Lithium Possibly Helping Tinnitus — Feeling Hopeful

Hey folks. I've been on and off this board for two and a half years now and have had quite the journey with tinnitus. Mine was caused and then exacerbated by psych meds, specifically Wellbutrin, Lamictal, and Tegretol. At one point I had the miracle of it going away for a few months, but upon taking Tegretol it came back. (See my other posts for my full story, at one point during which I was suicidal.)

I have recently started working with a truly brilliant psychiatrist, which has made me realize just how ineffective many doctors I had seen in the past were or that some of them even made my mental health worse. There are a lot of really shitty "doctors" out there. But that is beside the point for me because of this absolute genius I have found.

My psychiatrist has used clear evidence to make me understand I do have Bipolar II Disorder, and that is what must be treated if my depression is ever going to lift. Given what Lamictal and Tegretol did to me, drugs of the anticonvulsant class were out of the question, so he prescribed me Lithium Carbonate, which he said would work synergistically with the Latuda that I already take. It has been two and a half weeks now and we have gotten the dosage up to 1,200 mg daily. In the past few days I have noticed a clear increase in my mood, and while my tinnitus is still there, it is bothering me less. This is very encouraging for me, as this is exactly what happened the last time my tinnitus improved, although this was a natural change in my mood last time, no medication involved. However, I have a lot of hope both in this new medication and the most intelligent and compassionate medical practitioner I have ever met.

Looking back on the past ten years of my life, I realize it has been dominated by my mental illness. The "up" periods of hypomania where I make bad decisions and get myself into trouble and the "down" periods of depression where I can't even get out of bed. And the fact that I can flip so quickly between the two, usually from up to down. My doctor is convinced that we can use medication get my symptoms into remission and also feels there is a good chance that once I am stable the tinnitus (or at least the emotional effect it has on me) will subside as well. I am feeling very, very hopeful.

 

I'll be deeply curious to hear what you have to say about this 12 months down the line.

 

@linearb I know from our messages in the past you are generally anti-medication. Do you mean this in a truly curious way or more of a skeptical one? Either way is fine, I'm just wondering.

 

I meant that I'm interested in your experience and will be interested to hear how it develops. I certainly hope you are on to something for yourself, and that if things continue to go well you come back to give us an update.

Also, have you noticed any side effects from the lithium? I was on it for a while decades ago, seem to remember some shakiness and stuff, but I was probably on other meds at the same time so who knows.

I have seen some (placebo?) mild mood improvement from occasional supplementation with lithium orotate, but the dose of lithium involved there is a tiny shred of what you get from a pharmaceutical.

 

@linearb So far no tremors - my psychiatrist did warn me about them but I haven't experienced any. Here are the side effects I am experiencing:

1. VERY frequent urination. Doc said this would likely pass or he can prescribe something else to stop it. You really have to stay hydrated because Lithium is a salt so extra water + side effect of frequent urination = lots of trips to the bathroom.

2. The past couple days I just feel a little out of it, like my head is foggy. I'm going to assume that this is my body getting used to the medication and that it will pass.

Very good point about the Xanax. I have bounced around to over ten different psychiatrists in the past 8 years and I have finally found the right one. He did a full intake, i.e., 8 sessions, some of which were 1.5 hours, before making any diagnoses or writing any prescriptions and also did a very thorough review of my history I sent him outside of our sessions. I trust him inherently as both my psychiatrist and my therapist. Generally psychiatrists are not great therapists, but he is not an outdated practitioner or psychoanalyst - he practices modern CBT and DBT therapy. In that sense the "one-stop shopping" is nice. I have more faith now than at any point since my tinnitus returned over a year ago. I truly believe this man can and will help me, with both my mental health and my tinnitus. I no longer want to live an impaired, frightening life, where I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop (depression). I just want to be stable and happy enough. Will keep everyone posted.

 

@linearb and others - 1 week update: Lithium seems to be my wonder drug. I feel more balanced than ever. My depressive symptoms have receded but I'm not in a state of hypomania. I have been depressed since March 2015 and in this past week I finally feel normal again. Side effects are minimal: I have to pee a lot and sometimes I feel fatigued.
Now, what about the tinnitus? Well, it's still there but my emotional response to it is so much lower. If it is there and it doesn't bother me, it might as well not be there, right? I'm not quite there yet, but I seem to be heading in that direction. Making lots of positive changes in life.

