While not typically debilitating, many people suffer from the effects of tinnitus.  For some of them, tinnitus makes falling asleep more difficult or at times causes their work to suffer when they have a period where the tinnitus is loud.  Because tinnitus affects so many people, it is very well researched and methods for alleviating tinnitus symptoms have come a long way in the past few years.  Going forward, there is research into many different ways of getting rid of tinnitus and some of these will soon be available to the general public. 

Basics of Tinnitus

Tinnitus is actually a symptom, not an actual disease.  It has many causes, from hearing loss to impacted ear wax to being a symptom of heavy metal poisoning to being a side effect of many different types of medication.  However, the single most common cause of tinnitus is hearing loss and most attempts to help correct tinnitus sufferers focus on this cause and the resulting tinnitus. 

Newest Treatment Options

Two of the newest treatment options available are tinnitus retraining therapy and additive destimulation therapy.  Tinnitus retraining therapy is a two pronged approach to dealing with tinnitus.  The first part is through the use of a sound generator to help alleviate the distraction of tinnitus.  The second part of this therapy is specialized counseling which helps retrain the brain and ear of the tinnitus sufferer to either make the sound less noticeable or to teach the person how to ignore it. 

Additive destimulation therapy is the latest and greatest though and uses a far more technological approach to helping with tinnitus.  In this therapy, the audiologist identifies the frequency or frequencies that the tinnitus sufferer hears and then modifies songs that the sufferer likes to listen to take out those frequencies.  By removing these frequencies, the brain becomes less sensitive to them and over time, hearing the tinnitus frequencies is no longer an issue because they can be more easily ignored. 

The Next Round

On the horizon are techniques that utilize electricity to achieve tinnitus relief.  The auditory nerve is the target of one such treatment, called nerve stimulation.  In this procedure, an electrode is attached to the auditory nerve and helps reset the receptors in the brain.  Because it is fairly drastic and experimental, it is reserved for only the most severe tinnitus sufferers. 

The last procedure is called repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation.  It involves using magnets to stimulate specific spots in the brain.  In research trials it shows promise in turning off tinnitus with very few side effects and should be approved for bigger trials soon.