Tinnitus Educational Seminar in Harvard

There's Tinnitus Educational seminar in Harvard soon, I provide details in case someone is interested:
Wednesday, November 16, 2016 • 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. Mass. Eye and Ear, Meltzer Auditorium, 3rd Floor

Please join us for a free educational seminar on tinnitus.

Physical therapists, chiropractors, audiologists, sleep specialists, dentists, and mental health workers will be available to answer your questions about tinnitus and talk about scheduling follow-up appointments.

Light refreshments will be served.

Questions? Call 617-807-7844

 

This is good for awareness.

 

or...those presenting locally are there to drum up business for themselves.
Every chiropractor there will say their methods are directionally correct to improving tinnitus when it isn't true.

I would love to be proven wrong. For those attending, could you come here after the 'seminar' and share why attending may improve your tinnitus?

 

I don't care why people at Harvard speak about tinnitus. All that matters is that they speak about it

Step by step

 

Bringing awareness is good yes. Shilling services that won't help just fleeces people out of money adding insult to injury to tinnitus. I am only going by the cast of presenters and would love to be proven wrong and something positive is derived. If those that attend could pass along any value provided, it would be helpful to the community here.

 

I agree, but we're in a time of transition.

Thanks to hearing loss related medical research, the bullshit "treatments" will soon be something of the past.

 

There is no end to people trying to make a dime at the expense of other's misery for the simple reason that people are desperate and in particular when they are desperate, they aren't particularly clear thinking...not that they were to begin with. Snake oil abounds in many health care areas and tinnitus is among the worst. Dentists flaunting endless TMJ treatments, chiropractors probably in aggregate doing more harm than good and of course the physical therapists that will message your T all away...all standing in waiting at Harvard to help the uninitiated. Here is my card...make an appointment. I agree at some level it will come to an end as scientists take a deeper dive.

 

@stophiss
I am sorry to have to say that I agree with you. A condition such as tinnitus that has no cure at this moment, there will always be people that want to “drum up business for themselves”. Nicely put by the way.

Health professionals know about the anatomy of the ear, and thankfully are able to treat it medically or surgically should anything go wrong with it and I have a lot of respect for their expertise. However, the majority of them no nothing about tinnitus. I am not talking about the occasional ringing in the ears that one might get after attending a nightclub and then it goes away.

It is for this reason I have always been reluctant to go to one of these tinnitus seminars, because I feel a lot of these so called professionals, want to pat-each other on the back, give it the high five and use very eloquent words and medical terminology to dare I say it, look down on ordinary people not in the know.

I wrote about this in my post: Who are the tinnitus experts? Anyone that hasn’t read it please find it below as it might be of some interest.

Who are the tinnitus experts?

The onset of my tinnitus stems back to a time when the Internet hadn’t yet gone mainstream. My main source of information about it came from tinnitus organizations and books that I had got from the library or bought at a store. How times have changed. Although I learned a lot from books, I really wanted to meet with people that had experience with tinnitus and would be able to advise me how best to cope especially in the early days. For all I had been hearing was, there is no cure you’ll just have to learn to live with it.

Through one of the tinnitus organizations that I had joined they published a magazine which I found very informative. I was heartened to see they had readers letter pages, where people could write in for advice or ask questions and hopefully they’d be answered by more experienced people living with tinnitus.

It was nearly 20 years ago when a video tape recorder was in many homes. I thought my luck was in when I had the opportunity to borrow a VHS tape of a tinnitus seminar held by a Dr, that worked in ENT and was a tinnitus expert who also wrote a book on it. The venue was in a large hall. He stood on a podium behind a lectern with microphone and presided over his seated audience and looked very official. After his introduction he said he’d answer any questions at the end of the evening . At last I thought I was going to learn something and settled down to watch the hour long tape.

To say I didn’t like what I had seen would be a polite way of describing it. For one hour I watched and listened to this person say everyone gets tinnitus occasionally. It is mostly to do with noisy background activity withing the body and it travels up to the auditory system where the signals are transmitted to the brain. Most people can easily ignore these signals was his theory but those with tinnitus, have allowed their brain to focus on them, until they become louder and eventually become a problem. He asked the audience, how many had been for a night out where the music was played loud and at the end of the evening their ears were ringing?

Nearly everyone put their hand up. He walked pompously from behind the lectern and stood at the front of the stage and said “And by the morning the ringing has gone a way right”? Looking very pleased with himself he continued. “But in your case you’ve allowed your brain to hold on to the tinnitus and when you don‘t hear it any longer you say”. In disbelief I watched him start to jog up and down the stage shouting out “Where’s my tinnitus, where’s my tinnitus?”

When he eventually stopped he could hardly contain the huge smile that was spread across his face, as he looked very pleased with himself. However, the audience looked less than impressed at what they’d seen because no one said a word. I watched the tape until the end and sent it back with a letter of thanks and my comments which were not favourable. My letter was printed in that tinnitus magazine to warn other potential readers of what to expect before asking to borrow it.

What I had witnessed all those years ago on that video by a so called tinnitus expert, was nothing short of mocking people that find tinnitus debilitating when it’s severe. It was very clear to me, that Dr had never experienced loud intrusive tinnitus once in his life. Thankfully times have moved on and there is greater understanding and help for people with tinnitus, and not all health professionals think it’s all in the mind or something that can easily be dismissed because it isn’t.

I am thankful to the Internet for enabling people to come together and meet in forums like tinnitustalk and give help and support to those that need it. In my opinion, these are the people that are the real tinnitus experts because they know what it’s like to live with the condition daily.

Michael

My consultant whom I have a lot of respect for knows all about the anatomy of the ear, for she is an Audiovestibular Physician. She once told me: “You know more about tinnitus than me because I have never experienced it”.

 

Indeed Michael. Who are the tinnitus experts? Nobody has solved the riddle yet and those purporting relief are standing on a nickel.
Best relief for tinnitus which is easy to say and hard to do in the presence of suffering is controlling one's mind. This takes a lot of looking within and something that maybe hard for many...acceptance of self...and acceptance of tinnitus.
So if seminar's are given on CBT or habituation and ways to control one's mind, they are worth attending IMO.

 

I might go ...wish it was on a weekend or a Friday night .....But if work permits I'll stop by.

 

What if the penalty for intentional scamming was death? I'm sure that would change a lot of things.

 

Sure would reduce the population

 

Hi, I work at MEE and wanted to provide the correct phone number for the Tinnitus Coordinator. It is: 617-807-7844 . If anyone can edit the original post, that would be very helpful!

 

I think there are people who could benefit from this. I also believe that there are people who could benefit from acupuncture, chiropractors, etc. They just aren't us. Most people don't have T so bad that they need to be on a forum. I think it is safe to say that there are two reasons for being here. Either you have major problems with you ears that resulted in T that most people never experience or you have an anxiety disorder or both. Perhaps even the people with anxiety disorders could be helped by the seminar. I think it's very few of us that are in the first category otherwise known as completely screwed.

 

I would go but the airplane flight would have too many decibels.

Hopefully it'll be recorded and posted online so those who can't go can still watch it.

 

I agree, you would need one hell of a plane to travel back in time. The tinnitus seminar according to OP was in November last year.

 

For a moment I thought it was still 2016. Time flies.

 

https://www.masseyeandear.org/specialties/otolaryngology/hearing-balance/resources/tinnitus-seminar