Treatment for Tinnitus?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have tinnitus - ringing in the ears - and my ear doctor admits that medicine has no cure for it.

So, I wonder if anyone else with tinnitus has had success with nontraditional methods, perhaps, acupuncture?

I’m a bit embarrassed to solicit info like this because I have always been skeptical of offbeat medicine. Until…

I was having these “heart attacks,” characterized by intense, often debilitating chest pain that would radiate down my left arm which also hurt like hell, and would render my arm weak, almost useless. The whole episode would last maybe 5 minutes.

There was nothing special that triggered the event. I could be strolling at the mall, or seated at a lecture, and Bang! Big time pain.

Got an exam and an EKG by my GP. Normal. Even went back a couple of times, and once had the attack in the midst of the EKG. Still, my heart was normal.

He sent me to a cardiologist. EKG and Angiogram both normal. Happened to mention this to my Dentist. “CHIROPRACTOR!” he boomed.

He gave me a name, I went. He crunched my spine and cracked my neck - once to the left, once to the right. I guess he did this weekly X 3, and now I go once a month and no longer suffer those noncardiac-related heart attacks.

Today, I asked him if he could tell me specifically why his treatments have me helped me so. The short answer: no. Which makes me :slight_smile:

My chirporactor can’t help with the tinnitus, so I’m hoping there might be possibilities of relief with acupuncture, or whatever.

Recommendations, anyone?

2

Man, that sucks. My father has the same thing and he also says that there’s no cure that he’s heard of. It would be cool if someone has a cure for it though…

3

I had a bicycle accident 7 years ago, and hit my head on the pavement. My ears are still ringing, and they are going to do it every day until I die. If I’m smack in middle age, and I live out the other half, my ears will have been ringing for more than half of my life. There is no kind of treatment anyone has ever devised to get rid of it. Man, that’s depressing…

Sorry to hear that you have it, too.

4

Mine have been ringing for 18 of my 36 years, compliments of an extremely loud concert in high school.

I can’t sleep in total quiet - the ringing keeps me awake, so I employ “white noise” to drown out the tones.

Have any of you that do have it experienced a brief increase in “volume” every once in a while? It really creeps me out when it happens.

5

Mine seems to crank up in bad weather. Might be something to do with changes in atmospheric pressure.

It sometimes seems to be especially bad at night. When it is and I’m in bed, I try think of other things. Lately, I’ve been imagining how I’ll split up my PowerBalll winnings. Everyone in my family becomes a millionaire.
:slight_smile:

6

Have you considered Tinnitus masking?
I’ve had a few patients who tried it and reported relief. Not a cure, but diminution of the symptoms.

QtM, MD

BTW, you probably want to beware of some of the other treatments offered at that site. Take 'em with a shaker of salt.

Actually, if you have tinnitus, you should avoid salt, as excess sodium can make symptoms worse. Alcohol, caffiene and tobacco too.

7

Thank you, Qadgop.

I’ll check out the site exactly as you suggested. (Don’t drink or smoke, but I’ll work on the salt and caffeine. I use too much of the former and drink far too much coffee. )

8

http://www.tinnitus-hyperacusis.com/Staff/staff.html
http://drjho.com/id75.htm
www.mercola.com/2000/may/28/lidocaine_tinnitus.htm

9

Now that I think about it, my tinnitus got a lot better (less loud) when I dropped alcohol and caffiene from my diet.

I’ve heard that the masking works quite well. For sleeping, I like to keep some noise in the form of pink noise (there is a difference between that and white noise, but it’s slightly complex. A musician friend of mine who works with old school synths told me that the harmonics in the upper frequencies in white noise can damage hearing even at low levels if it’s played too long. Pink noise turns down the amplitude on the higher frequencies which somehow makes it less harsh).

I’ve also noticed that I can “turn down” the volume which helps when I wear ear plugs to sleep. I find that even when I stop thinking about turning it down, I don’t hear it as much.

10

Tinnitus is one thing I really wish that I never have to suffer from.

On the other hand, gangrene of the testicles…

Seriously though, there seems to be some great treatment being devised at a University not far from where I live.

This is the first link I found, but I’m sure there’s more.

Tinnitus treatment

11

I suggest that you see the best specialist that your insurance or finances will permit. The Shea Clinic in Memphis, for example, has an excellent reputation.

I am not disparaging acupuncture, but my one experience indicates the need to be skeptical when choosing a practitioner. I went to see one about chronic pain from a foot injury. The first visit cost about $100 and consisted of the practitioner asking me a few questions and then explaining the fee structure: two months of visits for a total cost of several thousand dollars – the first half had to be paid before I received a single treatment, and the single half had to be paid midway. The man never even looked at my foot. I was desperate and would’ve been willing to pay for one treatment at a time, but I couldn’t bring myself to fork over thousands of dollars in advance when I had no evidence it would work, there was no guarantee and no recourse if I wasn’t satisfied.

12

I’ve got it, and have had it for over 20 years. It started after a bad case of the flu.

Occasionally it gets pretty loud, and stays that way for a couple of months; most of the time it’s less obtrusive, but it’s always quite noticeable. When it gets loud I look around the web for treatments, but I haven’t found any that sound terribly convincing outside of masking.

I do drink alcohol and cola, but I’ve never found that cutting those out for a while made any difference. There’s a long list of drugs that are known to increase it as well, but none of the ones I’ve taken have ever made any difference either. But obviously, different people react differently.

The way I deal is just to dissociate the fact that I’m hearing it from any emotional reaction to it. Not to get all Buddhist about the whole thing, but it’s the reaction that drives you crazy, not the noise. So I treat it like I would crickets: there they are, not much I can do about it, go to sleep.