A new remedy may offer relief to people suffering from ringing in the ears

Depression is a real threat to people affected by noise or ringing in the ears. An app will train tinnitus sufferers to face their new inner enemy. One in ten people are affected.

A buzzing or screeching sound that is often permanent: Tinnitus is an ordeal that affects about 1 in 10 people. Geraldine Zamanski, a journalist from Health magazine on France 5, met a researcher who, with an international team in New Zealand, designed. A new solution that can finally bring relief to those affected.

franceinfo: An international team evaluated an app that allows you to live better with these “inner” voices?

Geraldine Zamansky: While waiting for the treatment that will remove them, this app will help them. The stakes are high: Depression threatens 2 out of 3 tinnitus sufferers. Imagine, a whistling sound that never stops, for example, is terrible. This may be related to hearing loss.

To put it very simply, the brain then tries to compensate for the decrease in received sounds by “turning up the volume”, and parasitic noise appears. In these cases, it can sometimes be attenuated using classic “amplifying” hearing aids. But if the cause is sound shock, such as a rock concert, or head trauma.

Have these experts found another solution for all these causes of tinnitus?

And they start with our brain’s natural ability to focus on the voices of those around us, for example, to ignore the hubbub of a restaurant. The app will train tinnitus sufferers to reproduce this mechanism to combat their new internal enemy, as its designer Fabrice Bardy at the University of Auckland in New Zealand explained to me. And in two months, it relieved 60% of the 30 participants in the trial, the results of which they have just published.

How can we help the brain ignore tinnitus?

With an element of relaxation. Because a whistling sound, for example, is perceived by the brain as a real alarm signal, it goes into a permanent state of alert. Slow breathing, by contrast, creates a reassuring message: there is no danger.

At the same time, meditation sessions also help the brain not to be invaded by stress. Not forgetting sound therapy: listening to soothing sounds like waves, which help manage parasitic noise in moments of silence. The whole thing is accompanied by behavioral and cognitive therapy in small daily interactions with the app, to overcome the negative thoughts generated by this ordeal.

Fabrice Bardi hopes that a French version will be produced soon. In the meantime, he insists: even if it is difficult, these strategies make it possible to control tinnitus. Their sufferers can already find relaxation exercises, meditation and soothing sounds online.

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Possible application: Resound relief