DIY Low-Level Laser Therapy for Tinnitus on a Budget — LLLT Under 100,-

Well I'm not convinced either. But Ive to do something. Today I am pretty good but yesterday was awful. Loudness changes about +- 20% and thats enough to go from bearable to torture for me.

I wouldn't mind to spend more money on it. Actually I would pay 100k to get rid of it. But in this case 1k for a commercial lllt is a rip off. 30€ is worth a try. Even just for the nice warming of the ears.

Concerning the cause, its just that I don't know for sure. I had definitely no depression before but after 2month every day suffering I was depressed. Not clinically but in every other way. Even though I take Mirtazapin its just for sleeping, concerning mood I don't feel a difference beside not being sleep deprived anymore. Well, stressed I was, but 've been before more stressed. Also stress imho its never a cause, can just be a trigger.

The reason why I gonna try it is I have definetly hearing loss. Hearing test shows it. But more important: I use a cicada sound on my cell phone for masking. Usually even on very low volume it helps. I guess its somehow related to residual inhibition, otherwise I can't explain why its so effective. So must be in the frequency range of my T. Here is the thing. On my left ear where I have my T I can hear this cicada sound very badly. When I hear it with my right ear loud and clearly I hear with my left just nothing. This was so very strange to notice, because before T I never was aware of me being partial deaf.

What I did next was to use a sine generator and good earphones, set volume to very low level and check full frequency range up to 20khz. I've found some notches where I have HHL.

 

Btw after a lot of pondering about the true character and origin of T I've come to the following conclusion. This is only my personal way of explaining it. Maybe other people experience T differently.

For me it seems that there is definetly damage in the inner ear. This is part of the T conception but not all of it. I compare the stimulus from ear damage to a splinter. Depending pn the strength of this stimulus AND depending on the predisposition, the brain then begins then to either tune it in or out. I compare it to either get an inflammation of the splinter or encapsulate it.

If the brain tunes in it really feels like an inflammation of the nerves, making the original stimulus stronger, which is then conceived as T. It can lead to reactiveness, H and other strange behavios, e.g. somatic components.

To get rid of T you can either work on the splinter or on the inflammatory reaction to it. I will try to do both...

 

Well I've been doing mine religiously,10 days and then 10 days break as suggested and so far nothing really to speak of but admittedly it's still early days.

40 minutes a day using 808mw.

 

Safety Notice:

I had not considered this.

Before anyone starts ordering these parts and shining lasers up their ears please consider that my university only uses laser up to 60mW for safety reasons, and that I will be monitoring the spot of incidence on the tympanic membrane Every Second. I'll also be using my physics background to calculate the proper incidence of light. A focused laser on the eardrum is not wise.

Instead you can also buy 8x 10W Red LED floodlights. http://www.banggood.com/Multicolor-...Light-Lamp-Accessories-DC9-12V-p-1039799.html
They are much easier to power as laser diodes require a stabilized power source with net spiking protection. When you get 8x they only cost 11,00 Euros in total and you can't really hurt yourself with them unless you shine them in your eyes.

 

Fortunately I have a physics background as well.

 

Haha that's great! We can calculate the safe incidence together, to be honest I could use some help in certain areas.

 

Hey @Cityjohn I'd like to help whereever I can.
I have a master degree in physics and good understanding in electrical engineering. But well, doesn't really help in case of T.

Concerning the LLLT I really will do it in an simple way. 100mW is no risk if not focused on a spot.

 

Of course I'm sad we're both here but still happy to meet you I'm an undergrad in Amsterdam, I graduated in constructive engineering before this. Since I know so little I could really use some help in a few key things.
There are three experiments I'm going to do in June that I've reserved the lab for.

0. There has been an extensive survey collected here on TT and I'm still trying to analyze it but I'm not quite used to analyzing words and making histograms from 2D matrices in either Origin or using Python. I could really use some ideas on how to extract relevant data here.
1. To perform a BERA test and improve upon it by graphing a 2D surface across multiple frequencies, not just the click sound. This is limited to sounds with a wavelength of 5ms. This might yield an objective way to diagnose tinnitus and its location in the auditory path. I will have a group of 8 people with and without tinnitus participating. I'm hoping my signal processing skills may come in handy here.
2. To test the optical space in human (skin) and pig tissues (brain), and measure the wavelengths of the chromophores including cytochrome c oxidase inside all these tissues to see what light source we really need and whether we can do Deep LLLT up to the brainstem, perhaps through the mouth I will calibrate human vs pig as best I can and I will check the light sources I ordered from Banggood.
3. To build my LLLT device and perform the therapy for one month on two people. I will be recording with the new BERA test, a calibrated audio system audiometry at home, and at the end audiometry and Otoacoustic emissions test at the autiology center. I'll do it right, and if it works, it works. If it doesn't we can destroy the efficacy discussion forever.