As far as tinnitus goes, it is clearly a lot worse if there is an underlying mental health problem - in my case bipolar disorder. I used to think bipolar disorder is such a big deal and there is a huge stigma. It is only a big deal if it is not treated and you keep cycling through hypomania or mania and depression. In the case of Bipolar II (my case) you spend a lot more time in the downs of depression than the ups of hypomania. I'm 30 years old and look back at the last 8 years of my life since graduating college. On one hand I have accomplished so much but on the other hand my mental illness has wreaked havoc in my life. I would struggle through months and months of depression waiting for it to lift. I got in relationships with absolutely psychotic women with severe personality disorders who abused me - when depressed I took the abuse, when hypomanic I thought I could make the relationship work by doing everything right. Wrong - they are hopeless to have any sort of good life. I abused alcohol. I was arrested twice. I thought I was just fighting my way through life but my amazing psychiatrist has shown me that there is another way to live. And it seems like Lithium is the medication to get me there. My 20's were full of ups and downs but I am confident that my 30's will be much more stable and fulfilling. And I truly believe that my tinnitus will soon be a thing of the past and I will be able to post in Success Stories. It has gotten better before, it will get better again. Thank you for all your support.

 

I have been taking Lithium Orotate for a few weeks and it seems to have consistently kept my tonal tinnitus lower. However it doesn't do much for the whistle or hiss that I have. It seems to work best if I take it at night. Since taking it I have had a lot better sleep and it has been easier to relax at night. I have been calmer and after a few weeks it seems like I have become much more rational when certain problems arise. I have had much better and even moods. I also seem to be having more dreams and if I take a short nap I am more likely to wake up refreshed whereas before I would usually wake up more groggy. I have not had really dreadful feelings laying at bed at night like I had some nights before taking it and I have much more willpower to do things.

The side effects I seem to notice is that I have drier eyes. I have been currently taking 2.5mg of Lithium Orotate at night which is half a tablet. It is a supplement you can buy and there are multiple companies that sell it. You can look up reviews from other people on Amazon.

I just figured I would share this information with you all in case you were interested.

 

I initially heard about therapeutic lithium from a friend who had suffered from severe depression for many years, and eventually tried the prescription medication, lithium carbonate (which IIRC, was a form that was able to be patented). He was desperate to get relief from his depression, but the nasty side effects he experienced made him stop taking it within short order. This apparently occurs quite often.

One day he was in a health food store, and noticed a bottle of lithium (50 mcg) and decided to give it a try. After taking just one capsule, he woke up the next day with his depression totally gone. This extraordinary experience occurred by taking just 1/6,000 of the dosage of the 300 mg/tablet lithium carbonate. He later discovered the carbonate form is extremely hard for the body to absorb and use, thus the need to take such high amounts to get any effect at all for depression.

In my own research, I discovered that for the longest time, researchers and scientists thought lithium’s efficacy somehow resulted from its ability to change brain chemistry. They later learned (fairly recently as I recall, and much to their surprise), that its effects were not for that reason at all. It turns out it was effective because of its ability to detoxify the brain. -- It seems to me that anything that can help detoxify the brain could very well be helpful for tinnitus.

 

The snippet below is from this article: -- Top 23 Science-Based Lithium Benefits + Side Effects, Toxicity. Besides lithium being well known to help with anxiety and depression, it's also apparently very helpful in reducing glutamate-induced excitotoxicity and inflammation, both of which have been implicated as potential major contributing factors in tinnitus severity. -- @TracyJS @Greg Sacramento @JohnAdams @Bill Bauer @Bam -- Hey Bam, good to see you back on the forum. -- Welcome back!
...............................................

1) Lithium Is Neuroprotective
Chronic lithium treatment was found to robustly reduce glutamate-induced excitotoxicity mediated by N-methyl-D-asparatate (NMDA) receptors. This effect was at least partly due to lithium’s ability to inhibit the influx of calcium, which mediates NMDA receptor activity. [R]. -- Therefore, it can help mood disorders, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, cancer, and inflammatory and autoimmune diseases [R].

 

Hey @JasonP,

Good to hear about your success with lithium. Here's a LINK to another thread which discusses lithium orotate.

 

Just wondering... Is there any difference between the Lithium discussed in this thread and Lithium Orotate discussed in a thread below?

 

As far as I know, there's only two main types: Lithium Orotate and Lithium Aspartate. My understanding is there's not much difference between them except one may be more bioavailable than the other one. But I suspect that depends on the person who's taking it. It seems most come in the 5 mg. size.

 

@Lane I send a message to SAGE about lithium. They must be working around the clock, because I will sometimes get an answer to a question in the middle of the night. They publish a lot of directional neuro research that released by analysts. They think that CDK5 regulates the amount of NR2B containing NMDA receptors on the synaptic membrane, which affects synaptic plasticity. I been sent several articles including this one. They also have involvement with other neuro researchers that study the head, neck and jaw functional relationships/ movement and they hope to find out more about the neuro pathways that relates. I was asked if my pitch was high and do I feel that it's in my head, but shooting out thru my ears. I said yes.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6128851/

 

@Lane SAGE Therapeutics had no comment on lithium or on any other supplement. The company is very friendly and will discuss recent analyst press releases of NMDA, GABA and depression neuro research. We even discussed the mandibular neurophysiological pathway.

