A lady explained,

I am 38 years old. I have no hearing loss, yet I experience Musical Ear Syndrome (MES). Over the last couple of years, I began noticing that when things are very quiet, like silent almost, I hear faint music. I describe it as hearing a radio station through a pillow. It will sound like a country station one night, a 50s style radio host the next night and maybe classic rock the next night. I can’t make out words or complete songs, but there is a form to the music. If I turn on a noise machine, which helps drown out my husband’s snoring, the MES tends to be louder.

I’m just wondering about experiencing these auditory hallucinations w/out any of the monikers usually associated with the syndrome. I have no hearing loss, I have 3 young children so I certainly don’t have a lack of auditory stimulation and although I have experienced tinnitus from time to time, I don’t think the frequency is any more than any other non-hearing impaired person.

Some people hear faint tinnitus when it is very quiet. Thus, I’m not surprised that you hear faint music when it is very quiet. I think that is your brain wanting to hear something—and when it can’t, it makes up its own so to speak.

I’m not surprised that your “noise machine” makes your phantom music louder. In fact, this is relatively common.

A continuous sound such as a fan running in the background—it could be a furnace, air conditioner, fridge, bedroom fan, etc.—seems to cause numbers of people to hear phantom music.

Somehow the brain takes this constant background sound and modulates it into music. Some people have specifically noticed they hear phantom music whenever their furnace/air conditioner comes on and goes away when their furnace/air conditioner cycles off. Your noise generator is doing much the same thing for you. This is a special kind of MES that is relatively common in people with normal hearing.

A lady asked me about a reported new drug cure for tinnitus. She wrote,

I wonder if you’ve heard anything about Caroverine? What are your thoughts?

She referred to an article published in Hearing Review on January 19, 2012 (1). This was in turn picked up from an article published back in November, 2010 that began, “Lincoln Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (LPL), an Ahmedabad-based drug manufacturing firm company today announced that it has launched Caroverine injection under the brand name ‘TINNITIN’ which is India’s first drug to treat Tinnitus – a disease commonly known as ‘ringing in the ear’.

The company developed Caroverine injection under research and development collaboration with Phafag AG, a Switzerland-based drug manufacturing firm, a release from LPL said.” (2)

Here are my thoughts. Like all the other tinnitus treatments out there, this drug treatment works for some people and not for others. Furthermore, it doesn’t cure tinnitus as such, it just reduces it while you are taking this drug. When you go off the drug you can expect your tinnitus to come back.

However, Caroverine should not be taken in the long term as it has other side effects on your body. Basically it is a Glutamate antagonist. “Glutamate is very important to many bodily functions and must not be inhibited long-term. Glutamate is an amino acid and one of the most important building blocks of proteins. It is also vital for metabolism and brain function.” (3) Therefore, if you suppress too much glutamate activity in your body or brain, nasty things will happen.

Thus, in order to be effective, researchers have to find a way to make this drug only work on the glutamate receptors in the auditory circuits and not everywhere else in the body. (Researchers are currently trying micro-catheters but these have their own problems.)

I find it interesting that although this drug has been around and used for about 40 years, it is still not approved in the USA—the drug capital of the world. That alone, should tell you something about the safety/efficacy of this drug.

If you want to learn more about tinnitus and what you can do to help bring it under your control,  check out the new 5th edition of “When Your Ears Ring! Cope with Your Tinnitus—Here’s How“.

________

(1) First Pharmaceutical Cure for Tinnitus Reportedly Launched in India. Hearing Review Jan 19, 2012.

(2) Lincoln Pharma launches India’s first drug for Tinnitus. November 16, 2010.

(3) Barry Keate. The Promise of Caroverine for Tinnitus.

A lady explained,

I am a 41 year-old woman who was diagnosed with otosclerosis in my left ear during my first pregnancy at age 35. (My grandmother was fully deaf in her left ear by age 20, and hard of hearing in her right ear, so it wasn’t a total shock.) The hearing loss gradually spread to my right ear, though that impairment was minimal, and I have hearing aids for both ears now. I know I should be asking my ENT or audiologist for information, but both seem fairly uninformed—the ENT had never heard of any possible connection between pregnancy and otosclerosis, and seemed astonished that my tests showed both conductive and sensorineural hearing loss.

