Tinnitus: The Non-Silent Killer… Condition

In recent weeks, I have begun to encounter something in the background of my life that I long ignored, tinnitus.  And no, it is not because I recently saw the remake of “A Star is Born”.

The British tend to pronounce it, “TIN-i-tis “. