Right now I'd prefer to never think about tinnitus again, but before I (hopefully) put this in the rear-view mirror wanted to share this for others desperately searching for info online what worked for me.
-- Kevin Hogan's book 'turning the volume down.' I'm not a shill, he's got this expensive box set of stuff on his web site. Don't know if you need that, but the cheap book really helped b/c it shifted my perspective. As intensely physical as T is, the problem for a lot of people -- and me anyway -- is that it's severely connected to stress, your focus and emotions. In a nutshell, his theory: SPADE (stress, panic, anxiety, depression, and emotional illness) doesn't CAUSE T but it does foster an environment where it can start (spurred by noise, drugs, whatever) and helps keep it going after it should, in theory, have passed. after all, many many people with severe hearing loss dont have T. it's usually a brain thing. You have to rigorously retrain your brain to ignore and quit giving you this useless information (the ringing), and that takes some real work.
-- So: I got back on an anti-depressant plus started taking a bit of xanax in the evenings. Calming down didn't reduce the tinnitus -- at first -- but gradually I began to see a big difference. Basically hogan argues you gotta treat the depression and stop paying attention to the T in order to even have a chance of stopping it. tough, i know. Also: One of the ways you can most easily tell if you're treatable, he says, is if the T fluctuates in volume and or tone.
-- Cardio exercise every day (i swam laps at gym). it makes you feel better. and anything that makes you feel better is important.
-- Stress-reducing Yoga in the mornings (rodney yee videos on laptop via itunes)
-- I tried a hypnosis thing i found on youtube for ignoring tinnitus. not sure if that did anything, but i'm including it here because i want to include everything i did in case i'm mistaken about what got me better.
-- Tried supplements -- Ginkgo, Magnesium, Vinpocetine, melatonin, and Bioflavoidnoids. I can't say for sure none of them worked, maybe one or two "kicked in" but i suspect that isn't the case because this was first thing i tried and i didn't notice any difference until starting the other things. Btw, the only one my ear doctor recommended was the bioflavinoids.
-- Stopped "checking" my T, tried to keep myself constantly distracted and not think about it.
-- Sound-rich environment. Never be in a silent room when you have T. no ear plugs. This is key, but there's a right way and wrong way to do it. simply masking the T is fine if you just need to get it off your mind. but ideally, it seems, you should listen to **music you really like just below the volume of your T** ... that helps make your brain strain to hear the "good" noise and learn to ignore the "annoying" noise. I created a playlist of a couple hundred movie soundtrack tracks in Spotify and had that playing at low volume while i worked. at night, i downloaded from itunes "7 hours relaxing nature sounds" -- a pretty great collection of 6 minute tracks of various nature sounds. After deleting some of the annoying ones, i stopped having my ceiling fan on at night and instead had this on at a low volume, just barely able to hear it -- the very first morning after doing this i woke up and instead of the usual raging head noise, it was reduced. again, it's not having a white noise boring masking sound, but rather something that's pleasant that your brain would rather hear than T.
anyway. that's it. right now my T is still slightly there, but barely noticeable. obviously this won't work for everybody. and for a while i was super frustrated bc i felt like i was doing everything and nothing was helping, so if you do try this, hang with it for a while. i was pretty amazed at what a difference this eventually made. i figure if it only helps one person, im glad i posted it.
-- Kevin Hogan's book 'turning the volume down.' I'm not a shill, he's got this expensive box set of stuff on his web site. Don't know if you need that, but the cheap book really helped b/c it shifted my perspective. As intensely physical as T is, the problem for a lot of people -- and me anyway -- is that it's severely connected to stress, your focus and emotions. In a nutshell, his theory: SPADE (stress, panic, anxiety, depression, and emotional illness) doesn't CAUSE T but it does foster an environment where it can start (spurred by noise, drugs, whatever) and helps keep it going after it should, in theory, have passed. after all, many many people with severe hearing loss dont have T. it's usually a brain thing. You have to rigorously retrain your brain to ignore and quit giving you this useless information (the ringing), and that takes some real work.
-- So: I got back on an anti-depressant plus started taking a bit of xanax in the evenings. Calming down didn't reduce the tinnitus -- at first -- but gradually I began to see a big difference. Basically hogan argues you gotta treat the depression and stop paying attention to the T in order to even have a chance of stopping it. tough, i know. Also: One of the ways you can most easily tell if you're treatable, he says, is if the T fluctuates in volume and or tone.
-- Cardio exercise every day (i swam laps at gym). it makes you feel better. and anything that makes you feel better is important.
-- Stress-reducing Yoga in the mornings (rodney yee videos on laptop via itunes)
-- I tried a hypnosis thing i found on youtube for ignoring tinnitus. not sure if that did anything, but i'm including it here because i want to include everything i did in case i'm mistaken about what got me better.
-- Tried supplements -- Ginkgo, Magnesium, Vinpocetine, melatonin, and Bioflavoidnoids. I can't say for sure none of them worked, maybe one or two "kicked in" but i suspect that isn't the case because this was first thing i tried and i didn't notice any difference until starting the other things. Btw, the only one my ear doctor recommended was the bioflavinoids.
-- Stopped "checking" my T, tried to keep myself constantly distracted and not think about it.
-- Sound-rich environment. Never be in a silent room when you have T. no ear plugs. This is key, but there's a right way and wrong way to do it. simply masking the T is fine if you just need to get it off your mind. but ideally, it seems, you should listen to **music you really like just below the volume of your T** ... that helps make your brain strain to hear the "good" noise and learn to ignore the "annoying" noise. I created a playlist of a couple hundred movie soundtrack tracks in Spotify and had that playing at low volume while i worked. at night, i downloaded from itunes "7 hours relaxing nature sounds" -- a pretty great collection of 6 minute tracks of various nature sounds. After deleting some of the annoying ones, i stopped having my ceiling fan on at night and instead had this on at a low volume, just barely able to hear it -- the very first morning after doing this i woke up and instead of the usual raging head noise, it was reduced. again, it's not having a white noise boring masking sound, but rather something that's pleasant that your brain would rather hear than T.
anyway. that's it. right now my T is still slightly there, but barely noticeable. obviously this won't work for everybody. and for a while i was super frustrated bc i felt like i was doing everything and nothing was helping, so if you do try this, hang with it for a while. i was pretty amazed at what a difference this eventually made. i figure if it only helps one person, im glad i posted it.
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