Dr. Vik Veer (ENT) — Another TRT Messiah

This item in Tuesday’s Daily Mail.
(Excerpt.)
Vik Veer - TRT consultant at Royal National ENT Hospital London.

For it to be successful, it’s important to find activities — especially at night, when all is quiet — that will absorb your mind so you don’t hear your tinnitus.
So I’d watch TV with the sound off, but subtitles on, which I had to focus on reading. If I listened to the radio, it would be something in which I had to engage other areas of my brain in trying to understand, such as the shipping forecast.
Every night, I’d try one of these activities and, over a few days, my tinnitus started to subside.

***It took around six weeks to get rid of the ringing in my head completely, but the feeling when it had gone was absolutely fantastic.

I’ve rarely had any problems since — occasionally, I’ll get a touch of tinnitus if I’m very tired, but it goes away with the brain-focusing activities.

***Now I’m ‘cured’, I want others to be aware that they’re not helpless: I firmly believe that most people can control their tinnitus.

Yet another TRT MESSIAH who can cure us all.
“I got rid of the ringing in my head completely!”

 

@Jazzer

Fortunately, this has also caused quite a stir on BTA's Facebook page.

I've become very suspicious of some people who claim they have tinnitus. It's been said that tinnitus is not understood by those that don't have it. So, people like Vik Veer, people like Lawrence McKenna, audiologists and the like can say they have it and increase their credibility with tinnitus patients. And, who really knows? There's no way of confirming if someone has tinnitus or not.

Adding to my suspicions is the fact that the audiologist that saw me said she had tinnitus. But then at a subsequent appointment said she didn't have it.

Nonetheless, I find stories like this and the lack of action on BTA's part rather frightening. Instead of posting it on their Facebook page they should be sending a message to Mr. Veer and the Daily Mail, on behalf of the tinnitus community, explaining how tinnitus really affects people.

In David Stockdale's own words, TRT uses directive counseling and the world has moved on from that, but is seems someone forgot to give Mr. Veer the message.

TC

 

I saw this gent near the start of my tinnitus, perhaps attracted by the fact he said he’d had it himself. Whilst he seemed perfectly nice and charming, it was a rather brief consult and I didn’t learn much other than I would need some expensive tests. Which I did not pursue. Great for him that it went and I personally believe there’s something in the idea that it can quieten down the less you focus on it as this is my own experience with my variable tinnitus.

However if he had tinnitus for just six weeks it may be it was just a spontaneous remission, rather than being attributable to any particular technique. Asking around amongst friends and family I came across several people who’d had tinnitus us for about six weeks which just went away by itself. I remember on Mr Veer’s website he also attributed the remission to something called "180 phase shift sounds" something for which he was in the “process of developing a mobile application for this so others may have similar success”.

The Mail is in the habit of doing medical advertorials so I suppose this is one of them.

 

@Jazzer I think the treatment you and I missed out on that this gentleman should really also be selling is "luck".

Here's the original article-https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6771075/How-beat-tinnitus-specialist-treated-himself.html

 

This guy was never more than a very slight sufferer, if at all - IMNSHO.

Tinnitus Messiah - he ain’t,
but he is conceited enough to believe
that he’s found the answer and can
save mankind from this curse.
He almost certainly knows less abouttTinnitus than any member on this site, who actually has it.

ie. another bloody tinnitus fantasist,
who insists he actually had tinnitus.

 

@David why are you not doing the above?

 

I've also left this message on BTA's Facebook page. They need to raise awareness.

 

I always wonder about this so called fleeting tinnitus. If someone goes to a loud concert and their ears ring afterwards and subsequently subsides with time, it may be a very different mechanism that those of us who have developed chronic severe tinnitus. The tympanic membrane and the ossicles have small muscles attached, the loud noise could be stretching the membrane and those muscles vigorously over a relatively short period in time and the overuse results in tinnitus. It would be analogous to doing vigorous exercise at the gym and having sore muscles as a result. The chronic tinnitus I have is a different mechanism, it's from age-related hearing loss and something going amiss in the hearing pathway in the brain.

Does that make any sense?

 

If I was old Vik I would be a little more humble around this dragon.......Because you never know when it might make its return with a whole load more fire in its belly.

 

That’s very interesting.

 

I don’t think he’s a fantasist, but I don’t think that six weeks of tinnitus that may or may not have spontaneously remitted is necessarily relevant to patients who may have had this thing for years, and who may be attracted to his private practice on the basis of this article. It might be more relevant for those within the first few months - this method described.

 

Yes a complete garbage article. Perhaps not very surprising as it's published in the Daily Mail (more accurately known in the UK as the Daily Fail). But the BTA really should know better than to promote this nonsense.

 

When people feign tinnitus they will never get it right.

