Remedies That Work for Me

So I am new here. I developed tinnitus in mid-July. There was no noise trauma but the noise just appeared. It was most likely caused by stress. In mid-June I was operated for herniated disc (Sciatica) that has caused some nerve damage. The nerve damage affects my ability to run and since I am running enthusiast it was really stressful blow to me. However, the nerve is slowly recovering and I can already run about 400 meters at a time. My surgeon and physical therapist have told me that recovery time between 1-2 years is common. So there is hope also in that respect.

Back to tinnitus. Here are treatments I have tried and whether they have worked. I have tried each treatment at least 2-3 before giving up. Obviously, I have kept the ones where I get positive feedback.

+ = Positive Effect
0 = No effect
- = Negative Effect

- Notched music. Listening to music where tinnitus frequency is filtered out. Horrible, made things worse me. I tried this 3 times. There are scientific papers that it could improve tinnitus for some. I used:
https://www.notched-music.com/

- Tone frequency training close to my tinnitus frequency. This also made things worse

+/0 Tone frequency training away from tinnitus frequency. This improved but so little that I have not kept doing this. For tone frequency training see:
https://plasticity.szynalski.com/

+ Everyday mindfulness / Slow movements. The idea is to practice every day mundane tasks like filling up the dishwasher with slow purposeful and mindful movements. Kind of like Tai-Chi but applied to everyday activities. Problem with this is that takes a lot of energy and concentration but it does work. Sources: Julian's video and video/ book that covers everyday mindfulness by an Google employee:

Slow Movement & Tinnitus

Chade-Meng Tan: "Search Inside...

https://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-Achieving/dp/0062116932

+ Meditation. This helps. Although typically not immediately. Also the track I currently use places me in so deep relaxation that I would do it even without tinnitus.

Guided Mindfulness Meditation on Stillness -...

0 Massage (Shoulder, neck, head, face). This did not change tinnitus. However, the massage to the neck and back of the head made me feel like I was in heaven. I scheduled another appointment

+/0 SNRI These medications do not affect tinnitus for me. However, they prevent deep depression and keep me active. Being active helps in the recovery.

0/? Food supplements. I eat a bunch (fish oil, Ginkgo, magnesium, etc). I have no clue if they help but I will eat the ones I have and then stop as I run out.

+ ACRN + white noise. This track appears to have some positive effects. After listening this 3 hours yesterday I experienced 10 minutes of silence. More remarkably this morning my tinnitus was only 2 compared to the usual 4. I think you are suppose to listen such tracks everyday for longer periods to retrain your brain. I guess with ACRN tune matching I could receive added benefits. Let's see when I have the time to do this.

Extremely Powerful Tinnitus Sound Therapy |...

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/acoustic-cr®-neuromodulation-do-it-yourself-guide.1469/

+ Exercise. I mainly do cardio. Yes this makes me feel good and reduces my tinnitus.

I strongly believe in individualized medicine. I also believe there are many sub-types of tinnitus that react to different treatments. As such scientific studies might not find significant effects of some treatments because the selection of patients would include a heterogeneous pool of people. Just to illustrate, this paper on ACRN shows that 33% of patients received much or very improvement, 57% had slight or no improvement and for 8% the treatment made things worse.
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2015/569052/

In other words, I have to keep on experimenting. If you have received help from some of the stuff I posted, let me know what else has worked for you. The same trick might work for me. Thanks.

 

Try something called curcumin.

 

^Thanks. I think curcumin was also included in my package.

Is it common to experience so many different sound changes? I have had T about two months now and so far I have encountered the following sounds.

1) Single note high pitch "eeeee". This is how it started
2) High pitch kind of like bells with multiple notes (not as high bitch as 1)
3) Flat tire / Gas leaking sound (lower bitch than 1 or 2 but usually more volume)
4) Like 3 but with sound electricity added to it
5) Pulsatile tinnitus (typically when I wake but also during the day)

I do not have all these at same time. Usually only one is present. Also the changes are becoming more frequent. It used to be that a single sound would last several days. Now almost everyday there are multiple changes.

For example yesterday in bed number 4 sound suddenly changed to 1. The 1 sounds was also very loud. Then ten minutes later I had hardly audible sound 2. This morning it has been number 3 but I think I also had short while with 5.

Any ideas?

 

Mikki, in my case there are two tones. One is masked by the other. So as the inflammation lowers the second sound shows up. It's actually always there.. but it's less loud that the other so only shows up as the loudest one lowers during the day. The second one itself however did change from a solid lower EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE under my higher picthed somatic EEEEEEEEEEEEEE to a multiple notes morse codeish thing at week 6. I consider this some kind of healing.. I hope so at least . I'm now taking NAC, Magnesium, L-Theanine, Taurine and Melatonin every day. Most of my day is tolerable now, WAY better than it was when this started.

 

Thanks. The "morse codish" could be more accurate description of my sound 2. It is also kind of like sound that static electric field make when it uncharges. And this uncharging happens all the time.

I think listening the sound therapy I linked above helps to reduce the pitch of my tinnitus, e.g. from 1 to 2 and 2 and 3.

Also when I go running. The little running I can do. The tinnitus is not constant but everytime my foot hits the ground T is lower. But once the impact has been taken it is back to normal. So it is like ring-ring-ring-ring when I run. This does not happen when walking. Three days ago when I had done running my better ear (the one with much less tinnitus) made ten cracking sounds that did not sound like the other T sounds at all. I have not heard that sound since. When ever I hear a strange sound I now wonder if my nervous system is coming up with new sounds

Overall, I am quite well habituated but the changing tunes in my left ear make it somewhat hard.

 

My tinnitus is hugely somatic.. It's hardly a problem on the days when I can get the pain out of my neck in the mornings. On days when I can do that all I have by the evening is the morse code sounds. I've found that recently riding my bike I can hardly hold my head up on longer rides. So weak.. I'm going to join the gym and see if that can help me out.

 

I played around with
http://generalfuzz.net/acrn/ and
https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/neuromodulationTonesGenerator.php?l=0000250041000045587000&m=&d=0

They seem to do very good job in masking. Better than the YouTube ones. And the benefit is that if I do not like it I can always reconfigure the sounds.

Note to self: I ran them both at same time ACRN thing at 8237 and my noise as configured in the link. I say keep on experimenting.

 

Did some testing.
3 times: Sauna + Ice cold shower -> Increases tinnitus. I figured it would since ice cold showers after sauna are quite a shock to the nervous system. And yes I also have prior experience with ice cold showers and winter swimming.
3 times Sauna without ice cold showers does not effect or decreases T.

Last 4 days have been quite good. Five days ago I also stopped all supplements except the fish oil. They did absolutely nothing for my tinnitus.

I think the top 3 remedies at the moment are:
a) mynoise with hearing calibrated profile,
b) meditation (massage is great because it helps the meditation, during meditation I can get extra relaxation my imagine myself back to the massage table)
b) forgetting tinnitus (I am getting better this)

 

I managed to find a sound that is almost as my T is today. High pitch hiss, which is just at the end of my hearing range. Funny how this all started with a single high pitch note and has now evolved to this. I prefer the current sound much more than the 11200hz single tone . That was bad.
https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/peakNoiseGenerator.php?l=00000000000000000099&m=&d=0

Now what do I do with this? I am going to be brave and run it through my headphones. Afterall sound theraphies do not typically give me spikes. Either they do nothing or they reduce it.

Maybe my T is hearing related after all as it at the end of my hearing range.

 

Yes, I think that is one of the most common types of T. I will classify my T on that group also. I have asymmetric hearing loss in my left ear. I have an extra 20-30 dB loss above 8KHz, and normal hearing in the communication frequency range. My T has many changing sounds, but they are all very high frequency. Right now, but I know it will change in a few hours, I have a hissing noise very similar to what you have and is around 10KHz.
I believe that sound therapies are only good for masking and residual inhibition. At least, for cases with very high frequency loss and a broad sound spectral region. Sound neuromodulation has very little business trying to fix this broad high frequency mess. I find myself using MyNoise.net less and less. I did not use MyNoise before T, and it does not really help my T. In the long term, we are better off skipping these crutches that are just reminders of our condition.

 

Treatment of the day has been ACRN at 10051 and Notch noise
https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/notchNoiseGenerator.php?l=00000000000000000099&m=&d=0

Not sure whether they do anything for tinnitus, but they help me focus when I am working on computer. Being able to focus leads to better mental state and reduces stress. I also think about month of meditation and SNRI is giving positive effects to my life. Yesterday, my wife and daughter were fighting which usually annoys me. However, yesterday I simply ignored the entire thing and minded my own business.

I have also increased intake of bananas. I understood that tinnitus is related to potassium channels and bananas are loaded with potassium. I also have healing nerve damage in my back / leg so I might need extra dosage of that. So I eat a banana each day.

 

I disagree. These treatments help me do my job at the computer and forget my tinnitus. So for me it works in the opposite way as it helps me to forget. I know if my tinnitus is very bad I always have good maskers that are available -> this helps me relax in general. Kind of like I know if get a migraine that I also have I have good medicines available. Strangely after getting tinnitus I have not had a single episode of migraine.

Note to self. Noise of the morning. Also the noise kept disappearing several times when I tried to tune for it. So I had to wait for couple of minutes for it to return. What is below is the closest I could get
https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/p...00000000000000072999&m=&d=-1.0000057351416043

 

In one or two years you might not need the MyNoise.net all the time . Leave it to passing time

 

Do you mind my asking what SNRI you are taking? I have been trying to get by without thes drugs but it is effecting my entire life... negatively. Thxs

 

Venlafaxin. I read about 50 user experiences after starting the drug. One out of the 50 matched my experience perfectly but most others were way off. So the effects are very individual. For me the drug had almost immediate effects. Only after 12hours I could tell for certain that the drug was no placebo. I still only use the lowest dosage 37,5mg per day as that gives me the positive and negative effects.

 

I tried your advice and have not used it for 3 days. I seem to be OK.

Another advice I should add to my "remedies that work for me"-list is that visit tinnitustalk.com less often. This site increases my T albeit I have also found some useful hints. I think many other users have also reported this.

 

Awesome first post. Welcome and good luck. I think you're gonna be ok!

 

Interesting observation. I was on vacation in Canary Islands. During that time Tinnitus was still present. However, I simply did not care as I was so consumed by all the activities. The tinnitus might have been lower but it is hard to say as I did no monitoring of it. I think this is how it should be in my daily life. Fill a day with good activities and T is less of a problem. Also less monitoring but this is easier said than done.

After the vacation there has been a quite a bit day-to-day variation. Yesterday evening was very loud. This morning I almost did not hear it in a quiet bedroom. As there is large delta between a good day and a bad day it means that if I could achieve from bad to good improvement on top of a good day I would be cured. GoodDay + (GoodDay - BadDay)

I am still running custom (myNoise) whitenoise + ACRN on top of it. I realized that recommended daily listering time is between 4-6 hours to get good results as in.
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/attach...nitus-by-acoustic-cr-neuromodulation-pdf.183/

 

Wednesday Nov 6 was a very good day. My T was very loud as I could easily hear it in a loud restaurant. I simply did not care and was happily socializing. I guess habituation is really kicking in.

Since then I also had 4 low T days on row Nov 10-13. I don't think that has happened for couple of months.

Both of those are definitely positive signs.

 

Updates. I discovered I have hearing loss. When using the pure tone from ACRN web page and the lowest volume 1 my right ear can hear up to 9500 Hz. In left ear hearing stops at 5500 Hz. If I put the volume to 2 my left can go up to 8400 Hz while right gets to 10400hz. That sort of explain my left side dominant tinnitus.

I revisited notched music. Still gives me a huge spike. However tone frequency training my left in the hearing loss area 5000-11000 Hz seems to now improve my tinnitus. When I do the training I can barely hear my tinnitus. I don’t know if my brain just blocks tinnitus sound or if it is really lower. After the training t slowly returns.