I have a lot of experience with experimentation and field work and my methodology is very accurate. I even wrote the worlds best course on collecting quality astronomical data. But my concern is with the quality of paper I can write, my grades on papers may have been influenced by extreme time constraints but I'm still likely overlooking many things.
My intention is to do grass roots research with people here and then publish it.
Any help or pointers herein would be so greatly appreciated.

 

@Cityjohn: I appreciate your initiative.
Maybe you like to discuss it a little. I'm curious!

my remarks/thoughts/questions.

0: I'm really intrigued by this, especially since T seems in all parameters to be so similar and different at the same time, e.g. cause, reactivity, severity, impact on life.
I read about Tinninet research initiative which is also addressing the heterogeneity of T.
This forum contains a lot of information, but I doubt it will be easy to extract statistically useful data out of it, since not randomized, key parameters are not defined and highly subjective etc. Do you have already some issues in mind?

1. How do you expect to extract the T signal out of BERA data? I guess you are trying to get an objective measure of the T. The Tinninet did a meta study and criticized that there is no standard for T measurement and the measurement is all very subjective:
http://trialsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13063-016-1399-9


2.-3. I will keep you updated about my self-made LLLT project. I have absolutely no expectation that it works, so no placebo effect. . I will post some pics and do some basic tests about penetration. My setup will be 650nm laser on one side and 808nm on the other side. In one session you switch sides to get both wavelength. I will use an old head phone as mounting. No MC control, since I don't need it sophisticated. Don't need power regulation or pulsing, since I do believe in its relevance even less.

 

@Marlino

0. I just posted the survey data in the Team Research forum, please have a look.
Yes I do have some issues in mind but more than anything I think this survey should serve us to create a new one, that is designed to be statistically significant.

1. I'm going to change the BERA a little instead of using just a click I'll try multiple frequencies to see if the auditory pathway produced a different response. This way you don't have to calibrate the same person before and after tinnitus. It's like taking an qEEG of the auditory cortex and comparing the non-tinnitus afflicted part with the tinnitus afflicted part, if there is a change in perception there should hopefully be a change in voltage.

2-3 Yeah I'll do the same, post some setup pictures.

 

@Cityjohn Thanks for sharing all of this information. I'm super curious how your research will go. Please keep us updated and, if possible, post some pictures of your self-built device. Let me know if I can help in any way.

I'm now considering buying the parts you posted and building my own laser. Have to sleep over it a few nights and think through how I can build it.

 

I'm posting a small update to let everyone know what's been going on.

Until now I have tested and looked into:

- Home audiometry to objectively see if there is improvement over time. I'll only be doing another profesional audiometry when I have completed the entire treatment. That will include an otoacoustic emissions test which I don't think I can reproduce at home as I can't find a microphone that small. For this I use a program called 'Free Hearing Test' from http://www.freehearingtestsoftware.com/, I set my volume digitally through the computer (0-100) to where I can just barely hear a 10khz tone at 50% amplitude on my Sennheiser inner ear monitor, which have a very flat response curve (you can check response curves for different head/ear-phones here http://www.headphone.com/pages/build-a-graph).
The reason I use this program is because it can output the data in a format I can later reduce to make statistically valid, and it also makes a chart every time so it's powerful and easy to do. Every time I measure I'll follow a procedure to make sure the system is calibrated, and then go through the motions which takes about 3 minutes each time. This is an excellent way for everyone here to objectively detect changes in their hearing when doing LLLT at home. Diagnostics and objective measurements will be key in any experiment.

- Diode powering is hard because they have special needs. I'm trying to find out how I can most easily and cheaply do this. I'm pretty sure the way to go is with battery power. I have a lab power supply to substitute until then. I'll be testing all sorts of diodes in Juli, they all require different power setups.

- Diode heat levels to make sure the heat is properly vented or water cooled away. I have ordered some silicon tubing, water cooling blocks, and a pump to be sure that I can dissipate the heat produced. Especially those 10W red diodes produce reach around 100 degrees pretty quickly at full power so they need proper cooling.
Heat is also important because it reveals the efficacy of energy to light conversion which means that we need to factor it in when we calculate safe levels of exposure by using the input energy.