When we read the harrowing accounts of this wretched condition written by the genuine sufferers, there can be no doubting their distress.

Fantasists and exaggerators lack verisimilitude.

The ‘hooks’ quite simply are not there.

 

I don't think BTA were necessarily promoting it. Rather, they said they posted it so all could read it and support one another.

I simply posted that it felt unfinished to me, and asked what BTA plan to do to raise Mr. Veer's and the Daily Mail's awareness to the fact that stories like this make those whose tinnitus is chronic feel isolated and that it also promotes false hope.

Others on the Facebook page said they were surprised that BTA would post something from the Daily Fail and also that the story was causing false hope.

 

Genius comment of the century.

 

The Daily Mail is actually really pro-tinnitus and I suspect the editor or someone high up there has it pretty bad. They write more tinnitus articles than any other newspaper I know and this includes stories about the research side of things like Susan Shore's device, etc. They also write about all the suicides, so they don’t hold back.

Tinnitus articles really are a regular feature in there. I’m not a Daily Mail reader - I don’t really read any newspapers to be honest - but whenever something tinnitus related comes up, that’s where I usually find it.

 

(.....er.....I have been worried about your general knowledge for some time Ed......)

 

The last place anyone can expect to gain meaningful knowledge is from a newspaper. Most of them are just full of self-serving propaganda and/or sensationalised bullshit. I suppose some of them are ok if they use citations, but the general articles can be completely made up a lot of the time.

 

@Ed209
- you do know I was taking the
wee wee brother?

 

Of course, I’m not daft

I just wanted to be clear what my general opinion about newspapers is.

 

I am a bit confused after reading the article. Simple distraction does not CURE the tinnitus we all suffer from.
It can make it easier to cope. The author stated he was CURED. This is scientifically impossible. And the author is a scientist.

Plus many spelling errors for a published article.

As a scientist he should use the specific name cilia for tiny inner ear hairs.
He does address seriousness and suicide in a few cases.

This does not address research for tinnitus and if a majority of people are cured by distraction methods no one will or should donate to research efforts.

I agree with the technique of using distraction methods. For me it is repeated music therapy created by me.
But it is not a cure.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6771075/How-beat-tinnitus-specialist-treated-himself.html

“But there was something more. As I closed my eyes and willed myself to drop off, I became conscious of a weird whining sound. I couldn’t work out where it was coming from, so I prowled the house to find its source.

Then, in the stillness of the night, I realised this strange, high-pitched wail was coming from inside my ears: I had tinnitus.

But, over time, I became more aware that the sounds — at least at night — were becoming higher and louder and making me feel agitated. I managed to keep this hidden from my wife, a GP, and, at work, I was so focused that it didn’t bother me that much.

But it showed me how some people might be so driven to distraction by it that they take drastic action — distressingly, a small number of sufferers take their own lives.

The most common cause of tinnitus is damage to the tiny sensory hair cells in the inner ear.

With TRT, the theory is that, by concentrating on something else, the brain’s pathways can be rewired and the tinnitus subsides.

For it to be successful, it’s important to find activities — especially at night, when all is quiet — that will absorb your mind so you don’t hear your tinnitus.

So I’d watch TV with the sound off, but subtitles on, which I had to focus on reading. If I listened to the radio, it would be something in which I had to engage other areas of my brain in trying to understand, such as the shipping forecast.

Every night, I’d try one of these activities and, over a few days, my tinnitus started to subside. It took around six weeks to get rid of the ringing in my head completely, but the feeling when it had gone was absolutely fantastic.

I’ve rarely had any problems since — occasionally, I’ll get a touch of tinnitus if I’m very tired, but it goes away with the brain-focusing activities.

Now I’m ‘cured’..."

I sorta agree with @TuxedoCat.

 

Now that’s very interesting.

 

The Guardian can be pretty good with its fact checking.

 

Read "now I'm habituated".

I've seen TRTers call TRT 'the cure'.

But as we all know habituation is not a cure, it's a substitute for no cure.

Hmmmm. I wonder if we can find Mr. Veer's email address and send him the link to the recent podcast with David.

 

I have to say that even the narrative reads like a piece of fiction.
I’m not prepared to give it much credibility at all.
I simply do not believe in his Tinnitus.

And then “it took about six weeks to get rid of the ringing in my head completely.”

“Yea.......Right......Tell it to the Marines!”

(English idiom for - ‘not to be believed.’)

 

I think I just tweeted the link to the podcast to Mr. Veer.

Wow, my first tweet.

 

@Jazzer

You reminded me of the late Tuxedo Cat. She was a rodent hunter. Best mouse trap known to man.

She had no interest in birds whatsoever.

 

Tinnitus can certainly remit spontaneously after a few months. I don’t see why he has to be making up the fact that he had it or that it went after such a very short space of time.