Tinnitus treatment may be aided by listening to white noise, according to a new study.
- White noise is defined as the tone that combines all frequencies audible to humans. It is so called by analogy with white light, which is the result of the superposition of all the visible waves of the spectrum (the colors).
- Tinnitus is a hearing disorder that affects more than 250 million people worldwide, including more than 15 million French people, according to a 2018 Ifop survey.
Hissing, clicking, grinding, ringing, buzzing… Here are examples of “ghost” sounds that people who suffer from tinnitus – no less than 15 million in France – are likely to hear. If there is currently no medical treatment, research in this area is progressing.
Researchers from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, particularly welcomed the “encouraging results” clinical trial of a new therapy. Their work, identified by the site MedicalXpresshave just been published in the scientific journal Frontiers in Neurology.
An improvement in two thirds of volunteers
After being assessed by an audiologist, in charge of developing a personalized treatment combining a panel of digital tools, the 61 volunteers were asked to test the effectiveness of a mobile phone application producing white noise. This is defined like the tone combining all the frequencies audible to humans: it can be nature sounds (waves, rain, wind in the trees, crackling fire…) or more artificial sounds but always continuous or repetitive, like a fan or a dishwasher.
After twelve weeks, “65% of participants reported clinically meaningful improvement, explains Dr. Searchfield, lead author of the study. For some people, including tinnitus was taking over their life and attention, that changed everything.”
“Rewiring the Brain”
“What this therapy does is essentially rewire the brain so that the sound of tinnitus is reduced to background noise with no meaning or relevance to the listener”adds the researcher, convinced that this innovation will have a “direct impact on future tinnitus treatment”.