One of the main causes of tinnitus and hearing loss is exposure to loud noise. Living a healthy lifestyle and taking the appropriate preventive measures to protecting your hearing can make a difference. Clinically speaking, acoustic trauma is an injury to the inner ear caused by excessive exposure to loud noise.
Patients can suffer from chronic acoustic trauma, which is caused by long-term exposure to sounds with an average intensity of 80-85 dB, and acute acoustic trauma, which is caused by brief exposure to intense sound waves above 120 dB. Experiencing hearing loss and tinnitus are among the two main symptoms of acoustic trauma tinnitus.
Living a healthy lifestyle and getting your hearing checked regularly are the best preventive measures to protect yourself from hearing impairments and tinnitus that may lead to acoustic trauma. Excessively noisy workplaces, such as factories, construction sites and nightclubs, require adequate protection in the form of headphones and earplugs. By reducing the volume of your headphones, making sure not to exceed 60 per cent of the maximum volume, taking quiet breaks and steering clear of noisy environments from time to time, are good rules to safeguard your hearing ability.
In the event of acoustic trauma tinnitus, wearable sound generators can help reduce the perception of it, providing a pleasant feeling of relaxation. Sound enrichment devices can stimulate the auditory system by emitting constant sounds that are preferably neutral or related to the world of nature in order to reduce the volume of the tinnitus and, in the most fortunate cases, to eliminate presence altogether.
