- The Impact of Pets on Emotional and Hearing Health - April 26, 2024
- Strategies for Coping with Single-Sided Deafness - April 16, 2024
- Effective Strategies for Sharing Your Hearing Loss Journey - April 16, 2024
Over the past year and a half, we have learned a lot about the COVID-19 coronavirus. Whereas the earliest days of the virus spreading were full of questions about transmission, symptoms, and cures, we now know much more about how it spreads through communities, what to expect if you have been diagnosed with a case, and what to do for treatment if your symptoms increase. With this information in hand, we also know much more about the variety of symptoms that some people experience. Along with the former list of respiratory symptoms along with impairment of the senses of taste and smell, tinnitus has been added to the group. Let’s take a look at the specific study that established a connection between COVID-19 and tinnitus before considering what can be done for protection and treatment.
COVID-19 and Tinnitus
The journal Frontiers in Public Health recently published the study “Changes in Tinnitus Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” This study used an online survey to ask 3,103 people with tinnitus about their experiences. Although the data came from 48 countries, 49 percent of the respondents came from North America, and 47 percent came from Europe. Recruitment was performed through the tinnitus patients’ treatment organizations. Although this survey data was obtained among a narrow window of the global population, we can make some generalizations about the results. First of all, a strictly statistical measure showed that 40 percent of those with tinnitus found that a COVID-19 diagnosis made their tinnitus worse. 54 percent of respondents found no change at all, and a remarkable 6 percent said that their tinnitus symptoms improved. These results point toward a strong possibility that something about the COVID-19 coronavirus can negatively affect the experience of tinnitus.
Pandemic Conditions and Tinnitus
Although many respondents with COVID-19 diagnoses found that their tinnitus symptoms became worse, these results are confounded by more general findings about tinnitus symptoms during the global pandemic. During the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide, people were more likely to be socially isolated, to experience loneliness, to get poor sleep, and to have reduced levels of physical exercise. The pandemic also charted higher rates of depression, anxiety, irritability, and financial concerns. Each of these conditions is independently associated with a worsening of tinnitus symptoms. Though researchers and specialists don’t understand exactly why mental health and wellness measures are so strongly related to tinnitus, study after study shows that the two are connected. In a very practical sense, the world became quieter during the pandemic. Transportation was halted, and fewer people found themselves commuting to work. Without restaurants, concerts, and sporting events, fewer people found themselves in loud environments, either. Those who have tinnitus will tell you that the symptoms tend to be the worst when a person is in a quiet environment, so the general lack of background noise might have had something to do with the worsening of tinnitus. Without any other noises to mask the sound of tinnitus, people became more aware of their ongoing symptoms.
Tinnitus Treatment
Despite these multiple possibilities for the connection between COVID-19 and tinnitus, those who have worsening symptoms are not without hope. Many people develop their own at-home strategies for treating tinnitus, whether that is through playing a television at a quiet volume at night, using a box fan, or buying a white noise generator for the bedroom. Each of these tactics can work for individual cases, but they are more like using a sledge hammer to kill an ant. A more precise type of treatment comes from the latest developments in hearing aid technology. These devices can emit a quiet series of frequencies that only the wearer can hear.
With individualized customization, these aids can emit a frequency that matches the tinnitus symptoms enough to use the process of phase cancellation to eliminate the experience of the sound. These treatments are not effective for everyone with tinnitus, but they can be helpful in many cases. If you are interested in learning more about tinnitus treatment, the first step is to schedule a hearing test with one of our hearing health professionals. When we understand your hearing needs, we can better address your tinnitus symptoms, as well.