I am currently halfway through my second pregnancy, and have suddenly noticed a serious worsening of the hearing in my right (formerly my better) ear. I have had a cold for several weeks, and first began to notice it starting to worsen during this time, but it is suddenly as if I have about 5 cotton balls in my right ear (normal for me is more like 2-3 in my left and 1 in my right). My family doctor saw no signs of an ear infection when I went in to have a strep test. My question is this, is this more likely to just be a side effect of the cold, or maybe an infection starting to develop, or is it probable that this is a permanent worsening of my condition which would necessitate a visit to the audiologist to have my hearing aids adjusted?

I find that hard to believe that your ENT is so ignorant about otosclerosis. ENT’s are supposed to know about such things! It is well-known that for women with otosclerosis, hearing loss commonly occurs at puberty and that further loss occurs with each pregnancy, with the last flare-up occurring during menopause.

Your doctor should have known that there are two types of otosclerosis—the middle ear version that causes conductive hearing loss and the cochlear (inner ear) version that sometimes occurs when the otosclerosis grows into your inner ear. This results in sensorineural hearing loss in addition to the conductive hearing loss.

Obviously, your otosclerosis has grown into your inner ear. That is why you have the sensorineural hearing loss component on top of your conductive middle ear loss.

There are two possibilities as to why you suddenly have more hearing loss now. One possibility is that your otosclerosis is flaring up (true to form) with your current pregnancy. The other possibility is that your cold virus has attacked your inner ear causing additional sudden sensorineural hearing loss.

Even though your family doctor saw no signs of a middle ear infection, it is possible that the virus was in your inner ear—and did not cause a secondary infection in your middle ear.

Your question is, “How can I tell whether my hearing loss is from my otosclerosis or from a virus?

I think a wise move is to have your hearing tested by an audiologist again. That will answer some of your questions.

I would specifically ask for the pure tone testing, both air and bone (conductive), and then compare the new results to your old audiogram to see where your hearing loss is increasing. If it is all sensorineural, it could well be a result of the cold virus attacking your inner ear, although since your otosclerosis has grown into your inner ear, you can’t rule it out either.

If all the increased hearing loss is conductive, you know your inner ear is ok at this point. Thus it could be the otosclerosis coming into play again and there is nothing much you can do about that.

At the same time, I’d suggest having a tympanogram to be sure your middle ear is not congested. A type “A” tympanogram would indicate all is well in this department. This would further suggest that your otosclerosis is the culprit.

If you show a type “C” tympanogram, it could indicate that your cold is affecting, and clogging up, your middle ear. If that is the case, your hearing loss hopefully will be temporary—and will return to “normal” when your middle ear and Eustachian tubes clear after you get over your cold.

A concerned daughter wrote,

My mother is 78. She has been very reclusive since her retirement about 15 years ago and has no contact with anyone other than me on the phone and one of my brothers. Along with her isolation, she has a bit of paranoia about sounds she says she hears in the walls. At one point she cut all the phone wires to stop the noise.

She definitely has hearing loss and several years ago specialists tried to get her to use a hearing aid but she rejected it during the trial period because she didn’t like the sound of her own voice. She blasts her TV which is evident whenever I call to talk with her so I know she can’t hear well.

In the last 6 or 7 months she began complaining about music blasting at all hours of the night. The music was so loud that she would be awake at 2:00 in the morning shaking and sweating from the stress. Eventually she started to believe that my brother was doing this to her remotely, and that he probably had put speakers in her attic and walls and makes the music go on whenever he wants to drive her crazy.

I live in a different state and primarily talk to her by phone. My brother does most of her shopping and brings her to doctors’ appointments when needed. He has been a very decent care giver.

We both started researching her situation and kept coming to articles on Musical Ear Syndrome. She has been resistant to believe this is possible until recently when I printed out pages from your website and sent them to her. I think I have her attention finally. I also ordered your book and I’m hoping she reads it and continues to believe that Musical Ear Syndrome (MES) is the explanation to her situation.

It would seem that she is a prime candidate for having MES. She is elderly, female, has had tinnitus, has hearing loss, is isolated, does not use her own voice much, and has been taking Elavil for over 25 years for depression.

I have suggested to her that she read out loud several times a day. I am trying to get her to take a walk around the block a couple of times a day as well so her ears hear different sounds. I think she also needs to see a specialist who can test her, convince her she is not going crazy, that my brother is not doing anything to her and find an appropriate course of action.

I’m sure you have plenty of emails like this and appreciate any advice you can give us. I will share your response with her.

I find it sad that your mother has largely withdrawn from life. Life is so much more exciting when you “join” the world rather than live apart from it.

