Dirk De Ridder Explores Ketamine and HD Transcranial Infraslow Pink Noise Stimulation (HD-tIPNS)

Yea I will post updates. I think it's too soon to report anything. I haven't noticed any significant changes yet.

 

Let's hope he is honest, because there is no money to be made here.

 

At least one person I am aware of on this forum tried a Ketamine infusion protocol with no impact on tinnitus.

My own experiences with NMDARs post tinnitus is that they universally seem to cause short term spikes.

Ketamine therapy is becoming increasingly available to the point that there are clinics in some states that do everything through the mail now, you just pay your fee and have a Zoom doctor guide your session.

I am vaguely interested in this; on the other hand, a single session costs the same as like three grams of pure Ketamine does on the street, so...

This is definitely not true, Ketamine is being seen as a goldmine by various mental health providers that are somewhere between "alt med" and "conventional". Some are well intentioned, others less so, but the upshot is that if you go to a clinic for a trivial dose of Ketamine it costs hundreds of dollars, vastly exceeding the price of simple therapy at the same clinic, and yet the costs to the provider are not that much higher (some additional insurance, and the trivial costs they pay for Ketamine and injectable supplies).

This is absolutely being pushed for financial reasons. The marketing is way ahead of the science, ex: https://ketamd.com/

 

What does that mean?

 

I'm pretty sure the price is high because you have to pay for the anesthesiologist which are never cheap.

 

You must be in the United States, $500 for a band aid.

 

It's an old horse tranquilizer, patent expired, so cheap as chips, plus toxic to urinary tract and liver, so not sustainable at high dose or long periods.

 

Nah, you don't need an anesthesiologist for this, and 100% don't with the sublingual stuff.

$200 for an office visit in the US is not that far outside of normal. People with good insurance often are less aware of this.

I have to buy private insurance for our family which costs $1880 a month, plus another $9000 in deductible before any coverage kicks in (which is then 100% for basically everything).

If you do the math there it means we're spending $31,560 a year post tax for family health insurance. This is average for the state. The state median income is $60,000 pre tax, so most people have to get plans through the exchanges which are government supplemented, which means, great, my tax money is subsidizing the insurance industry. (I have no problem whatsoever with my tax money helping pay healthcare costs for low income families; I dislike that 40% of it just goes into corporate pockets at Blue Cross).

The doses being used are claimed to not cause bladder damage.

Many of the formulations being attempted in the US use proprietary delivery mechanisms of one kind or another to provide a period of patent protection, but that's not the main thing driving the costs.

 

Dirk de Ridder is an absolute expert in tinnitus.

He wrote this article about sailing with Matteo de Nora (founder of the Tinnitus Research Initiative) and what to learn for tinnitus from that experience:

https://www.tinnitusresearch.net/images/files/migrated/downloads/americas_cup_2021.pdf

 

Does Matteo de Nora have tinnitus himself?

 

Yes, he has tinnitus himself. As far I know this guy spent a lot of money in funding. He is a millionaire living in New Zealand.

But we need more humans like him. It’s obviously not enough.

 

This is exactly how Psilocybin with mirror therapy works for phantom limb pain.

 

Psilocybin would be safer.

 

I think it would work regardless. The people with nerve pain from an amputation had severe trauma, and using psychedelics is effective for that. They are using psychedelics to reinterpret the signals from damaged nerves.

 

I'm extremely pleased and humbled that you actually asked him my question. Even though I was able to ask him myself directly, I still appreciate it. I have another appointment with him on the 31/8, which ironically happens to be the 3 year "anniversary" for my tinnitus.

 

I hope that some nice person out there -- who has lots of time on their hands -- can type out a transcription of the interview -- I listened to a bit of it, but it sends my tinnitus volume up.

Anyone else out there who can't listen to electronic audio? Any tips about how you listen to television? Maybe this is belongs on a different thread.

 

You can find it in the Podcast section of Tinnitus Talk, Joeseph. It's the orange label in the top right corner of the main page. Anyway, here's the transcript. Credentials go to @Andrea Rings for all the hard work.

 

Thank you Hazel & Christiaan.

 

Take it from someone who has used a lot of Ketamine. At first in very low doses I thought it was helping. At higher doses it spikes the tinnitus or doesn't do anything. I still do Ketamine because of the other benefits mentally I get. So I would have to agree with the above statement.

 

Is Dirk De Ridder's theory the most accurate theory we have? Are our hopes with him?

I wonder what he would have to say about OTO-313 which is a medicine for "tinnitus".

It was interesting to know that regenerative drugs may not work.

I feel so bad, knowing it won't be easy to be without this hell. I really enjoyed the Tinnitus Talk Podcast interview, I hope he is right in what he says.

Here on Tinnitus Talk I see a lot of people trying some treatments and saying "this or that doesn't do anything for my tinnitus", as he says, all treatments that exist are to minimize the suffering from tinnitus, and we all look for something that will reduce your volume, which does not exist.

 

It's natural for us to want the noise to go away, but what I got out of it was "We can't really do anything to directly reduce the noise, but if we make it so you don't care if the noise is there, we've solved the problem".

And moreso, it seems like the feedback loop - noise = reaction to noise = more noise = even more reaction to noise is reversible - once you stop caring about the noise, it starts to goes down. It's not just that treating the reaction is all he can really do right now, it's that it actually works.

 

Yea it seems like maybe there are two ways of fixing tinnitus:

1. Repair hearing/synapses
2. Stop the feedback loop in the brain generating the sound

Unless Dr. De Ridder is correct in that once the tinnitus is ingrained into our sense of self, repairing our hearing will have no effect?

 

I hope it comes down to some simple solution such as fixing the synapses or the hair cells.

Something tells me that we may be standing before some big new topic of study called "Architecture of the Cochlea" for want of a better term.

I'm a strange case: I had very sensitive hearing long before the onset of tinnitus -- years before. Was this hyperacusis?

• Some people have tinnitus
• Some people have hearing loss and deafness
• Some have hyperacusis
• and some have a combination of the above.

It's a smorgasboard.

 

So many of our hopes in so many studies are based on the improvement or elimination of tinnitus seen with hearing aids (for some) and Cochlear Implants (for many).

 

Another publication from Dirk De Ridder's team:

Is the posterior cingulate cortex an on-off switch for tinnitus?: A comparison between hearing loss subjects with and without tinnitus

 

It could even be the case that a repair job on the synapses brings the tinnitus tone down a few decibels.

Follow that with a job on the inner hair cells and you're half-way there.

Tune up the out hair cells and you almost got it.

Slow down the feedback loop and Hey Presto!

Nothing more to worry about... except the medical bills.

 

He can have all my money.