How Your Audiologist Can Provide Tinnitus Relief

If you’ve ever experienced the symptoms of tinnitus, you’ll know that is can cause a lot of pain and discomfort. Finding an effective way to relieve the symptoms is essential, and an audiologist is the only person that can help you discover the perfect solution for your tinnitus. 

Depending on the nature of your tinnitus, there are several ways that the audiologist can help you reduce and relieve the pain. Here are five of the best:

Clear blockages and underlying problems

Tinnitus is often a temporary issue caused by earwax and infections. If your tinnitus has come on suddenly or occurs intermittently in one ear, an examination may pinpoint these issues. Clearing the earwax blockage or treating the infections or perforated eardrum can provide instant relief. Better still, removing the source of temporary tinnitus can additionally prevent it from returning anytime in the near future. This is one of the first solutions the audiologist will aim to use.

Prescribe medication

Medication will not cure tinnitus, but it can certainly reduce the symptoms. Amitriptyline, nortriptyline and Xanax are three popular solutions for calming the symptoms of tinnitus. The audiologist can discuss these options, among others. Meanwhile, painkillers and other pain relief products may be prescribed to manage the short-term bursts of discomfort. In some cases, adjusting the medication dosages you currently take can be equally beneficial as it can prevent tinnitus-like side effects from surfacing.

Help you utilize sound therapy

Sound therapy can be a great way to retrain the brain, as can cognitive behavioral therapy and meditation. Essentially, tinnitus stems from the signals being sent to the brain. Therefore, learning to directly target and stimulate the brain so that it can block out the pain and impact of the tinnitus symptoms is very useful indeed. In many ways, this is about developing a coping mechanism to ensure that daily life isn’t completely disrupted by tinnitus – that’s the least you deserve. 

Provide noise-masking devices

The concept of masking or suppressing the internal noise is fairly simple to understand. The idea is to use external noise to distract your brain from the clicks and whistles of tinnitus. White noise devices can be used to play low-level sounds directly into the ears, which stops the buzzes from being noticed. Due to the fact that the white noise becomes background noise, this can enable you to concentrate on work or drift off to sleep with far greater efficiency. Without stopping symptoms, tinnitus becomes almost unnoticeable.

Prescribe hearing aids

In most cases, hearing loss will be one of the key contributing factors to tinnitus. Consequently, then, hearing aids are often used to relieve the pain by reducing the symptoms. Restored hearing supports the idea of masking the sounds. Likewise, the fact that hearing aids can prevent changes in air pressure levels can stop the most painful elements of tinnitus. When added to the fact you’ll be able to interact with people and your surroundings, the impact of tinnitus becomes far smaller.