Brai3n Tinnitus Clinic

Can you disclose what did qEEG show in your case? Did they find neural overactivity in your auditory cortex?

 

Some will need to increase their dose and some will actually reduce their dose.

There is a lot of political correctness out there now about benzos and narcotics and I think the pendulum has swung too far so that patients who would benefit are being denied helpful medications. I do agree that this has resulted from sloppy over-prescribing however.

 

Jan Ost described it as overtensioning of the muscles what he saw as I described it in the intake. But remember also a lot of the scan is directly thrown away as they compare the normal "in rest" results with the "overactivity" results. I think that the scan is far from accurate enough to show which part of the brain has the overactivity although I could be wrong.

As I am absolutely clueless on how these scans work (I think by measuring small current changes through your hairs) it is unclear how they determine which spots are overactive. So I don't know how they pick out the spots on your head they will put the stickers on to stimulate. Jan Ost said that they compare each scan to people of the same age without tinnitus from a dataset they apparently have.

And no, never got any in depth info on what was measured, where my overactivity was etc.
The follow up meeting I did was with De Ridder (I insisted on that) and not with Jan Ost as I would first liked to hear what de Ridder had to say about my medication for TMJ tinnitus.
After all most doctors that treat you for TMJ don't know about tinnitus. And I hoped for De Ridder to know both as he is a brain surgeon. And yes, he does know about a lot of drugs. He said that the drugs I was prescribed for pain (as my pain fluctuates with T) also were tested for T but only deanxit + rivotril were partially succesful.

So in general I would say only do the QEEG if you also plan on doing the neuromodulation otherwise it's 200 euro's emptied from your wallet just like me because I didn't do the neuromodulation (yet). Maybe later when I am in a much better financial position.

If you don't plan on doing the scan you can always try deanxit + rivotril first if you like. It's the way to go anyways by De Ridder's preference for quite some of patients.

I would have hoped that they would have mailed me with the QEEG results. I will try to get these results over e-mail anyways as I paid for them to process the scan.

 

I visited Brai3n early 2019. They gave me a qEEG but I never tried the neuromodulation. Sounded too experimental for me. I'm despirate sometimes, but not that desperate to try some experimental treatment. Certainly would not want an increase in tinnitus or hyperacusis.

 

I’ve been on HD-tES for about two weeks now. My tinnitus is unchanged—even worse on the evenings after treatment the same day. Quite a lot of money in the river—but what do you do when you are desperate...

The individual meetings has a professional level and they really take tinnitus seriously but Dr. Boedt had obviously not communicated with the rest of the team before my meeting—it was more of a parallel work, f.e. Dr. Boedt had his own clinic and Jan Ost his own etc.

It is strange that the clinic do not test audio frequencies over 9000 Hz since hearing loss can appear above that.

I don’t know what else to say. Not sure which direction Brai3n goes as a clinic. It seems like trial and error work. From what I understand, they work to stimulate several spots on the brain with an EEG-cap. My feeling is that the brain is so fucking complex that stimulation is a dead end when it comes to tinnitus treatment.

 

Thanks for the feedback. I'm also meeting Dr. De Ridder this Thursday and I will do an EEG on the brain but am not willing to go for the brain stimulation.

Are there other treatments that they offer like the Ketamine treatment?

 

Regarding Ketamine—not that I know of. I've read some about it though.

Wish you the best of luck!

 

Prof. Dirk De Ridder said recently Ketamine is not the right drug and was looking at combining medical grade Psilocybin or MDMA with brain stimulation.

Sounded wacky to me for a top researcher, I have to admit.

How is the Deanxit?

 

I dropped Deanxit after four days as I had a spike, but not sure if it was the drug or the tVNS I was doing at the time. But I decided to end it.

Prof. Dirk De Ridder recommended to do the tVNS as he thinks my tinnitus & hyperacusis is related to my vagus nerve being damaged.

The only thing that has helped me so far was the general anesthesia I had once for a surgery. I had a very low tinnitus for two months after it. I wish I could have general anesthesia every couple of months.

 

The psychedelic field has boomed in psychiatry research the last five years so I am not surprised Prof. Dirk De Ridder is curious about that combo. He seems like a little too curious perhaps, in general. But good thinkers are often a bit crazy, so maybe it's a good thing in the long run!

 

Now lemme get a general anaesthetic.

 

So I had a consultation with Dr. De Ridder. He looked tired and lacked the charisma of his podcast for sure.

He basically suggested Cyclobenzaprine for somatic tinnitus, but I told him it is not available in the UK. It has a unique Mechanism of Action so there is no alternative. He gave me a prescription for Flupentixol 0.5 mg, LDN 5 mg and Aripiprazole 2 mg. He warned me to take Clonazepam with it to prevent tardive dyskinesia that can occur but unlikely to at low dose Flupentixol. He did stress this, and that it can be hard to reverse even if it's rare. He said a low dose of Clonazepam would prevent this.

I introduced my research to a new medication called Latuda. He looked up the pharmacology as he was not familiar with it. After doing so, he said in theory it's a good choice based on action at specific receptors known to be involved in tinnitus.

He mentioned Mirtazapine can make tinnitus worse. He didn't seem well prepared in terms of looking at my MRI and audiogram I sent the week before the consultation. He seemed tired and flat looking, but easy to talk to. The appointment cost €85.

 

@Nick47, have you ever considered tDCS at Brai3n?

 

He asked if I could go to Belgium so he can do an EEG to see which parts of the brain show hyperactivity and target the medication more precisely. I can't afford to, and neither could I withstand the noise of a long, multi-faceted trip to be honest. Also, on podcasts he has said the benefit of treatment is often small and around 20-30% get benefit, so I was surprised he suggested it. He has recently spoken of the need for these 32 channel HD-tDCS machines, but I still have not seen ANY studies showing them to yield better results than standard tDCS. I think Brai3n already have the HD-tDCS machines.

There was a trial using the standard tDCS at Nottingham University this spring. They measured EEG alongside it and refined parameters based on systematic reviews they conducted prior. This was to establish the optimal number of sessions, duration and current. I messaged Bas Labree a few weeks ago who said the study had only just been sent in for publishment and would take around 6 months.