Tinnitus treatment: How to treat ringing in your ears – Healthy Hearing
Do you have tinnitus and are wondering how to make it go away—or at least get better? Relief is possible, but you may need to work with a physician, a hearing care professional, and a behavioral therapist to find the right treatment combination for you. Because so many health conditions can trigger tinnitus, diagnosing every case is unique.
A thorough assessment of your symptomshelps determine the best tinnitus treatment.
In addition to the following treatments, ther…….
Do you have tinnitus and are wondering how to make it go away—or at least get better? Relief is possible, but you may need to work with a physician, a hearing care professional, and a behavioral therapist to find the right treatment combination for you. Because so many health conditions can trigger tinnitus, diagnosing every case is unique.
A thorough assessment of your symptoms
helps determine the best tinnitus treatment.
In addition to the following treatments, there are alternative relief strategies that may help.
However, it’s important to know there is no cure for tinnitus. Many people use habituation to help them reduce the daily annoyance of tinnitus.
Diagnosing tinnitus
The first step in treating tinnitus is uncovering what may be causing it. One of the challenges in tinnitus evaluation and treatment is that everyone experiences it differently. Measuring a subjective experience is very difficult. A hearing care professional will start by asking lots of questions about your symptoms such as:
- How long has this been going on?
- Is it intermittent or constant?
- Is it worse at certain points of the day?
- Is it a pulsating sensation?
- In which ear do you hear the tinnitus? Both?
- How loud is the noise?
- Is the pitch high or low?
- It the issue extremely bothersome or just a little irritating?
- Are there certain conditions that make it worse such as exposure to noise or certain foods or beverages?
- Does the sound change?
- What does it sound like? Clicking, rushing, humming, rhythmic?
The practitioner will also ask you to report your medical history. After a thorough discussion of your symptoms and health history, the examination will begin with a visual inspection of your ears and standard hearing tests. Because tinnitus often co-occurs with hearing loss, you’ll likely have your hearing tested, too.
Tinnitus-specific tests
If medical causes of tinnitus have been ruled out, then you likely have what’s known as neurophysiologic (sensorineural) tinnitus. This can occur on its own, or may be due to hearing loss or loud noise exposure.
A health care professional’s next step is to determine the best treatment. An audiologist or similar professional may use a series of tests to tailor your treatment to your specific needs. Examples include:
- A pitch match test to help your hearing care professional determine the approximate frequency of sound that you are hearing. For this exam, you will be asked to identify the pitch of your tinnitus as best as possible by comparing it to other sounds.
- A loudness match test to quantify …….
Source: https://www.healthyhearing.com/help/tinnitus/treatment