I hear from numbers of daughters (and a few sons) telling me about their parents’ Musical Ear experiences. Some of their parents become what appears to be paranoid—but when you understand that they are responding to (phantom) sounds (which they believe to be real), you realize that those thoughts and actions are in fact logical and rational given what they believe they are hearing is true. Of course, from our point of view they may appear to be irrational—but then, we are not “hearing” what they are hearing.

The phantom music can be loud for some people—and because it seems so real, no wonder she was afraid about what was going on. That can give rise to further, and at times farfetched, scenarios such as when she began to believe that your brother put speakers in her attic and walls and played the music whenever he wanted to drive her crazy.

Of course your brother isn’t doing this. But I’ve received similar stories where the person blamed the landlord for supposedly doing similar things, or blamed her husband.

The reason for this is that the person is desperately searching for a rational reason why they are hearing these sounds. To them, the only alternative is to admit that they are crazy. Since they don’t want to admit that they are “losing it”, they come up with “rational” reasons to blame the phantom sounds on others.

The way to help people in this situation is to explain what MES is—that MES sounds, although truly phantom, are benign sounds. In other words, the person hearing these phantom sounds doesn’t have a mental problem, but rather has an auditory problem. You need to remind them that they are not crazy—that they are sane—even though they can hear phantom sounds.

Now that you have her attention, hopefully she will stop blaming your brother. You’ll know she has things firmly under control when she can say when she hears her phantom music, “my brain is fooling me again” and let it go at that. When this happens often the phantom sounds will begin to fade into the background. But even if they don’t, she won’t be afraid of them anymore.

Unfortunately, people that are depressed tend to focus more on such things. By worrying about them, she will just make the situation worse.

Your ideas of getting her to read out loud several times a day, and to walk around the block a couple of times a day are good ideas—both for her mental and physical health as well as to try to control the phantom sounds. I have found that more social interaction, focusing on the loves of you life and surrounding yourself with real sounds all help to bring MES under control.

There are a number of other tips in dealing with Musical Ear Syndrome in my book, “Phantom Voices, Ethereal Music & Other Spooky Sounds“.

A lady wrote,

I have had tinnitus for several years. It seems to be a genetic disorder as my mother and brother both suffered from it as well. I worked in the music business for years and always attributed it to the exposure to loud music and extended use of Aspirin. Both my brother and mother had heart issues. Is tinnitus related to heart disease? Also, what would cause an increase in the sound of tinnitus?

I’ve never heard of tinnitus being genetic. Rather than your family’s tinnitus being genetic, you could all have tinnitus because of similarities in your environments, lifestyles or upbringing that result in tinnitus. When that happens, it is easy to think that tinnitus might be genetic.

Being around loud music can and does cause tinnitus. So can taking a lot of Aspirin. Fortunately, tinnitus caused by Aspirin is typically temporary.

Furthermore, tinnitus can be related to heart issues—depending on the type of your tinnitus. For example, if your tinnitus pulses in unison to your heartbeat, you have a vascular kind of tinnitus called pulsatile tinnitus. High blood pressure or clogged arteries in your neck and head can cause this kind of tinnitus.

If you have heart disease and take heart medications, one of the side effects of the heart drugs can be tinnitus.

There are many factors that can cause your tinnitus to increase in volume. For example:

— being around louder sounds
— taking any of the more than 500 drugs known to cause tinnitus
— increasing hearing loss
— stress
— anxiety
— eating certain foods
— various diseases such as allergies and diabetes
— ear infections and other ear conditions, and so on.

If you want to learn more about tinnitus and a number of things you can do to help bring it under your control,  check out the new 5th edition of “When Your Ears Ring! Cope with Your Tinnitus—Here’s How“.

Numbers of people find their tinnitus, or the loudness of their tinnitus, is related to stress. I hear from people all the time who tell me that when their stress increases, so does their tinnitus.

Researchers have found the same thing. Writing about people with tinnitus, one researcher recently noted, “On a stress free day, their tinnitus may be manageable and unnoticeable. In the presence of a stressor, their tinnitus returns. It is widely known that stress, even if it may not be the main cause of tinnitus, precipitates and/or perpetuates tinnitus. Thus, teaching patients how to manage their stress more effectively is an important component of a tinnitus treatment program.” (1)

Thus, one of the effective things that you can do to help bring your tinnitus under control is to learn to control your stress. There are many different techniques you can use to help reduce your stress. Discover which works the best for yourself and watch the stress-induced component of your tinnitus “melt away” as you learn how to “hang loose”.

