Dealing with Bad Spikes? -- New to the Forum!

[kokoro]

(Moved my personal story with tinnitus into the "Introduction" forum)


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I'm experiencing a bad relapse/spike - after about 5 months of slowly getting to a comfortable point with my tinnitus, now I am back at square one and need some advice.

* What brings on a spike for you?

* What do you do to deal with or relieve a spike? (medicine/nutrition etc.?)

* How do you keep yourself from freaking out when having a spike? (emotionally)

* What foods/activities do you avoid/recommend for tinnitus?

* Is there any credibility to stuff like hyperbaric oxygen, gingko biloba, TMJ treatment, hearing maskers etc.?

* How long did/does it take you to properly habituate?

* How long have you stayed habituated before you've relapsed?​

I really just need some answers from people that have experience or knowledge where I don't. I feel so pathetic bringing this stuff up all the time with my family and friends - who sympathise, but don't understand the sheer intrusiveness and suffering of it all.

Hopefully one day we all reach habituation - or a CURE! Thanks guys.

 

[Hengist]

Okay here is my personal experiance:
HBOT - yes removes tinnitus during the therapy, but it comes back when you depressurize, best done asap and you have a 15% chance to be cured
Dexamethasone -best done asap but I took it a month after, reduced my tinnitus volume by 50-70% and removed spikes for the most part but due to nasty sideeffects I stopped it, maybe if I took it from day 1 I would be cured. Now the situation is back to what it was before dexamethasone.
NAC - good for spikes but do not expect too much, maybe a small reduction

as for my own personal reaction to a spike, start drinking and hang around people!

http://www.generalfuzz.net/acrn/

 

[billie48]

Spikes are very common for newer tinnitus sufferers. So the best is to mentally prepare for them, so that you don't sink back into a mental black hole every time a spike hits. First off, understand what triggers the spikes, whether there is a medical cause. If you or the doctors can't find the reason for the spike, then just count yourself as the norm, which means T can spike for no reason at times and this is very common. The mental stress of trying to find the answer or reasons for the spikes may be exhausting at times, and we end up gingerly tip-toeing around something which we suspect causing the spikes.

For me, I took Ativan sublingual pills with me in my pockets all the time during the young days of my T life. When spikes hit and I couldn't handle the anxiety, there went the pills. It was not easy to handle the spikes initially. But slowly I realized I needed to mentally prepare for them. Since I couldn't find anything to help reduce the spikes, I decided to reduce its impact mentally. My approach is not for everybody, but it works for me during my initial days a few year back.

I searched youtubes for people who have loud jobs, especially in the 3rd world where people like miners & drillers who are happy to have a job, even a loud and unsafe job. They face horrendously loud jobs for life for wages so that they can feed their family. Many don't have ear protection. Perhaps, I thought I will just imagine myself being one of them, a driller or miner, facing a long shift with horrendously loud jobs. At least I don't have to work 1000+ ft underground risking mine collapse or poisonous gases. I would turn videos like below links to a level of loudness like real life volume and then imagine that if people can take that and be happy to work, perhaps I should just accept my spikes without all the negative emotions. It is not a perfect analogy, but good enough for me. This mental imagery technique worked to reduce my stress level with the spikes, and slowly I didn't need meds to deal with them. But after a few years now, I don't give a dime to T, high or low. My brain is used to the sound and is hardened to it without any adverse reactions, and even on loud days, I don't hear T for long stretches of time. It is I guess what we call habituation.

Turn the volume to real life level and feel how people work like this day in and day out.