@10Kcd,
@Jan64,
@SoundB0und,
@Anima, I would appreciate any replies!
Hey there.
Cool that you're trying out the laser. I've not posted on this forum for a while, but I've continued lasering all these years. In early June, it'll be six years. I've been consistent; when I accidentally forget a day(because tinnitus is really not on my mind at all anymore), I always do more the following days, but I gradually decrease the time over five days to reach back the baseline time I always laser. This happens about once a month. What helps is I try to meditate every day, and lasering is part of my meditation. No harm from all this extended time of lasering, as far as I can tell. According to my calculations, I've clocked in over 1000 hours now.
Now for your post. I realize now, after all these years, that this whole "trying to cure my own ailments" topic is controversial and very difficult for people. When you mess up, there's no one else to blame but yourself; everyone will say what you did was stupid, and so on. The casualties from modern medicine are not looked at the same way. Every time you start something new, it's Russian roulette, that applies to medications by doctor and anything you try on your initiation. Nowadays, I feel very hesitant to advise people in the form of "do as I did, and it'll work."
I had so many advantages in recovering from my horrible tinnitus; I was willing, capable, and able to live like a hermit; I had the time, energy, and will to be really careful and yet still willing to go on the roulette wheel, have a very overactive mind; am generally not anxious; I've learned not to push myself too far when things seem like they're not working out; I start slow and experiment and most of all, I take try full responsibility for what I do. I was just lucky to have these predispositions and lucky that things actually worked out; the biggest part was just luck on the roulette wheel, really.
You can increase your odds and increase them by a lot, but things can still go wrong no matter what. It's not only about effort but the right kind of effort, too. And do realize that not doing anything is doing something; plenty of people get worse without taking action, and it's not looked in the same light as those who got worse actually taking action; the latter seems much worse to people, for whatever reason. So... I have a hard time recommending my methods to most people, not because I no longer think they up your chances of recovery, but because I don't think there are many who could execute them correctly; there are some here who I definitely see who could do it, though.
As far as doing the laser, I started very slow but only did that for a couple or a few days; I amped up to the routine recommended by Konftec really fast (which I now realize was very suboptimal for me, but I think it was better than going really slow, now I don't really follow any strict routine because I have a feel for whatever I need to do). And the spikes, it's hard to talk about this because somebody will just take it the wrong way and ruin themselves with the laser, perhaps, but I really wish my tinnitus would spike from the laser nowadays; it pretty much doesn't at all at this point.
I gauged it as a sign of healing, but when it did spike, it was a very different kind of spike than the spikes when I damaged myself from loud sounds. Very different doesn't sound like much for regular people; it just sounds to them like their tinnitus spiked. The laser spikes actually felt like healing; they felt good in a way, but on some level, they were really hard to explain again. The injury spikes just came with ear fullness(which the laser spikes never did have for me) and this kinda burning sensation, and you feel you lost hearing acuity and so on.
Now, somebody will just try to build a "structure" around what I said, and well, my ears are not burning and have no fullness, so I'll keep blasting the laser, which is incorrect for many reasons. I'm not trying to seem ambiguous here for no reason. It's literally a skill more than a knowledge base I have. Would the world's best surfer explaining to you what he does really improve your surfing? Not really; in fact, if you just went by what he does and got on the board for the first time, you would start overthinking, trying to emulate him, and actually get worse; this is what I feel like talking about these things.
It seems like I got off on a bit of a tangent, but I think it's important that people don't try to strictly and blindly follow what I do or did; we are just hugely different in many ways. If you wanted to do what I did, you'd not really need me to tell you the times of the laser and what to do when it was all experimentation and with my body, so it's not going to translate to your predispositions and your body because we're that different.
I am not trying to discourage anyone here, either. I do believe a recovery is possible, but it takes a lot of work, and one needs to really think about what he or she is willing to sacrifice to recover. I see a lot of posts on the forum like "Got blasted with loud sound on the city, how can I be so unlucky?" or along these lines. That's really lacking awareness to me and people who are in this kind of mindset should probably not even try the laser. Not that I never go to the city or anything, I do, and always with muffs nearby, knowing the need and the benefits of going out outweigh the costs and that I could get ruined. So you did not get unlucky; you just got hit with a, in the short term, statistical improbability, not an impossibility.
So, to end, to me, and this is just to me, it feels like you're either healing somewhat from the very short laser sessions you've done or that maybe you're not protecting as well while doing the laser as you should(you mentioned going out). I believe that when you get into healing mode, it's paramount to protect well from sounds that are too loud, even better than prior to starting to heal with the laser. You also mentioned higher pitch, which was a classical sign of healing to me, one which I don't get anymore after all these years. I feel that the hyperacusis has improved, which is a very good sign, and that means you should heal more with the laser if you protect adequately. Your ears are sensitive to LLLT; I wish mine were at this point
One thing I still believe is the longer you wait and slip out of the acute phase, the worse your chances of recovery with the laser are. I've shared the story of what happened to my left ear; it's still around 4x worse than the right to this day. It's a long game, this lasering, and about six months in, I just learned to mostly ignore everything short term because I realized it's helping me.
At any rate, I wish you good luck with whatever you choose to do going forward. There are risks, nothing is 100% safe when you go rouge in treatment and recovery, but I think you can still make good progress if you're careful and persistent enough.
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