What is tinnitus? Symptoms & treatment

Explore options to better manage tinnitus, including hearing aids, tinnitus sound generator apps, and audiology resources

If you experience sound that no one else hears, you may have tinnitus. According to the American Tinnitus Association, you're not alone. Around 50 million Americans experience tinnitus. 

When it comes to tinnitus, what you experience can vary from person to person. Everyone experiences tinnitus differently and symptoms can vary widely. These can range from ringing that's barely noticeable to buzzing, static, or chirping that affects sleep. Although there is no cure for tinnitus, our licensed Audiology Team at Jabra Enhance is here to help you understand different ways to manage it.¹ For people with mild to moderate tinnitus related to hearing loss, our hearing aids work together with our tinnitus sound generation app and audiology resources to help many customers alleviate their tinnitus. In fact, 82% of customers seeking help with tinnitus report improvement.²

While tinnitus can affect your life, it doesn’t have to control you. In this article, we’ll go over the causes of tinnitus, the range of symptoms, and available treatment options designed to help you gain control over your tinnitus. 

What is tinnitus?

Tinnitus is the perception of sounds in your ears when there is no external source. What does tinnitus sound like? Tinnitus can sound different to everyone: ringing, buzzing, hissing, clicking, humming, or roaring, or even musical. It can be constant or intermittent, can range widely in severity and pitch, and can occur in one or both ears. In other words, tinnitus can sound like ringing in your ears, even when no one else in the room can hear it.

Tinnitus causes

You might ask yourself what causes tinnitus? What causes ringing in the ears? Well, tinnitus is typically not a standalone issue. It’s usually a symptom of something else. Causes may include hearing loss, age, medications, an underlying health condition or injury.

Common causes of tinnitus, according to the Mayo Clinic:

• Hearing loss (from age, loud sounds, etc.)
• Blockage from earwax
• Ear infection or dysfunction
• Head, neck, or ear injuries
• Medication side effects
• Chronic illnesses (vascular, autoimmune, etc.)

Types of tinnitus

Because tinnitus can sound different to everyone, audiologists group “ringing in the ears” into four main categories: subjective, neurological, somatic, and objective. By identifying the type of tinnitus, you can better understand your unique hearing challenges and how to get help. 

Subjective
As the most common type of tinnitus, subjective tinnitus is when only you — not anyone else — can hear ringing, buzzing, or other noises. 

Neurological
Neurological tinnitus can be the result of a neurological or auditory processing disorder that may cause you to feel off-balance. 

Somatic
This type is associated with physical causes, such as muscle spasms in the ear or neck or dental or jaw problems. 

Objective
Unlike the other types of tinnitus, objective tinnitus is rare and can also be heard by someone else. With a stethoscope, a doctor may be able to hear a clicking, murmur, or other noise.

Tinnitus treatments

Regardless of the type, the constant background noise of tinnitus can interrupt your everyday life. Although there is no cure for tinnitus, the good news is that it is treatable for many people.

Hearing aids can often reduce the severity of tinnitus, in addition to helping you hear better. That’s because hearing aids allow you to hear more of the sounds around you, so you focus less on the ringing in your ears. 

Some hearing aid wearers find that they need additional tinnitus relief and may want to explore using a sound generator.

And for people whose mental health is affected by tinnitus, professional counseling in combination with sound generators can help. Counseling can include cognitive behavioral therapy to address how people perceive tinnitus and their emotions.

How Jabra Enhance can help with tinnitus

With a combination of advanced hearing aid technologies, our tinnitus sound generation app, and licensed audiology resources, we’ve helped thousands of people with mild to moderate tinnitus related to hearing loss. Using a standardized customer satisfaction tool, the Client Oriented Scale of Improvement , or COSI, we measured our outcomes: 82% of our customers who reported struggling with tinnitus symptoms experienced an improvement!²

Hearing aids that help dial it down

When your brain gets more real-world sound, tinnitus becomes less noticeable. Our hearing aids do exactly that—making it easier to focus on life, not the ringing.

Sound therapy for tinnitus

Use our tinnitus sound generation app with our hearing aids to create calming, personalized soundscapes that help take the edge off the ringing—anytime, anywhere.

Expert resources, whenever you need it

Our licensed Audiology Team provides you with tools and educational resources to help you manage your tinnitus.¹

How our Audiology Team helps with tinnitus

Dealing with tinnitus can be challenging, especially when you don’t know where to turn. Here at Jabra Enhance, we take your whole hearing profile into account, starting with a free online hearing test designed by audiologists as a starting point to help you learn more about your unique hearing needs. This includes results around your ability to hear low, mid, and high frequencies that may indicate hearing loss. From there, we can custom-program hearing aids based on your test results or audiogram.

At your first appointment with our Audiology Team, we can assess your hearing history and goals, including tinnitus. Afterward, we’ll work with you to improve all aspects of your overall hearing experience with follow-up appointments and personalized consultations.

You don’t have to deal with tinnitus alone, we’d love to help you. Modern hearing technology and licensed support can help you quiet the noise, so you can reconnect with your world.