Tinnitus Retraining Therapy - A Quick Guide

A new habituation therapy has been discovered for those with tinnitus or ringing ears. Tinnitus Retraining Therapy is the treatment that is relatively new. Results showed 80 percent success rate in a recent trial done. It brings about the idea that the brain can pay no attention to the noise that a person can hear of everyday. Patience must be one qualification of the patient as this treatment may take him 18 months or so.

Patients must be counseled well before undergoing the treatment, explaining to them how joining the tinnitus retraining treatment and sound enrichment could stop the negative reaction of ringing ears, gradually ending their awareness of it. To provide a background noise level, a noise generator would be used in the Tinnitus Retraining Therapy. The aim of this therapy is to give hope to the people with ringing ears or Tinnitus. Time is required in this therapy, as well as the effort of the patient in undergoing the whole course.

The person undergoing the treatment must take an effort in knowing about the condition, tinnitus, and its treatment, Tinnitus Retraining Therapy. He must have knowledge of how the ear works with the brain to perceive sound; knowing that through the subconscious auditory neuronal network, auditory cortex perceives sound.

To give us a better insight of the concept of Tinnitus Retraining Therapy, consider this example. A person living in a rural area, hearing noises everyday, may perceived the sound in his surrounding as just a noise, and his brain won’t give a negative reaction to the sound as compared to the person living in an urban area, who is not used to hearing noises everyday would really be bothered if he is to transfer to the rural area. This function in the brain is called the Auditory Habituation, which is used in the Tinnitus Retraining Therapy.

So what Tinnitus Retraining Therapy does is that it retrains the brain in such a way that the brain won’t give a negative reaction to the noise or ringing ears or tinnitus, thus allowing auditory habituation. The therapy does this by having the person listen to a regular digitally created full audio spectrum while noise, MP3, or CD. The level of the ear noise must be the above the level of the sound. In that way, it makes the ear noise imperceptible, since the sound would cause the plasticity of the brain to increase. Therefore, it couldn’t make an emotional response, resulting in an auditory habituation.

Patient undergoing this treatment must be cooperative of helping himself get through and to finish the cause successfully. Understanding different brain functions and believing in the treatment would give positive result to the patient. Patience plays an important role in Tinnitus Retraining Therapy, as this would take about 18 months. Not only being patient is important here but also believing in this technique because if you don’t believe in it, you couldn’t last the whole technique.