What Treatments Have You Tried in the Past Four Years (2016-2019)?

What tinnitus treatments have you tried in the past 4 years?

What was effective?

What didn't work?

This includes devices like Neuromonics, hearing aids with tinnitus programs and everything under the sun.

Let's see what works for people and helped them get relief from tinnitus.

 

When I first got tinnitus I had a very modified version of TRT on the NHS. The counselling sessions were too far apart for it to really fit into the TRT protocol - maybe once every six weeks or so. I didn't find the white noise generators very helpful - if anything they aggravated my tinnitus somewhat. I also found the counselling - which was effectively CBT - of very little help (some of the advice I received I know in retrospect was actually actively unhelpful.) For these reasons I wouldn't say that I found either TRT or CBT to be particularly helpful in habituation.

Two things really, really helped with habituation. They were: Firstly, time - it took at least a year for me. Secondly, avoiding loud noise exposure as much as possible. Don't follow the really bad advice of the BTA that you shouldn't avoid places where you are exposed to loud noise. The more times you have long periods of loud noise exposure the more your tinnitus will spike - for often long periods - and the harder it will be to habituate.

In terms of other things I would say maybe sound therapy through a sound machine or app might be very slightly helpful plus trying to keep calm and avoid stress as much as you can. I considered spending a lot of money on all the acoustic neuromodulation stuff early on and was really glad I didn't.

 

Yeah the acoustic neuromodulation stuff doesn’t work. What does work is bimodal stimulation and those devices I feel WILL be worth it big time.

I’m seriously considering Widex Zen2Go which is essentially a hearing aid without amplification that plays calm sounds into your ear. But I wonder if I can save $2.500 and just get Bose Sleepbuds (batteries last 16 hours) or some wireless earbuds to do the same thing.

 

When I respiked my T from an alarm clock I got more aggressive with my regimen and found these things helped:

- daily omega 3 (evidence is weak, but found that helped me pretty quickly in terms of reduction of T, elimination of H, and more resistant to spikes)
- nighttime earplug use (found that habituation proceeded much quicker, and no morning waking up with increased volume of T)
- musician earplugs (partially protective, but hear just fine with them in, ideal for situations where I want to hear, but still need some protection, such as in a noisier store, or walking outside near some traffic with intermittent noise exposure)
- ear muffs (still think they look goofy, but put over my earplugs for lawn mowing is ideal, at protecting the entire ear area from bone conduction of the noise, and no element of T spiking even after a morning of power tool use- like the combo so much I use it for vacuuming as well)

Not sure any of this is a true treatment, but it clearly worked for me as T from noise exposure is pretty minimal these days.

 

The only thing that's helping a bit so far is my Sound Pillow.