Kevin Starr has association with the company and they have communication to other great neuro researchers around the world. It's been mentioned that they can do any neuro trial that they wish beyond the ones that are in process now. They have over 550 million dollars in the bank so I would think so.

I have already posted links to all this, but more can be found by going to Twitter, Market Realist and most trading sites such as Ameritrade on their stock page under Social Signals. For myself I will not invest in the company because share price is very high and it could sell off even with good news.

 

Does one need a prescription in order to buy it?

 

No, you can get it retail. When I was looking for the best deal, I ended up at Amazon, getting both the orotate and the aspartate form by Solaray (I take one of each per day). -- For an amazing lithium story (for treating debilitating depression), check out THIS POST.

 

"In addition to protecting the brain from the development of plaques and tangles, lithium has been shown to repair existing damages brought about by Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis. Lithium ions, for example, encourage the synthesis and release of key neurotrophic factors such as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and neurotrophin-3 (NT-3), which in turn stimulate the growth and repair of neurons. Patients on lithium have been found to have significantly higher gray matter volumes in the brain. One study has even directly demonstrated that damaged nerve cells exposed to lithium respond with increases in dendritic number and length."

https://www.greatplainslaboratory.c...that-charges-cell-phones-and-preserves-memory

 

Update: I stopped taking the lithium orotate a while back and the tonal tinnitus did not come back. At the time, I was taking a drug called Lamictal, which I am now wondering if it would sometimes cause the loud tonal tinnitus I had. (The reason I kept taking Lamictal was because it seemed to lower the static induced tinnitus that klonopin + sleep would give me. However, it could have been causing me to have more of a loud tonal tinnitus some days and some days it was extremely stimulating at night for me.)

Lithium Orotate is a very tricky supplement for me. There has been sometimes where I took it and it drastically affected me and calmed me down but other times it caused very bad gas and nausea even at low amounts. I really wish I knew what was going on because that just doesn't seem normal. I don't think it would do that to most people. It could be because I went through benzo withdrawal or it could be because of my body.

The last few times I took it, it seemed to wake me up with an adrenaline rush. I had to take a beta blocker to calm down and be able to get to sleep that night. It was really weird. This stuff is very potent to me and I'm kind of scared right now to take it because some times good things happen and sometimes bad things happen.

 

I'm wavering on a few medications for anti-depressants after Prozac seemingly spiked mine. A friend of mine takes Lithium for anxiety and she said it's helped reduce her tinnitus to a much better level.

I'm curious if anyone has experience with lithium in relation to tinnitus?

 

Hi, just to share my 2 cents while I was checking this section for the first time.

I have tried lithium too and trust me I tried many many things like gaba, theanine, and dozens of other stuffs, well, lithium seemed to lower my tinnitus for real. I’ll have to try again to make sure it wasn’t a coincidence, but when I was taking lithium my tinnitus was constant (which is good because I can focus on it when sleeping without getting anxious) and very thin (very good too, like very very high).

I don’t think I have bipolar or nervous disorders however.

Lithium is known to be efficient for bipolar people and it’s not a placebo in this case. It seems to have a real impact on the nervous system in spite of a very low knowledge of the science side.

I don’t exactly remember why I stopped lithium... I think I was feeling good and emptied the box so I didn’t buy some more. It would be funny to notice the anxiousness related to my tinnitus came back because I stopped that !

 

lol so that's what caused it for me.

 

Are you talking about lithium carbonate or lithium orotate? Lithium carbonate is prescription and lithium orotate is over the counter.

 

I was taking Oligosol (liquid state), it's "over the counter".

 

does lithiun ororate cause slight euphoria?

 

I'm not sure I never had that happen with me but that doesn't mean it's not possible.

 

Anyone try this? I'm thinking of giving it a shot:
Pure Encapsulations - Lithium Liquid - Supports Cognitive Health, Mood, and Brain Function - 30 ml https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B01KJDE9V8/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_GzUDDb2A3KM8M

 

I have been on lithium carbonate for a year now and it has worked well for me. By taking this med allowed me to better deal with tinnitus. I'm still on low dose. They say it is for bipolar, but it works for me.

 

The few times I tried it it didn't for me.

 

Are you taking lithium carbonate 300 mg?

 

@Jcmc, I am still on Lithium Carbonate 450 mg.

Did your doctor put you on it?