Tinnitus Retraining Therapies

In this text, we will talk about Tinnitus and Tinnitus Retraining therapies.

What is Tinnitus?

Tinnitus is the acuity of ringing or unpleasant noise in the ears. This problem is very common, and it occurs to 15%-20% of people all around the world.

However, tinnitus is not a situation but it can be a symptom of many other conditions. For example, hearing loss can appear by aging, or from some ear injury.

Usually, Tinnitus is not that much of a serious problem. Every third person in the world once in a day hears this kind of unpleasant noise.

Nevertheless, it can be worse with time. Tinnitus can be diagnosed with treatment like all other problems. In our article, we will also go through the different treating therapies of Tinnitus.

Symptoms:

A person who is having tinnitus feels the sensation of hearing different kinds of sounds, even when there is no. Common symptoms are below:

Roaring
Clicking
Ringing
Hissing
Buzzing

This unreal noise may change in tone from a low to a high-frequency scream. You can hear the noise in one or both of your ears. Sometimes, the tone can be so loud that you might not make a difference between it to real voices or sounds around you so you can lose your concentration from your work. Its presence can be all the time or not at all as well.

Source: Unsplash

How can Tinnitus affect workers in industries?

People who have the risks of having tinnitus are usually the workers who work in different kinds of industries. Close connection with high levels of noise and pollutions can cause a lot of hearing issues. Some of those issues can be that serious that they can become useless.

This means that surgery or therapies cannot sort out these types of hearing loss. These exposures to the noise at the workplace can cause a temporary change in hearing. The result is that workers can feel their ear bloated up or a ringing in their ears.

These types of exposure won’t affect the workers that much, and it won’t go away after their shifts. But this can become dangerous if the exposure is permanent and unfortunately it can cause hearing loss.

Loud noises in industries can create stress, both physical and psychological, which can also reduce the amount of productivity of the industry. This can cause a disturbance in both communication and concentration between the workers. And this can lead to some serious accidents and injuries, due to problems in hearing warning signals.

The effect of noise in industries induced loss of hearing can be intense, which limits the worker’s ability to listen to high-frequency sounds, to understand speaking, and reduce their ability to communicate.

Tinnitus Retraining Therapies

Tinnitus Retraining Therapy is an understanding and learning to deal with your tinnitus on a conscious and subconscious level. This system helped tons of individuals all around the world.

TRT is often associated with the sound of raindrops falling on a roof being noticed when it first starts raining, but going unnoticed and put out of mind after a while.

It ensures close cooperation with a different hearing specialist. The therapy is used at the perceived source of the tinnitus and aims to show the brain to ignore it.

Tinnitus Retraining Therapy associate three specific therapeutic steps:

Extensive collection of data about the patient, including patient history and daily living habits.
Using devices behind the ear and generating broadband noise to divert the attention of the patient faraway from the tinnitus.
Some kind of psychological therapies, in which the patient tries to ignore the tinnitus noise. This step is related to deep relaxing exercises and stress management. The thing is that the elimination of the patient’s anxiety, so that the tinnitus is not any longer perceived as a danger, thus diverting the concentration faraway from the tinnitus noise.

Source: Unsplash

Clinical practice-tinnitus retraining therapies

Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT) puts a brief on four different main areas: thoughts and emotions, hearing and communication, sleep, and concentration. Its other clinical adoption is Tinnitus activities treatment (TAT)

Progressive tinnitus management (PTM) may be a 5-steps structured clinical protocol for the management of tinnitus, which can include tinnitus retraining therapy.

The five steps are:

Determining appropriate referral, i.e. audiology, ENT, emergency medical intervention, or psychological state evaluation.
Audiologic evaluation of deafness, tinnitus, hyperacusis, and other symptoms.
Group education about the causes and management of tinnitus.
Interdisciplinary evaluation of tinnitus.
Individual management of tinnitus.

Using hearing aids-tinnitus retraining therapies:

If you have Tinnitus, a hearing aid may help you, in consultation with hearing specialists. Hearing aids may reduce the pressure of poor hearing, and it can offer a sound therapy.

Reduce Stress

Research in different studies shows two main reasons why hearing aids may relieve tinnitus. First of all, tinnitus is always among deafness. People with untreated deafness, often, find communicating stressful.

When they are using hearing aids, they improve their ability to speak. This reduces their stress level, leaving them ready to deal with their tinnitus.