Health-Beauty-Fitness: How tinnitus is treated?

Outlines

Hearing aids
Cochlear implant

Tinnitus masker

Neuromonic device

Serenade by SoundCure

Hearing aids with Zen program by Widex

Counselling

Cognitive behavioural therapy

Antidepressant and antianxiety

Vagal nerve stimulation

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation

Integrated Tinnitus Therapy

-Tinnitus Retraining Therapy

-Widex Zen Therapy

-Neuromonic Tinnitus Treatment

HOLISTIC APPROACH OF TINNITUS*

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1.Hearing aids

Hearing aid

A hearing aid is a small electronic device that you wear in or behind your ear. Hearing aids are signal processors; they alter the signal input to improve it for the wearer by making sounds louder, which can help with hearing.

A hearing aid has three basic parts: a microphone, amplifier and speaker. The hearing aid receives sound through a microphone, which converts the sound waves to electrical signals and sends them to an amplifier. The amplifier increases the power of the signals and then sends them to the ear through a speaker. The electrical signals are then converted to neural signals by hair cells situated in the inner ear and sent to the brain via the auditory nerve.The loudness and prominence of tinnitus is decreased by activating the auditory system and amplifying background sound.

In other words, by improving your hearing will also mean sounds you wouldn't otherwise hear will now be audible, which may help override the sounds of your tinnitus.

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2.Cochlear implant

Cochlear implant

A cochlear implant is a surgically implanted electronic device that provides a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard of hearing. Cochlear implants may help provide hearing in patients who are deaf because of damage to sensory hair cells in their cochleas. In those patients, the implants often can enable sufficient hearing for better understanding of speech.

For management of tinnitus, the principle is similar to hearing aids, by improving your hearing mean sounds you wouldn't otherwise hear will now be audible, which may help override the sounds of your tinnitus.

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3.Tinnitus masker

Tinnitus masker

Tinnitus maskers are devices created based on simple white noise machines which are used to add natural or artificial sound into a tinnitus sufferer's environment in order to suppress or mask the ringing. The mechanism of sound masking can be explained by analogy with light. In a dark room where someone is turning a torchlight on and off, the light will be obviously noticeable. However if the overhead lights are turned on, turning on the lamp will no longer be as distracting because it has been "masked".

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4.Neuromonic device

Neuromonic device

It is a sophisticated, fully digital processor that provide acoustic/sound therapy. It delivers a spectrally modified music, that has been individually tailored according to each person’s hearing and tinnitus characteristics, so as to gradually reduce the impact of tinnitus, by promoting tinnitus desensitization and also promote relaxation. Tinnitus awareness and disturbance gradually reduces.

It is lightweight and compact that allows treatment to be undertaken during normal daily activities.

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5.Serenade by SoundCure

Serenade by SoundCure

The device the looks something like an iPod, and is a box with play, rewind and fast-forward buttons. It provides acoustic/sound therapy. The box makes patterned therapeutic sounds called “S-Tones” that patients listen to through earphones. The sounds are based on a patient’s particular tinnitus frequency. It generate brain activity in the part of the brain that perceives tinnitus. Ultimately that brain activity is shown to reduce the patient’s perception of his or her tinnitus.

Serenade consists of multiple tracks of soft treatment sounds to enable acute and long-term relief as part of a sound therapy program.

A patient will generally listen to the device for up to three or four hours a day when his or her tinnitus is worst, like while trying to fall asleep.

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6.Hearing aids with Zen program by Widex

It is a combined instrument (hearing aid + acoustic/sound therapy). Based on what is known as fractal technology, Zen program plays random, chime-like tones that can be used for relaxation and for making tinnitus less noticeable. Your hearing care professional can adjust the Zen program according to your preferences in terms of pitch, tempo and volume. The ZEN Program is a highly original and innovative feature. It is ONLY available inside select hearing aids from WIDEX.

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7.Counselling

Tinnitus counselling is usually carried out by hearing therapists, audiologists or doctors. It's a talking therapy that helps you learn more and understand about your tinnitus and find ways of coping with it. It is an important aspect in the management of tinnitus.

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8.Antidepressant and antianxiety

There's currently no specific medication to treat tinnitus. However, as tinnitus can sometimes cause anxiety and depression, antidepressants or antianxiety may sometimes be prescribed in combination with other types of treatment.

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9.Cognitive behavioural therapy

CBT is based on the idea that your thoughts affect the way you behave and the way you feel. Treatment aims to retrain the way you think in order to change your behaviour and emotion.

This technique can be effectively applied to tinnitus. For example, if your knowledge about tinnitus is limited, you may have certain ideas about it that make you feel anxious and depressed. This can make your tinnitus worse. Changing the way you think about your tinnitus and what you do about it can help reduce your anxiety and enable you to accept the noises, which after a while may become less noticeable.

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10.Vagal nerve stimulation

Serenity System pairs Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) with listening to tones. VNS is approved by the FDA and has been used to treat over 60,000 patients for epilepsy and depression, but has not yet been evaluated for safety or efficacy to treat tinnitus.

The device is fully implantable and can easily be used at home. During the therapy, an individual sits in a comfortable chair and wear headphones. They listen to tones while receiving small bursts of neurostimulation, which activate the vagus nerve.

UT Dallas says that “preclinical tests demonstrated that this approach “rewires” damaged brain circuitry associated with tinnitus, potentially yielding long-term reversal of symptoms. The initial human trial in Belgium provided encouraging results.”

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11.Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation

The device uses repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), which involves repeated magnetic stimuli to the skull to induce electrical activity in the underlying areas of the brain. Low frequency stimulation, once a second, has been shown to induce small, sustained reductions in activity in the part of the brain being stimulated.

The device, made of wire encased in plastic, is held close to the patient's scalp so that the magnetic field can be focused on specific areas of the cortex or surface of the brain. Once the device is in position, the magnetic field passes through the skull painlessly and induces a small current in the cortex and in specific neurons or brain cells.Patients have described the sensation as similar to the effect of tapping an arm with a pencil.

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12.Integrated Tinnitus Therapy

In order to manage tinnitus effectively, Integrated Tinnitus Therapy has been proposed. It addresses all of the major components of tinnitus distress, and tinnitus is treated by combination of therapy.

Component of integrated tinnitus therapy includes 1)Counselling 2)Amplification 3)Acoustic therapy 4)Relaxation.

Examples of integrated tinnitus therapy include: 1)Tinnitus Retraining Therapy 2)Neuromonics Tinnitus Treatment 3)Widex Zen Therapy

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STILL FINDING TINNITUS IRRITATING?

WANT TO TRY SOMETHING ELSE?

MEDICAL RESEARCHER, NUTRITION SPECIALIST, HEALTH CONSULTANT AND FORMER TINNITUS SUFFERER TEACHES YOU HOW TO STOP THE CONSTANT RINGING, BUZZING, HISSING, BEEPING, CLICKING, PULSING OR WHISTLING AND KEEP THEM AWAY FOREVER

WATCH THIS PROGRAM!