Tinnitus Help - Stop the Ringing in Your Ears

People who have constant noise in their head and ears will do just about anything to get it to stop or at least lower the volume. In addition to exercise and yoga, both of which address stress and improves blood flow, try cutting alcohol and caffeine from your diet .  If you are experimenting with caffeine-free living, it's important to remember that it's not just your coffee and chocolate products that are "verboten". Tea contains caffeine as do many soft drinks and even medicines .  If you smoke and suffer from tinnitus, there's another good reason for you to stop smoking. Nicotine (even in smokeless tobacco) reduces blood flow to the brain which can worsen tinnitus.  Although ginkgo biloba (an blood thinning Asian herbal supplement common in Europe and used as an antioxidant and memory booster) has not been proven to relieve tinnitus, it does help with blood circulation -- and getting good blood flow to the ears is important for healthy hearing. The only...

Every person's tinnitus -- and suffering -- is unique.  Some people hear it in just one ear, some in both. Some hear different sounds in each ear, like one tinnitus sufferer who had a high decibel ringing in one ear with a sound like a gentle roar in the other.  Sometimes the sound seems be be located in one ear, but it's such a high frequency and so continuous, that if there is a low volume sound in the other ear, it's basically impossible to ascertain.  Most people with tinnitus do talk about cycles of intensity , with the ringing or flute and whistle sound being fairly quiet one day followed by several days of increased levels of volume. Ticking, ringing and other sounds can come and go, in addition to the constant roar , or might be the only sound heard.  Sometimes the noise is so loud as to be actually painful (compared to the piercing shriek of a smoke alarm) and when this goes on unabated, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no end in sight, the results a...

Tinnitus sufferers often say the noise suddenly stops and (just as suddenly) starts up again.  Although the reprieves from the otherwise unceasing noise (which one person described as loud and invasive as a smoke alarm) are wonderful, people with tinnitus know the "sounds of silence" won't last.  The length of time that the noise stops varies, but is often quoted as being a few hours although some are taunted by a cessation of noise that lasts only a few seconds before it starts up again. The opposite phenomenon happens too -- new sounds are heard by tinnitus sufferers. Like the temporary silences, the new sounds don't tend to last very long, but the concern is always that it will join the cacophony of other noises permanently.  What about your noises? Do you ever hear nothing? Try Quietum Plus

If you developed tinnitus after a sinus infection , you may wish to try humming or chanting (loudly, with your mouth closed) for at least 15 minutes, three times a day, for a minimum of two weeks.  Actually, even if you don't think sinusitis was the tinnitus culprit, go ahead and hum -- it can't hurt. Not only does the extra air rushing through the nasal cavities help reduce the risk of sinus infections , but the level of nitric oxide production increases by some 15 times. And that's good.  People with healthy sinuses usually have high levels of nitric oxide levels (nitric oxide being the body's response to inflammation). The sound vibrations created by the humming or chanting moves the air between the sinus membranes and nasal passages.  It's actually this air movement that allows sinuses to drain properly , which in turn is how the risk of sinus infections is reduced.   If you do notice a decrease in the noise of your tinnitus, you then may want to conside...

More than 60 years ago, an experiment proved that nearly everyone has tinnitus. In 1953 Heller and Bergman performed an simple and classic experiment . They placed 80 tinnitus-free individuals (university members) in a soundproof room for 5 minutes each, asking them to report on any sounds that might be heard. The subjects thought they might be undergoing a hearing test, but actually experienced 5 minutes of total silence. A full 93% reported hearing buzzing, pulsing, whistling sounds in the head or ears identical to those reported by tinnitus sufferers .   This simple experiment shows almost anyone can detect background electrical activity present in every living nerve cell in the hearing pathways as a sound. Although some areas of the auditory system may be more active than others, every neuron will contribute to some extent to the final perception of tinnitus.   It's your reaction to the sound or sounds that is so distressing. If you are able to accept the sounds as ...

