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An FDA approved device offers a new treatment for tinnitus

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Re: An FDA approved device offers a new treatment for tinnitus

#71

Post by TheBigSalad »

criddell wrote: post #17
hypeatei wrote: post #9

Hmm, seems interesting but it's intended to take the "focus" off of the ringing rather than actually fix the underlying cause. Personally, having tinnitus for so long I don't even notice it anymore; it would be nice to experience complete "silence" again though.

Are you implying the underlying cause is never a brain malfunction? I think of it a little like phantom limb pains If you feel pain in a hand or foot that you no longer have, retraining your brain is one way to fix it. Maybe regrowing a foot would be better, but we don't know how to do that.

I'm not doctor or scientist, but I think of it like the nerves in the ear are signaling off constantly. The brain is operating normally by listening to them, but what you really want is for it to adapt and start to ignore the bad signals. The brain can phase them out, but it can never stop receiving the signal, so you still hear it if you consciously focus on it. It sounds like this person is already there but still looking for a real cure, something to stop the signals.

Re: An FDA approved device offers a new treatment for tinnitus

#72

Post by jcims »

instagib wrote: post #57
hooverd wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the superior Chinese knockoff version.

9V battery to the tongue?

I was thinking the other day that there’s a generational gap in this experience.

When I was a kid in the 80’s it seems like lots of stuff ran on 9V batteries, now almost nothing does except for smoke detectors and test equipment.

Re: An FDA approved device offers a new treatment for tinnitus

#73

Post by fallinghawks »

hypeatei wrote: post #9

Hmm, seems interesting but it's intended to take the "focus" off of the ringing rather than actually fix the underlying cause. Personally, having tinnitus for so long I don't even notice it anymore; it would be nice to experience complete "silence" again though.

I can make mine go away temporarily (as in a minute or so) by sticking my fingers in my ears and jiggling them around to make a lot of noise for 10 seconds. I suspect it's just the contrast, but it is really nice to have something resembling real silence.

A few years back I got a bad wax buildup in one ear and stopped hearing anything. After they took the wax out, my ear was hypersensitive for a day or so. I heard every little rustle, shifting in my chair, even fabric moving when I moved my arm.

Re: An FDA approved device offers a new treatment for tinnitus

#74

Post by tithe »

I've had a mental visualization I've used to control tinnitus flares for about 20 years now - i.e., "biofeedback".

I image the entire soundscape (what I'm possible of hearing) as a long, thin line which is warbling a bit, as I'm hearing things right now -- like the line in an oscilloscope. The present tinnitus represents itself as a sharp spike in this visualization, the location dependent upon its texture (sharp pings, or a low muffled warble).

I then imagine a giant hand (my hand) on top of that spike, pushing it down, slowly, and as I push it down, the tinnitus subsides (since I know what that subsiding sensation feels like). Sometimes I have to do this pushing motion a few times before the spike slowly attenuates by itself and it joins the surrounding levels.

The entire process takes about 30 seconds, and doesn't work every time. If after a few attempts it fails, I abandon the visualization exercise (lest my brain somehow learns the pushing motion to be ineffective).

It's not entirely clear to me how / why this works: mapping a physical phenomenon onto an abstract mental visualization / picture, and then manipulating that mental picture and thus the physical phenomenon.

I'm also very musical, so these sorts of visualizations tend to come very naturally to me.

Re: An FDA approved device offers a new treatment for tinnitus

#76

Post by joshspankit »

I accidentally did something similar, but there’s a significant cost.

Got tinnitus at 15 and over time my brain filtered out the sound. Unfortunately one of the tones was in the upper vocal range so I then developed trouble understanding people with higher-pitched voices as some syllables would be entirely filtered out.

Second is that I stopped paying attention to sounds that aggravated it. This caused me to gather more damage and I ended up getting additional frequencies that my brain wasn’t filtering out.

Re: An FDA approved device offers a new treatment for tinnitus

#78

Post by stevesimmons »

instagib wrote: post #56

I have had several audiologists begin their speech of “as you may know tinnitus is from damage to the ear due to loud … “, well mine is from Covid. I read about a study a few years ago that focused on shocking the tongue and its nice someone followed up on it. They described one year of relief post treatment. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201015173126.h... Bimodal neuromodulation combining sound and t…

Mine started after Covid too. The audiologist did some tests and found I have one ear having a section of frequencies with poor response.

His hypothesis is vascular damage due to Covid restricted blood supply to the hairs in that one part of the ear canal. The brain fills in the discontinuity from the resulting "notch filter" audio response (in Electrical Engineering terminology), and that hallucinated sound is the tinnitus.

Re: An FDA approved device offers a new treatment for tinnitus

#79

Post by dandanua »

joecot wrote: post #37
grugagag wrote: post #20

I have tinnitus only when I think about it. The rest of the time my brain just ignores it.

The #1 cause of me remembering I have tinnitus is seeing articles about tinnitus.

I didn't know I had tinnitus until I read about it.

Re: An FDA approved device offers a new treatment for tinnitus

#80

Post by abdela »

oblib wrote: post #68

I've been taking magnesium ("Calm" brand), zinc, potassium, and D, at night after dinner and just before I go to bed and that's really helped quiet down the tinnitus for me. For me, it's stress that triggers it and it can get vicious loud.

Do you know what caused your tinnitus?
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