- Diode focusing and diffusion will be required to control the spot size on the location of entry into the body to ensure safety and to calculate fluence. I've been thinking of multiple ways to do this, using cheap tiny lenses or some plastic seems to be the easiest way.

- My power supply stability and ripple current because I am too lazy to build a current regulated circuit and laser diodes need ridiculously stable currents and voltages that do not change when they heat up. There are small and easy to make circuits one can build to provide a stabilized current source using batteries.

- Otoscoping on my partner to see if I can use the otoscope as a laser guider and mount. Preferable I'll mount a video chip on it so that I can guide them myself on my PC screen. The otoscope really provides an excellent way to reach the eardrum but it'd be cumbersome to have to hold it in place.

- Biological samples will need to be gathered so I've made some calls to people that may be able to provide me with a human skulls to study, some brain tissues, etc. If anyone could help me here that would be great.

 

- Light guiding after penetration.

I have done some general tissue light penetration tests this evening and have found something striking. There is a very big difference between seemingly similar parts of the body when it comes to transmission. Some parts but centimeters away from another have a transmission rate 100 times greater which is quite interesting. It seems that cartilage caries red light around and between bones which gives me an ability to guide light after it enters the body, this is a pleasant surprise I had not expected.

- Addressing LLLT energy supply concerns.

Furthermore I had thought about the concern that not enough energy could reach where we want it. For comparison a 9 mm bullet fired from a hand gun carries 500 J of energy at the muzzle. If we do a little bad physics we could say that's equivalent to 500W.

Suppose we light the surface with 5 Watts of light, and only 1% or 5*10^-2 W or 0.05 W went through. This is only 4 orders of magnitude difference with that bullet. To put that into perspective, you would have to irradiate your head for 3 hours of irradiation to achieve the same energy as that bullet.

Now Suppose we light the surface with 5 Watts of light, and only 0.001% or 5*10^-5 W or 0.00005 W went through. This is 7 orders of magnitude difference with that bullet. To put that into perspective, you would have to irradiate your head for 116 days to achieve the same energy as that bullet.

If you have a home laser, it will probably supply around 50 mW or 5*10^-2 W of which maybe 1% or 5*10^-4 w could make it to your inner ear. Which would take 11 days of continuous use to have the same energy impact as the bullet.

Obviously I've compared to completely different things here but if energy is what the body needs to heal in the form of ATP then it's a good exercise to work out how much it would need. Dosage here seems to be pretty important but not quite in the same way that I've read most LLLT home lasers are setup to supply.
Of course not all of that energy will be used by the mitochondria, studies have shown they only use about half of the incoming light. I don't believe using lasers is particularly of benefit if we are going to effectively do LT, power over accuracy seems to be the way to go here. Some studies show that about 0.5-0.7% gets through the skull with tissues. This specific trans-cranial study shows a loss of about 2 orders of magnitude, so also 1%. (http://bja.oxfordjournals.org/content/84/1/38.long)

 

Hi @Cityjohn . Thanks. Interesting read.
You do not mention wavelength. I do understand there is quite a difference between, lets say, 600nm and 800 nm penetration wise. Have you looked at that too?

 

Ah yes, I had tested it with 10 Watt LEDs that have a broad wavelength between 600 and 650 nm. The LED is around 25% efficient, you can easily place two next to each other to have the same number of Watts as the gun round and make a calculation easy. A precise spectrographic and efficacy analysis may follow.

Now concerning wavelength, studies show that cytochrome c oxidase reacts best to 635nm and 830nm. But I'm finding it exceedingly difficult to find actual spectrographic data since everyone just uses LED's available to them on the market... This is a good paper that did a spectrographic study, finding 600nm to be the absorption wavelength, but they didn't go up to 800nm. http://www.jbc.org/content/238/8/2859.full.pdf

Without exact data I can't determine if it would be best to use the energy dense, easily refracting through cartiledge (and thus guidable), but easily blocked 600nm or rather the energy poor, non refractive, but deeper reaching 830nm. That's why I need to do a spectrographic analysis of a pigs or human cadaveric brain. I had thought about contacting a morgue to ask if I could study a human head for an afternoon after they freshly extract the brain.

More research about LT has gone into this thread than Konftec ever did, maybe I should have called it the LT research thread.

 

Human brainless head from the morgue !

That's the spirit

 

Haha, well it seemed much simpler than the calculations I was planning to do.

 

I stumbled on this device while browsing YT. I wonder if anyone here is using it...

 

Hey CityJohn!
How is your status?

