There are many people who suffer from tinnitus, the condition where you hear ringing in your ears even without any external perceivable sound.
Tinnitus is difficult for the medical community to get a handle on, and can be caused by a number of underlying conditions.
Unfortunately, having tinnitus could greatly affect one's life.
Aside from having general hearing difficulty, some people also have difficulty sleeping or difficulty concentrating because of the constant ringing in their ears.
There are people who have lost employment, lost relationships, even lost their sanity because of their experience with tinnitus.
I mean, obviously, think about it.
If you are not able to maintain a train of thought long enough to, many times, even complete a sentence, let alone complete a conversation - how useful are you going to be on your job? Not very useful, is my guess.
By the same token, this lack of ability to focus wreaks havoc on relationships, be they romantic relationships, family relationships, friendship relationships, or even just casual acquaintances.
In addition, people with tinnitus are very often unable to get a good night's sleep, or any consistent sleep at all, for long periods of time consecutively.
This type of sleep deprivation can cause hallucinations, delusions and - in extreme cases - psychosis.
Although tinnitus is often addressed and treated based on what is causing it, there are many other remedies one could try to help alleviate the condition.
One of the common solutions to this hearing condition is a tinnitus masker.
These are devices which are very similar to hearing aids except that it produces a sound that is supposed to suppress or mask the ringing in the ears.
Tinnitus maskers can be very effective especially for those who could not find any effective solution to their tinnitus.
Since the ringing in one's ear can be distracting, the sounds given off by the tinnitus masker can help drown out the ringing.
Most of the time, the sounds are natural relaxing sounds like the sound of ocean waves, rain fall, white noise, and many more.
This way the tinnitus sufferer would find it easier to sleep, think, and concentrate.
The constant use of tinnitus maskers is also believed to promote habituation which means that your brain gets used to hearing the sounds from the device and in effect, would be desensitized to the ringing caused by tinnitus.
There are even some rare cases when the tinnitus is suppressed after extensive wearing of a tinnitus marker.