Hearing Aids and Tinnitus?

[Georgia]

I wear hearing aids due to a hearing loss, and I have been wondering for a while why people say they are so good at masking tinnitus when honestly if I am in a quiet room I can still here tinnitus I suppose it will be different for everyone but in theory why would people with just tinnitus wear hearing aids because my audiologists tell me that people with regular hearing would damage their own hearing if they wore them, I get they say its good to wear them it will give you more to listen too not just t, but actually don't they just make it unnecessarily noisy making your ears more stressed out? This has always confused me any thoughts guys?

 

[Martin69]

@Georgia
Hearing aids make sense if you have hearing loss in lower frequencies AND your T is in low frequencies.
So if your T is for example at 4 kHz and you have hearing loss there, a hearing aid gives you more input in this frequency.

They also gave me hearing aids, but my audiologist finally said, they make no sense. Because I have no hearing loss in speech area (up to 6 kHz) and my T is ultra-high (15 kHz or higher). Nothing can mask my T only crickets partly.

 

[Georgia]

Its always confused me because I always thought that hearing aids would just make it more noisy for people who don't have a hearing loss only T and when its more noisy that makes T worse. I technically have to wear them not for T but for a hearing loss and I face the problem of what should I choose to hear more or to hear less but I guess 'protect' my hearing more of course ENTs and audiologists can't fathom why my ears feel vulnerable to noise and why I wonder why I wear hearing aids not ear plugs I know they say you need to try and replicate normal hearing and to hear how everyone else hears because my hearing is 'distorted' but still my ears commonly hurt and never exactly feel normal so I feel like I should preserve my hearing. Do you have any advice?

 

[Martin69]

Its always confused me because I always thought that hearing aids would just make it more noisy for people who don't have a hearing loss only T and when its more noisy that makes T worse. I technically have to wear them not for T but for a hearing loss and I face the problem of what should I choose to hear more or to hear less but I guess 'protect' my hearing more of course ENTs and audiologists can't fathom why my ears feel vulnerable to noise and why I wonder why I wear hearing aids not ear plugs I know they say you need to try and replicate normal hearing and to hear how everyone else hears because my hearing is 'distorted' but still my ears commonly hurt and never exactly feel normal so I feel like I should preserve my hearing. Do you have any advice?

Hi Georgia.
You seem to mean if your T reacts on noise (reactive T), why to make sounds from outside louder?
That's a good question.
I don't know if I can answer this since mine is not reactive. Maybe others can comment.

My opinion is that if your T reacts on outside noise, I would not amplify them with hearing aids, or maybe only a little bit. I would ask Dr. Nagler in doctors corner this. He probably has a good answer.

 

[Sleaford Mod]

My opinion is that if your T reacts on outside noise, I would not amplify them with hearing aids, or maybe only a little bit.

I have reactive tinnitus and wear bilateral hearing aids outside as well as in. I'm rather prudent about this and avoid doing so in the presence of very loud noise. But I simply accept it if the tinnitus temporarily spikes as - in my case - it eventually goes back down again.

For a long time I was actually scared of doing anything outside that might increase the tinnitus if it was being well-behaved while I was still indoors and enjoying a relatively quieter day. However, over time, I came to realize that this was an avoidance strategy and I was allowing my condition to dominate my life, which in turn caused me to hate tinnitus even more.

These days I just treat my reactive tinnitus as I would the weather. We don't generally allow the weather to dictate what we do, unless it's extreme. And so unless exposing yourself to noise leads to a permanent increase in tinnitus (the phenomenon which I think is called 'kindling' in TRT), I would get on with things.

 

[Fungus]

I have relatively mild high-tone hearing loss and loud ,very high pitched (hissing/fire hydrant/jet engine) tinnitus which started with a very mild viral infection leading to Eustachian tube dysfunction etc.

I currently wear sound-generating hearing aids to mask the tinnitus as well as provide me with enhanced hearing.

I find that they do help with tinnitus, making me unsure as to whether I am hearing tinnitus or the masking sound,, and thereby ignoring it.

I don't have reactive tinnitus and only had hyperacusis early on in my tinnitus.

Fungus

 

[Terje Larsson]

I've had my hearing aids for a week now and I think they will help quite a bit. My tinnitus is a high frequency hiss and I have high frequency hearing loss. My hearing aids give me back some of those high frequencies without doing much to the rest and while it does not take my tinnitus away it helps my brain focus on other sounds, simply because now I hear them again.

On a good day it reduces my tinnitus quite a bit and it feel like I'm going back in time to how it was almost 15 years ago, when I could hear my tinnitus if I listened for it but wasn't aware of it otherwise. That's fine with me.

On a bad day my tinnitus will still be very easy to hear but with my hearing aids I've got something to work with, I don't just have to endure. I can turn up the volume a bit and get more of those high frequencies in and that takes the edge off the tinnitus.

 

[glynis]

Hi @Terje Larsson,
Great to hear your hearing aids are helping you as mine do for me.....Have a lovely Christmas....lots of love glynis