Hello Members

Hi,
I am new to the forum and hope to find some helpful information as well as support fellow tinnitus sufferers. I've had tinnitus for 7 years and have not found any relief from prescription meds and am looking to try some advanced therapies that people have found successful. I have no underlying health problems, but think my T was caused by a medication I was prescribed 7 years ago for a years duration. I also had a series of ear infections, which may have contributed.

My T is in both ears and has been continuous for all these years, however it has worsened this past year. Like for many of us, sleep is challenging, both falling asleep and getting back to sleep. I am convinced I do not get enough (or any?) deep REM sleep, which contributes to other problems in daily life.
I am taking ginko and Vit. B, but am interested in any other self-help OTC things that may help. I'm not sure if they are helping, but they don't seem to increase it. I especially want to learn about masking, white and pink noise, CBT therapy and brain exercises.

I find having this condition can be very discouraging, and stressful, and I hope communicating with others may help.
I appreciate everyone's time, experience, stories and will read all the posts on the forum. Thank you for the support.
Mary

 

Did you do a hearing test? If so what does your audiogram look like?

 

Yes, I had my hearing tested and it was normal and showed no hearing loss.

 

Welcome to the forum. For CBT therapy, you can contact Dr. Hubbard in the Doctor's Corner. He specializes in CBT. In fact he wrote a success story about his own tinnitus struggle and how using CBT techniques have helped him. Here is the link :
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/how-cbt-helped-me-live-again-dr-hubbards-story.4608/

Not sure what you mean by brain exercises. If you mean mindfulness meditation, then you can contact Dr. Gans in the Doctor's Corner. These initial questions to the doctors are free. Besides asking the doctors, you can also search the forum with 'CBT' or 'mindfulness' and find many prior discussions on them. For masking, here are some suggestions below. Try to set the masking volume slightly below your tinnitus so that your brain can gradually learn to accept the presence of T and hopefully habituate to it. Take care. God bless.

1) Mask at bed time if having trouble sleeping, by using a sound pillow or sound machine with pillow speakers. There are good sound machine & pillow therapy systems like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Oasis-...d-Oasis-Therapy-System-Speakers/dp/B00MH5HKTA

2) If you need masking on the go, try load an ipod with nature sounds or music using itune. If you have a smart phone, you can download free APPs for soothing or T-masking sounds. Use wisdom in the use of headphones or earbuds as extended use or excessive volume may hurt your ears. Try set the volume slightly below that of your tinnitus.

3) With PC & speakers, you can try these excellent masking sounds to see which one masks best:

TT's excellent audio player: https://www.tinnitustalk.com/audioplayer/

or this online sound library, particularly the self-mix nature sounds: https://mynoise.net

or download free sound generator ‘aire freshener’: http://www.peterhirschberg.com/mysoftware.html

or click play to mix these sounds with this simple sound generator: http://asoftmurmur.com/

or search youtube with words like 'tinnitus masking sounds', 'white noise', 'rain sound' etc.

 

Sorry to hear you have had T for so long.
I think sleep somehow plays an important role in all this random nonsense.
Not had any luck with 'masking' although I do find talk radio on low in the background is a useful distraction.
Sadly my T seems to hates White, Pink and Brown noise. Others on here have had success though and will help you more with that, especially @Michael Leigh .
Its worth trying either L-Tryptophan or Melatonin for sleep if you haven't yet. Both work well for me.
I hope today is a better one for you.
X

 

Then if your T is tonal you may be a good candidate for sound therapy. You can try to match your pitch/frequency here.

 

Thank you billie48 , Kelvin and GregCA. All your input was very helpful. I will start my research and keep you posted.