can help you deal with the ringing in your ears. Tinnitus, for some people, can lead to a lot of anxiety and even depression, especially in social situations, which is where the behavioral techniques can come into play. 

Techniques like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an example of something that you could try, as it can help with how you perceive tinnitus. Something like CBT can help you to deal with tinnitus and could help you to accept it as part of your life.

Tinnitus retraining therapy

Tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT) is a form of treatment that can work with other things that you do. Therapy like this can help you to process what you are hearing and help you to essentially ignore those sounds. It can be something that is successful in helping you to cope. It can be something to use when other things that you’d do wouldn’t be possible to do. 

Use mindfulness and stress reduction

Mindfulness can help with chronic tinnitus or ringing in your ears. The idea with mindfulness is that it can help to redirect the cognitive processes that help you to interact with the ringing in your ears more healthily. 

A lot of mindfulness and stress reduction courses are all about learning how to divert attention away from the tinnitus and focus on other things in your life. Mindfulness can help you to view your experience as something that is much more positive, and it can help your outlook on it all improve. 

Customized sound machines

Sound machines can work in a quite similar way to some hearing devices and their tinnitus features. They can make regular sounds that help to cover up some of the noise that is generated by the ear. A lot of sound machines can only be used every now and again, as they are worn for only a short period of time until you find a sound that helps you. 

There is some research that suggests that people who use sound machines and find a sound that helps them, it can help with how much ringing in the ears is experienced and that this can work better than a lot of other sound and noise alternatives. 

External sound masking

Tinnitus is something that may impact your whole life, but external masking sound devices are sat close by to you, can help as they play a variety of different noises. This may be white noise, sounds from nature and other soothing or calming sounds. When someone experiences tinnitus or ringing in their ears, then listening to different sounds that are a little louder than the ringing in your ears can be a good relief.

If you are someone who experiences these issues with your hearing, then you can learn more about Gavin Audiology and Hearing Aids by giving us a call at (914) 610-3440. We look forward to hearing from you and seeing how we can help.