Mirror Boxing (and Other Stuff) for Tinnitus

I find V S Ramachandran and his work on phantom limb pain so intriguing when it comes to tinnitus. The notion of re-wiring the brain, which is at the heart of his work is, I think, at the core of most tinnitus treatments available today. That said, I think the current products are failing us.

I've contacted Ramachandran's office about any tinnitus specific research they may point me to. If I receive any links I'll post them here. This interview he gave in 2017 contains some really profound moments. I can't recommend watching it highly enough to those interested in this area of research. Discussion of the placebo effect around 41:50 is fascinating.

Hopefully I'll receive a reply to my email. In the meantime I'm going to try an experiment. I'm going to buy a packet of mints, rebrand the package as "Tinnitus Calms" and take one per day. I'm going to tell myself that this "tablet" calms tinnitus, but I'm also going to remind myself that it's a placebo. Should be fun to see/hear what happens.

 

Keeping an eye on this.

 

The placebo "calms" didn't have much effect I'm afraid. My tinnitus is still at the post-spike level but am managing to cope OK day to day.

I wrote to two separate people in V S Ramachandran's team and never received a reply. Oh well...

Was looking recently at EMDR. Aside from the fact that it seems like it's a rebranded version of CBT, this short video (have to play around with the subtitles in YouTube for the English version) was quite interesting because it referenced similarities in tinnitus mechanisms to those in phantom pain.