What is the Best Way to Treat Tinnitus?

If you're one of the millions of individuals who suffer from tinnitus, you're well aware that it may negatively influence everything from your work to your family and social life. With so many individuals suffering from tinnitus, finding strategies to manage the condition is more crucial than ever.

Tinnitus can be treated with a variety of different approaches. Some of the therapeutic options available include cognitive-behavioral therapy, tinnitus retraining therapy, progressive tinnitus management, sound therapy, and stress reduction strategies.

One of the most effective, however, is hearing aids. 

Regular hearing aids can offer respite from tinnitus.

When 90 percent of people with tinnitus also have an underlying hearing loss, it's reasonable to believe that addressing the underlying hearing loss could considerably impact tinnitus reduction. When we treat hearing loss and tinnitus with hearing aids, we see this regularly with our patients at our clinic.

According to a 2007 poll of hearing health specialists, over 60% of their tinnitus patients received at least some relief by wearing hearing aids, with roughly 22% of those patients experiencing significant relief. This means that one of the most effective ways to manage tinnitus is to use hearing aids that have been properly fitted and set to your hearing loss prescription.

The difficulty is that most hearing aids are considered daily wear devices, which means you only use them during the day and have to take them out of your ears to sleep at night. This means your tinnitus can return, preventing you from falling asleep. That's why I believe the Lyric hearing aid by Phonak is one of the best treatment options for tinnitus. 

What is the Phonak Lyric?

The Lyric hearing aid is unique in that it is classified as an extended wear hearing aid, which means you can wear it for up to two months, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This hearing aid can only be fitted by a trained professional, such as our Audiologists at Applied Hearing Solutions. We  gently place  the Lyric deep inside your ear canal, around four millimeters away from your eardrum. We then replace the Lyric device with a completely new one every two months.

Because it is the only hearing aid of its kind, the design of a Lyric hearing aid is quite creative. It has a microphone, amplifier, receiver, and battery at its core. The Lyric hearing aid's outer shell is made of medical-grade foam that conforms to your ear canal for a secure and pleasant fit. It also features self-removal loops that can be employed if necessary. Even though you can configure this hearing aid digitally, the sound of a Lyric hearing aid is distinctive because it uses analog amplification, which is more natural-sounding than digital amplification.

How the Phonak Lyric helps manage your tinnitus

According to research, the Lyric hearing aid can reduce tinnitus perception faster and better than a daily wear hearing aid. This is exciting news, given that we already know that hearing aids worn regularly are extremely helpful in lowering tinnitus perception in the vast majority of people.

24/7 hearing helps during those quiet moments. Because you will wear this hearing aid both day and night, it is one of the most helpful hearing devices to use to lessen your sense of tinnitus during quiet moments. Nowhere is this clearer than at nighttime. Sleeping with tinnitus can be challenging since you usually have to remove your hearing aids out of your ears, which means your perception of tinnitus will increase at precisely the moment you're sleeping in a very quiet room, which will amplify your tinnitus. However, because the Lyric device is never removed from your ears, it provides a consistent all-night sound palette to help relate tinnitus sounds to the background.

If it's out of sight, it's out of mind. One of the other perplexing aspects of tinnitus is that it gets louder when you think about it. But this is also one of the best features of the Lyric hearing aid. You don't notice it because it's completely invisible and deep inside your ear canal. Since you're not thinking about your hearing aids, you're not thinking about your tinnitus as much. 

It's a great supplement to professional support. When you combine a Lyric hearing aid with a tinnitus management program led by a licensed hearing care professional, you've got yourself a recipe for success when it comes to tinnitus alleviation around the clock.

So, if you, like millions of other people across the world, suffer from tinnitus, look for the help of an audiologist who is uniquely prepared to treat your tinnitus using hearing aids and a variety of other treatment choices. Also consider the Phonak Lyric as a surprisingly valuable tool for the fight against tinnitus.