Hi all!
No I haven't forgotten about you lot and no I haven't forgot about my tinnitus. It is up and down the whole time but as long as I heavily reduce salt it keeps it down. Going over 3mg of salt a day makes it noticeable. I'm positive it's a blood flow issue so I've ordered some Ginkgo 761.
I managed to reduce my tinnitus by 95%+ during the Summer but 10 days alter it came back after a stressful work week and indulging in far too much salty food. I was taking 600mg NAC after breakfast, then a B-vitamin complex and lastly 22mg of Zinc in the evening. I was getting quiet days but once I took the Zinc the next morning I just had a faint hiss when I checked.
There seems to be 3 main causes of tinnitus:
Blood Flow
Salicylates
Glutamate
The biggest problem is that there is crossover, what reduces it for one person spikes it for another. I read on Reddit a guy who overdosed on Aspirin and the next day his tinnitus was gone. On the other hand Aspirin is heavy in salicylates which can coat the nerves of the inner ear causing them to misfire producing tinnitus. This is one of the reasons people can get tinnitus from medication and why it will generally go away once they stop the medication.
Then on the other hand something like Curcumin/Tumeric and Ginkgo Biloba boost blood flow to the ears through Nitric Oxide and are Glutamate Antagonists but they are heavy in salicylates.
So if you need a vasodilator to improve blood flow but can't deal with salicylates then Aged Garlic Extract will boost blood flow but that in turn is high in glutamate which can cause and worsen tinnitus.
So you need something to reduce glutamate. This is tricky because you need to raise GABA levels but you can't have GABA without it being Glutamate first. This is where NAC comes in. It is well documented for reducing Glutamate which is one of the reasons it works so well for noise induced tinnitus. If you can reduce Glutamate and raise GABA then it can lower tinnitus and boost your mood. When those two things happen together you will enter a cycle and as long as it doesn't stop your tinnitus will keep going on.
No wonder it's so hard to find a cure for tinnitus when everything has the potential to lessen and worsen it.
And I'm now late for work but I promise to come back soon!
Nitric Oxide is a vasodilator but it is also a free radical and directly ototoxic to the inner ear.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12745149/
Interesting. It's one of the most dependent ways to reduce and even cure various types of tinnitus. It works as a vasodilator increasing blood flow to your inner ear. It's one of the reasons how people can have positive results from Ginkgo, Turmeric, Bio Flavanoid, Aged Garlic etc.
This could be a connection between certain drugs causing tinnitus.