Hey guys, I've had tinnitus for around 2.5 months and it developed after a very stressful period; I just randomly woke up with it one day. For about a month and a half, I tried to do something about it and the volume did decrease significantly but after that there didn't seem to be anymore of a reduction. At this point, I don't really care anymore and it doesn't really bother me a whole lot so I've "accepted" it. I'm more concerned that I've developed some form of dysautonomia so hopefully after the coronavirus stuff is over I can see a cardiologist. I did notice something that I thought was peculiar though so hopefully it can help a lot of you if you're lucky.
Starting off, I'll say that initially the volume was like a notch away from suicidal level and I took Klonopin to sleep out of desperation. Oddly enough, within 30 minutes, the volume significantly reduced and I tested it 3 times to confirm. After doing some research, it seems that Klonopin and other benzo class drugs bind to your GABA A and also GABA B receptors in your brain, which are supposed to balance out with Glutamate. Going off of this, I determined that maybe I had a neurotransmitter imbalance. So here's what I did:
1. I googled a list of all foods with large amounts of free Glutamate and went on an anti Glutamate, low salt, low sugar, no caffeine, and no alcohol diet. I pretty much ate meat besides turkey, eggs, salad/vegetables besides broccoli and mushrooms, nuts besides cashews, peanuts, and walnuts, limited fruit but lots of avocados, and some potatoes for a little over a month. And I put chili powder on everything haha.
2. I took a bunch of supplements including NAC, Magnesium Glycinate (4 120mg pills a day), omega 3 fish oils, a Vitamin B complex, vitamin E, Vitamin C, Curcumin with a piperine complex (for significantly increased absorption), Ubiquinol, 30mg zinc, a probiotic ("primal probiotics" lol), Vitamin D, and Vitamin K2.
Other things worth trying are L-theanine (but it gave me a headache), Acetyl-L-Carnitine (if you think your tinnitus may be related to hearing loss/damage, and Taurine (for the same reason).
3. I stopped all sexual activity for around a month and I feel like this actually did something but it may have just been coincidence that the reduction in volume started happening soon after this. But when you do the deed, your brain goes crazy and there's all sorts of chemicals released + nerve activation so who knows.
4. You have to stop being stressed and relax. I know it's hard but chronic stress is one of the main things that leads to a Glutamate GABA imbalance in the first place. And you also need to sleep well as you can + do some light exercise such as walking.
The most interesting thing to me that I don't think I have seen anyone on this thread mention is that AFTER TAKING KLONOPIN AGAIN RECENTLY, THERE WAS NO LONGER A REDUCTION IN VOLUME. I took it 3 times during the insane phase of tinnitus months back and 1 time like two days ag o- I wanted to see if I might reach 0% volume but it didn't do anything anymore. This leads me to believe that I mitigated some damage doing what I did and if I had acted sooner/put the puzzle pieces together, I might have been able to mitigate it even further. In other words, my GABA and Glutamate levels are probably balanced now but permanent/long term damage has occurred regarding the nerve/brain cells.
My advice to new people with tinnitus is try for a couple months to do something about it so you can say that you gave it your best shot and have no regrets but then you need to just let it go or you'll make yourself miserable thinking about it/focusing on it all the time. I was obsessed at first and it wasn't good for me. The statistics that say "90% of people who get tinnitus will have it disappear within a year" are pretty unbalanced because the vast majority of those are the people who go to a concert or shoot a gun or whatever and have it for 15 minutes to a day and what not and then it's gone. If you've had it for months, it's unlikely that it will go away, at least anytime soon, so for your own well being it's best to just move forward and live your life. If it goes away, that's great but if not, you'll get used to it. It's been like a week and a half since I just let it go and I don't really care that it's there anymore. I don't keep track of it anymore and I don't think anything spikes it either food wise, which is nice because I love Chinese food and Mexican food haha. I still hear it though so I don't think I've "habituated".
The most annoying time is when I'm trying to sleep. I found that the BEST solution to this is to only get in your bed when you're mega tired and you know you'll fall asleep immediately. Exercise earlier in the day, turn the fan on, take some melatonin (this makes sleep harder for me though), or read a book (but avoid screens). And if you're going through the initial panic phase, it's okay to take something like Klonopin or some other drug to get through it, although long term use is not recommended and the drug wasn't made for that purpose.
Lastly, when it comes to the cures, I'm not so sure because there are all sorts of ways to get tinnitus varying from sound damage, stress, TMJ, vertebral issues, neck issues, concussions, stress, etc. I think that the cochlear regeneration stuff may help those with sound damage but I'd be skeptical of it helping anyone else. If your tinnitus has a somatic element, you can 100% improve it to some degree but you'll have to find a set of exercises and maybe reduce inflammation because there is an objective physical cause involved. My mom and brother both have somatic tinnitus. My brother says his gets worse progressively as he sits in one spot playing his Xbox lol but it "resets" every day. Mom's changes when she moves her neck and some of her upper vertebrae aren't aligned 100% correctly. If you're like me and yours appeared out of no where or you think it was stress induced/you think you have some form of brain damage, I think the best bet might be the potassium channel modulators.
For the people exposed to ototoxic meds, who knows lol. Those are very odd because for example, I've taken Advil many times throughout my life and it never did anything bad but as soon as I took it after I got tinnitus, it made the tinnitus worse than it ever had been. And antibiotics never did anything to me. My guess is the meds are only ototoxic because someone has a genetic susceptibility to them or they are in a "weakened" state (high stress, sick, etc.) so the meds are more likely to have adverse effects.
If my tinnitus disappears completely, I'll make another post about it but I think it's extremely unlikely unless it's some spontaneous thing that happens years later. I've sort of wondered what the consequences would be if someone could just zap the overactive nerve cells and maybe kill them lol. There are plenty of nice people on here and it's been fun chit chatting with a lot of you
I probably won't be on here too much anymore though (but I'll donate haha).
But if you're early to the tinnitus game, I strongly think that your damage might be able to be reduced if you try what I listed above and get to it quickly, especially if it's stress induced/related to GABA and Glutamate.
Good luck to everyone and hang in there- the rate at which medical technology/technology in general has progressed has been incredible even in the last 20 years.
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