While tinnitus is said to have no cure per se, there are some things you can do to help yourself as you explore treatment options.  For example, relaxation therapy can make the tinnitus sounds easier to ignore. Stress makes the volume of ringing in the ears louder, so while the sounds will not disappear through yoga or tai-chi, learning how to meditate will help lower anxiety which will in turn make the sound somewhat more manageable to live with.  A simple exercise to start out with is to focus "past the noise" of the tinnitus and instead on the sound of your breathing. If that's impossible to do, try it initially with white noise or natural sounds in the background.  Exercise is known to help people who suffer from clinical depression -- a condition that is very much associated with tinnitus sufferers. The physical well-being that exercise brings about lowers stress and again may make it easier to ignore and cope with the noise of your tinnitus. Concentrating on so...

   Neuromonics is a treatment device for tinnitus developed by an Australian audiologist, Dr. Paul Davis.   It's sometimes looked at as a potential cure, and the medical device company that   sells the device claims an 83% success rate, with tinnitus reducing by 50%-90%.   Neuromonics works by retraining neural pathways in the brain. As a result of the   retraining, a person's auditory system is desensitized to the sound of their tinnitus.   Basically, you wear headphones and listen to the small device. It plays four tracks of   music and ambient nature sounds and has a neural stimulus treatment overlaying the soothing music, which targets the brain's auditory pathways -- helping the brain filter out the disturbing tinnitus perception.  Through testing, the music and overlaying neural stimulus on each device is customized to the patient's audiological profile and personal tinnitus pitch for each ear.  One t...

Some people with tinnitus find that other sounds, pleasant ones such as nature sounds or wind chimes, played at a volume slightly below that of the ringing in their ears, can help with the condition.  The idea of an alternate noise is not to block out the sounds, but to create a sort of diversion – something to concentrate on listening to instead of the tinnitus.  The goal is to get so used to the tinnitus as a background noise that you don’t hear it.  There are many products on the market from which you can choose to experiment to see if this is the right approach for you. White sound generators can be anything from a fan that you already have in your house or a channel of static on the television or radio to tabletop devices and electronic ear-inserts with myriad sounds to try.  If the distraction tactic seems to help, you should start reducing the volume of the white sound generators slowly, over a number of months. The ultimate goal here is twofold:  First, ...

Tinnitus can affect anyone ; however, older people are usually affected more than children . If a child does have tinnitus, it's possible that he or she might not be bothered by the condition as much as an adult, simply because children tend accept the condition as the norm, not knowing anything different.  Kids and adults alike can suffer hearing damage and loss, though, and are at risk for tinnitus as well, if they are consistently exposed to very loud noises . You'll know if you're at risk if you need to shout to be heard (like at most concerts or bars and discos, but also at sporting events) or if your ears actually hurt.  How many of us haven't experienced that "muted" hearing phenomenon after leaving a rock concert ?  Although a one-time exposure to loud noise does not necessarily cause tinnitus, it's certainly possible that the cumulative damage from even short-lived incidents of loud noise exposure over the years can be quite serious. A comparis...

If you have constant or intermittent noises in your head (or in one or both of your ears), you may have a condition known as tinnitus. The noises can be anything from ringing and buzzing to clicking or chirping all the way to whistling or hissing sounds. For every person who suffers from tinnitus, the description of the condition will be unique to that person. It's important to note that tinnitus is a condition, not a disease. It refers to the perception of ringing, buzzing, or other sounds in the absence of an external source. Tinnitus can be caused by a variety of factors, including hearing loss, exposure to loud noise, certain medications, and underlying health conditions.  And it's not a noise you can run from because there's nothing making the noise in your immediate environment -- tinnitus really is all in your head . Tinnitus ranges from an annoyance to a debilitating and life-altering problem .  Here's a TED Ed video by Marc Fagelson that explains tinnitus, wh...