______________

(1) Herzfeld, Melanie and Francis Kuk. 2011. A Clinician’s Experience with Using Fractal Music for Tinnitus Management. The Hearing Review. Vol 18, No 11, October 2011. p. 55.

A man wrote,

I noticed an ad in the current issue of Hearing Health magazine for Arches Tinnitus Formula. Has anyone had success with this product? The absence of a company address in the advertisement makes me wary.

It seems any magazine ad I see for a tinnitus remedy offers only a toll free number. When I call the number, my experience is that the price of the product is sky high and any questions about the formula will be brushed off because the formula is proprietary.

I realize some people do experience success using a homeopathic product, yet I’m also aware that the American Tinnitus Association has stated there is no medical cure for tinnitus.

I agree with you. I like to see people stand behind their products with full contact information prominently displayed. However, sometimes ads are cramped for space so they leave this information off. The good news in this case is that if you go to the Arches website you will find their contact information—name, address, phone number and the name of the person behind this product—namely, Barry Keate. (I’m well aware that there are other tinnitus products being hawked that have no such contact information on their websites—and of those I am really leery.)

More good news. The ingredients for Arches Tinnitus Formula are not proprietary. In fact, there are only three common ingredients in the Arches Tinnitus Formula, namely, zinc, garlic and Ginkgo biloba.

The interesting thing about their Ginkgo content is that this is one tinnitus formula that actually contains a therapeutic dose of Ginkgo, in contrast to many other tinnitus formulas out there that only contain a token amount of Ginkgo. (This is one reason that so many studies of Ginkgo as a remedy for tinnitus have not shown positive results—the researchers deliberately or through ignorance used an inadequate dose in their studies.)

For example, a German Commission did a detailed study on Ginkgo and determined that the therapeutic dose was 480 mg a day—and that the Ginkgo had to be standardized to 24% flavone glycosides and 6% terpene lactones.

Guess what? The Ginkgo content in Arches Tinnitus Formula is standardized to exactly that. Furthermore, their recommended dose is 480 mg per day—exactly the amount the German Commission found was needed for an effective therapeutic dose.

Even though the Arches Tinnitus Formula contains a therapeutic dose of Ginkgo, you need to realize that Ginkgo doesn’t work for everyone’s tinnitus. Ginkgo taken at the effective dose of 480 mg per day helps between 26% and 82% of the people taking it, depending on which study you look at. This is not to say that everyone’s tinnitus goes away completely, but taking a therapeutic dose of Ginkgo does help reduce the tinnitus in numbers of people—and any reduction in tinnitus volume/annoyance is a blessing to be sure.

Arches Tinnitus Formula is not a homeopathic product—it is a supplement type of product. In my opinion, it is one of the better herbal tinnitus products available. Sure it will cost you—about a dollar a day—but what drugs are that cheap?

There is no single magic pill that will cure tinnitus. The best approach is to try several things at once or sequentially—and hopefully each will help reduce your tinnitus a certain amount so that you end up with a significant reduction in your tinnitus. I give many of these tinnitus reduction strategies, including using Ginkgo and other herbals and minerals in my tinnitus book, “When Your Ears Ring! Cope with Your Tinnitus—Here’s How“.

A lady explained,

A horrible, loud explosion woke me up last night and made me scream out a bit. It was really scary! Has this ever happened to anyone else?

Fortunately, what you experienced is quite rare. It goes by the ghastly-sounding name of “Exploding Head” syndrome.

In spite of its grisly name, your head doesn’t really explode—you just hear a loud exploding sound—much like you did. This can occur as you are coming out of a deep sleep. It can certainly scare you and set your heart to pounding.

In my book, “When Your Ears Ring! Cope with Your Tinnitus—Here’s How” I explain:

“Exploding Head” syndrome is a relatively rare event in which you experience a very loud and sudden noise such as a loud bang similar to a bomb exploding, a gun going off, a clash of cymbals, a door slamming, a roaring sound, waves crashing against rocks, loud voices or screams, a ringing noise, a terrific bang on a tin tray, the sound of electrical arcing (buzzing) or any other form of loud, indecipherable noise that seems to originate from inside your head. It most often occurs just before deep sleep (and sometimes upon coming out of deep sleep) and wakes you up.

If you are interested, you can learn more about the strange kinds of tinnitus some people experience in this book. You can get your own copy here.

