Does tinnitus notch therapy really work? Here is a report on my own experience.

I am an audiologist, a deaf one. I also have binaural tonal tinnitus, a hissing on both sides, all the time. I am trying tinnitus notch therapy on myself and here is the report. I am keen to try tinnitus notch therapy for solid 12 months. I'll be updating this page with the progress of the treatment, so visit this page regularly to get an update on my tinnitus notch therapy.

Please feel free to post your questions or comments at the bottom of this page.

Tinnitus can be in different forms of sounds. There is no definite cure for tinnitus but for tonal tinnitus (what type is your tinnitus?) the evidence-based reports show there is a 65% chance that tinnitus notch therapy could alleviate tinnitus to some extent (more in here).

How did my tinnitus start?

A few years ago, I experienced labyrinthitis which in simple words is an inner ear infection. It left me with binaural tonal tinnitus and a cookie bite shape hearing loss. Back then I had mild vertigo for about 3 days and that was the only symptom I had. After that people around noticed that I am missing their calls, especially in noisy environments. Also, I gradually noticed the hissing, about 2 months after the virus attack. At first, I only felt my tinnitus before going to bed, or when it was absolute silence, but now I can hear it almost all the time, anywhere.

Here is my audiogram. As you can see both sides have hearing loss down to around 50 to 60 dB range in mid-frequencies.

What other treatments have I tried to alleviate my tinnitus?

I love music, so I usually listen to some music during the day that simply helps distract my mind from my tinnitus. I also use Resound Relief for tinnitus sound therapy. Resound Relief is one of the most sophisticated tinnitus sound therapy apps on the market and it is free to use.

What hearing aid am I using for my tinnitus treatment?

At the time of this experiment, there are only two brands of hearing aids that offer tinnitus notch therapy, Signia and Rexton. I used Rexton BiCore R-Li 80 for my tinnitus notch therapy. Please see this article to learn more about the best tinnitus hearing aids on the market.

I wanted the hearing aid to be rechargeable, and also to be able to connect to my iPhone through Bluetooth so I can do tinnitus sound therapy on the side.

Fitting Rexton BiCore R-Li 80 Rechargeable RIC

I have done a lot of experiments on the fitting of several types of hearing aids on myself. For the sake of allowing the hearing aids to do more sound processing and better noise reduction, I decided to fit them on a closed fitting. The disadvantage of this strategy is that I notice occlusion more than an open fitting, but the benefit of a closed fitting is that the hearing aids are able to help more in terms of speech intelligibility in a noisy environment.

What is the characteristic of my tinnitus?

I did an assessment of the frequency and the loudness of my tinnitus on each side separately. My tinnitus was felt at around 1.5 kHz in terms of frequency and it felt about 50 dB. In sloping hearing loss due to ageing, tinnitus could often be felt at 2 to 7 kHz (more in here). Sometimes determining the frequency of the tinnitus can be tricky. In my case, I feel that I can also hear multiples of 1.5 kHz i.e. 3kHz and 6 kHz, but I feel that 1.5 kHz is the base frequency of my tinnitus.

The tinnitus notch therapy is activated on all programs on my hearing aids for maximum effectiveness.