 

I have received everything I need to start building, it's a box filled with crap from watercooling to optoeletronics. I'm also finished conceptually designing the primary rig for the experiment I think will yield the best results, so I'll do that one first. I have spent somewhere between 80-120,- but much of the crap I got won't eventually end up in the rig. I've got a really hard exam on Monday and some other business to take care of after my 10 day studying lock up, so I'll be starting my build around this Wednesday. My design is based around the skeletal and muscular anatomy, at least in as much as I've examined it the last couple of weeks.
The brainless human head at the more would really be a great tool to examine this practically insteaf of theoretically but I haven't contacted a pathologist that performs sections yet.



There's been a question on my mind recently about the light. I know many home laser systems have a pulse rate based on almost no science other than the penetration depth issue, but I've been wondering if there is an amplitude modulation that could lend the influx of photons to be used more efficiently, or maybe stimulate the tissue different. To that end I've been searching for anything I could think of regarding on pulsed light but there's really nothing on it. If anyone knows more, please let me know.

So I'll start by taking some of the electronics to university and testing the spectra and efficiency/luminosity with a spectrograph to set the experimental parameters. Then I'd like to perform and calibrate an ABR (BERA) test on myself. I'll probably do both in one day.
I'm unsure as to the support I'll get at uni, but undoubtedly professors will wander in daily to see what's going on and discuss the experiment with me, some great input I'm sure.

I tried the lasers today and I can easily create a thick parallel beam with them. This means I can pretty much use them perfectly safely and they have the same power as whatever Dr. Wilden uses. I do believe he uses 632nm though, I'm not sure if that's more beneficial as Cytochrome C oxidase has been shown (albeit in 1963) to peak around 600nm, so with my 650 I'd be exactly completely off. Dr. Hamblin however suggests otherwise so it'll be a thrill finding out.



Other than this nothing much is new.

 

My parts arrived as well. Actually I try the easiest solution taking the 808nm laser, removing the lens, connecting it to 5V power supply and plugging it straight into my left ear.

Have little hope that this nonsense will help but well, what are the options...
If it works I will look into the science behind this.

I like the warmth of it though!

 

Nice diode dude! I have no idea what's going on and unfortunately I'm going to jail tomorrow or I would read the studies, talk about the worst place for T. plus I need a hearing aid masker and I don't know if they will let me have it in jail.. I really hope this thread is still going when I get out because I'm gunna check back - to me this seems like you are doing some groundbreaking experiments/ research. Thank you and pray for my sanity.

 

Sorry to hear that, hang tough brother, we'll keep it going.

 

Since 100mw laser doesn't really seem to be intense I ordered a red led 660nm 5w.

I don't expect laser to be superior to led, since scattering in the tissue will destroy coherence immediately.
Or does anybody knows it to be differently?

I presume the most likely effect of lllt is some kind of either psychological or physical focus switching to the radiated parts and to increase blood flow there with some benefits. Comparable to autogenic training.

 

@Cityjohn: hows your motivation? Still in the need of doing something or is T for you a minor issue now?

 

Lol, don't worry I'm motivated every night

Yes there is a difference I believe. Suppose you have 2 layers of tissue separated by air, if you irradiate the first layer with a small dot the tissue itself will act as a bulb directing the light to the next surface. But if you primarily use a broad arc light source you'll get much less penetration and much more absorption/scattering. It's just a geometric effect.

Lol that's funny I did three/four months of research first and I haven't even started yet. But I suppose it's my intention to maybe write a publication or two, and maybe do a serious clinical.

Actually LT is quite involved in the mitochondria and neural factors that it generates, which are in turn involved in tissue repair and neurogenesis in the CNS. These are the two main sources to start with;
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3288797/
http://jcb.rupress.org/content/early/2016/06/07/jcb.201605101.1.abstract

 

Haha that's good to hear. It'd be a loss otherwise.

Concerning the geometrical effect, I'm sure to be able to focus the light of a led sufficiently. One the other hand you need to broaden laser beam not to burn a hole in your eardrum

About this mitochondria stuff...well...possible, but imho unlikely. But even if true it most likely doesn't require laser light.

 

Awesome, I will. I hope that when I get out you've found a treatment and you'll be rich and I'll pay whatever for the treatment.

 

Haha, thats the only benefit of it...making you aware of huge business opportunities.


Actually the laser works...at least if you take Dr Wildens assertion seriously, that: if it gets worse first it's a good sign and shows improvement in the long term
It has been one of my worst days today. Even outside during horse riding it came constantly into my mind