Back in 2004 when I coined the name “Musical Ear Syndrome” for the strange musical hallucinations many hard of hearing people secretly experience, I never dreamed that someone would actually make a movie about it. But that is what has just happened. In fact, this short movie was one of 12 films nominated for inclusion in the prestigious 2011 Virgin Media Shorts film competition, the UK’s biggest short-film competition.

Ian Gamester, a Liverpool filmmaker, made the short list with a touching documentary starring his grandmother, Cath Gamester, who, after being prescribed anti-depressants by her doctor, now suffers from Musical Ear Syndrome (MES). As Ian explained, “She kept hearing the same songs again and again and thought that someone was playing a record loudly.”

Unfortunately, Ian did not win any of the three top spots at the gala judging competition on November 10, 2011, but just being nominated for this prestigious competition has helped more people become aware of Musical Ear Syndrome.

You can watch this 2 minute and 20 second black and white film here.

A recent MarkeTrak study revealed some interesting things about tinnitus and its effects on our lives—what we can do to help ameliorate the effects of our tinnitus and where hearing aids fit into the equation. (1)

But first, some background on tinnitus. Tinnitus—ringing in the ears—affects a LOT of people— somewhere between 30 and 50 million people in the USA alone.

The older we get, the more likely we are to experience tinnitus. (1) For example:

Notice that by the time people reach 55, at least one person in five has tinnitus. This rises to one person in four for seniors. That’s a lot of people living their lives listening to the phantom racket we call tinnitus.

Tinnitus affects the quality of life for many people. A study of 3,431 people with tinnitus (1) revealed:

(Note: these figures add up to more than 100% because tinnitus often affects several aspects of a person’s life at the same time.)

The good news is that almost half of the people with tinnitus report it does not affect their lives at all. Basically, they just ignore their tinnitus and live happy and fulfilled lives in spite of the racket in their ears. I’m one of these. Sure, sometimes I wish my tinnitus wasn’t there, but I choose to ignore the constant tinnitus I experience and live my life as though it didn’t exist.

That’s a bit of background on tinnitus. Now, let’s look at how we can help bring our tinnitus under control. One of the treatments that few people apparently consider to help bring their tinnitus under control is simply getting and wearing properly-fitted hearing aids.

In a study of 1,314 people with tinnitus, 52.4% found that wearing hearing aids didn’t make any difference to their tinnitus. That’s the bad news. However, looking at it the other way, the good news is that if you have tinnitus you have approximately a 50-50 chance that wearing hearing aids will help reduce the impact of your tinnitus. Any treatment that has a 50% chance of helping you is definitely worthwhile trying!

Here’s a note of caution: If you have tinnitus, you still have to be careful when wearing hearing aids because the above study further revealed that 4.2% of the people with tinnitus found that wearing hearing aids actually made their tinnitus worse. If you are one of these unfortunate people, you need to keep the volume on your hearing aids set to a level that doesn’t provoke your tinnitus. If that won’t work, you probably should not wear hearing aids.

However, the good news is that 43.5% of the people found that wearing hearing aids helped mitigate the effects of their tinnitus. Here’s the break-down of the results: 15.7% of these people reported a mild reduction in their tinnitus; 14.1% reported a moderate reduction in their tinnitus; and the really good news was that 13.7% reported a significant reduction in their tinnitus. (1)

How often did this reduction of tinnitus occur when wearing hearing aids? Of the 553 people that reported an improvement in their tinnitus when wearing their hearing aids, here’s the break down:

Notice that almost 2 out of 3 people reported that wearing their hearing aids gave them reduced tinnitus most or all of the time! That’s impressive for any tinnitus treatment.

Now here’s the best news of all. 3.4% reported that the improvement in their tinnitus continued even when they took their hearing aids off! (1)

With results like these, if you are bothered by your tinnitus and you have some degree of hearing loss, you owe it to yourself to try hearing aids and see whether they will help your tinnitus too.

This study also looked at the various things people tried in order to reduce their tinnitus. Of the 3,473 people in this study—all of whom had tinnitus—notice that only a miniscule 6.1% tried wearing hearing aids in an attempt to reduce their tinnitus. This shows how foreign it is to people’s thinking that hearing aids are an effective way to help control tinnitus. Now that you know the truth, don’t make the same mistake.

Here’s the break-down of the various ways people tried to reduce their tinnitus.

