Lots of folks who are suffering from debilitating tinnitus symptoms can take advantage of a counter-intuitive, but incredibly fast acting technique known as tinnitus masking.
Tinnitus masking is the embodiment of “fight fire with fire”, except in our example we are using sound to combat sound.
At one level, this may seem foolish: If you are already tormented by constant sound in your ears or head, why would adding more sound help?
There are a couple answers to this question. At the most obvious level, if you are tormented by a specific, chronic, nerve-wracking sound for prolonged periods of time, then hearing just about anything different is going to be a relief by comparison. If the new sound is specifically designed to be something relaxing, then your experience will be that much better.
There are many “white noise” and “nature sounds” available over the internet that you could use in this manner.
While this obvious method may offer a little relief, in order to overpower the noises created by the tinnitus symptoms you usually need to use something louder than what was bothering you in the first place, and that is not an especially smart idea.
There are some special kinds of maskers for tinnitus symptoms that work lots better than this.
The best and most serviceable maskers for tinnitus do not simply make some indiscriminate louder noise to overpower your tinnitus symptoms. Instead, they generate special sounds that are specifically designed to combine with the noises you hear from your tinnitus in a way that will actually cancel them out instead of drowning them out.
This means that when someone adds the therapeutic sound from a specially designed tinnitus masker to the noise that you are already hearing from your symptoms, what you get is the experience of sound at a level that is less than either of them individually.
It works in a way very similar to how noise canceling head phones operate. Since there will still be some leftover sound even with the specially designed masking sounds, a good tinnitus masker will usually include an additional white noise or relaxing nature sound to make any remaining sound there is even more soothing.
The very best part of using maskers for tinnitus is that the comfoting effect is immediate… the second you hear the masking sound your tinnitus symptoms are greatly reduced.
It actually gets better… Using a tinnitus masker routinely can actually help desensitize you to your tinnitus symptoms even when you are not using them. That is a process called “habituation”.
Don’t let that ringing in your ears Drive you crazy. There is hope for people suffering from tinnitus!
Fight fire with fire. Try masking as a new treatment for tinnitus, and get some instant relief from your ringing ears.