Notice the low percentages of people with tinnitus that tried each of these various treatments—the highest was only 6.8%. The total only adds up to 33.9%. Assuming each person only tried one treatment (and this is not likely), this study reveals that only one person in three even tried to help themselves deal with their tinnitus.

Why is that? Could it be that because many doctors tell people suffering from tinnitus that there is no cure for tinnitus, and that they have to live with it—thus leaving them without any hope—that these patients buy into this dismal mindset and thus don’t believe there is anything they can do to help reduce their tinnitus, and so they give up and do not try anything?

If you have tinnitus, don’t believe this. Yes, it is true that at the present time there isn’t a cure for everyone’s tinnitus. Yes, it is true that you have to deal with your own tinnitus. However, it is not true that there is nothing you can do that will help reduce your tinnitus. Do not give up hope. There are many different things you can do to help yourself deal with your tinnitus. Wearing hearing aids is just one of them. You can read about many more in my book, “When Your Ears Ring! Cope with Your Tinnitus—Here’s How“.

Now, back to this study. What were the results of the various things people tried? I have broken them down into three classes no improvement (0%), modest improvement (1-39%) and significant improvement (greater than or equal to 40%). I think these results will encourage you.

Notice that roughly somewhere between one-third and three-quarters of the people found no help with any of the above treatments. That does not mean that these treatments don’t work—just that they don’t work for numbers of people. The good news is that between one-quarter and two-thirds of the people that tried these various treatments did receive help. So these treatments DO help many people. The trick is to find which treatment or treatments work for you.

Now let’s look at the results again, but this time just zeroing in on the results of the highest level in the significant improvement category—namely 80%+.

If you could reduce your tinnitus volume and the impact it has on your life by 80% or more, that would be a real blessing, right? How many people were so “lucky”? Here are the results.

Notice that wearing hearing aids tops the list with 27% of the people that tried wearing hearing aids had a greater than 80% reduction in their tinnitus! That’s impressive. (Remember, that only 6.1% of the people in this study tried hearing aids.)

If these results hold true for all the people with tinnitus, then 13.5 million people in the USA alone would find that wearing hearing aids would reduce their tinnitus by 80+%. Millions more would find that wearing hearing aids would reduce their tinnitus by a lesser amount. Thus, if you have a hearing loss—even a mild one—wearing hearing aids should rank high on the list of things you try to reduce your tinnitus.

As I have said many times in the past, tinnitus arises from a number of different causes and affects people differently, thus a treatment that works for one person won’t necessarily work for another. The results in the various (above) tables prove this.

Since there is no single treatment for tinnitus that works for everybody all the time, and since there are many different treatments that do work in reducing tinnitus for some people, you need to try a number of them and see what works for you. If something doesn’t work for you, try something else. Unless you try, you’ll never know which treatment might reduce your tinnitus by 80% or more.

What have you got to lose? There IS something that will help you. You need to find out what it is and do that. A good plan of attack is to try several different tinnitus reduction treatments at the same time. Together they may make a significant reduction in your tinnitus. Some of that reduction may come from wearing hearing aids. Additional reduction may come from using relaxation techniques, and further reduction may come from taking herbals, or receiving counseling or wearing sound generators or listening to background music, or…the list goes on and on.

Based on the above study, if you are bothered by your tinnitus and have a hearing loss, you may find considerable relief from your tinnitus through the simple expedient of wearing hearing aids.

Note that the degree of your hearing loss and the severity of your tinnitus “are significantly related to the level of tinnitus reduction via hearing aid use. In general, people with milder degrees of tinnitus are more likely to experience mitigation of their tinnitus with hearing aids.” (1)

One final word of advice—you need to be properly fitted with hearing aids. One of the results of this study indicated that “people receiving a more comprehensive hearing aid fitting protocol are nearly twice as likely to experience tinnitus relief from their hearing aids than if they received a minimalist hearing aid fitting protocol.” (1) Don’t skim over the above sentence too fast. You need to insist on a complete and comprehensive audiological evaluation AND careful hearing aid fitting backed by real-ear measurements in order to get the best tinnitus-reduction results. When you do that, you’ve just doubled your chances that wearing your hearing aids will bring you significant tinnitus relief.

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(1) Kochkin, Sergei, et. al. MarkeTrak VIII: The Prevalence of Tinnitus in the United States and the Self-reported Efficacy of Various Treatments. The Hearing Review. Vol. 18, No. 12. November, 2011. pp. 10-26.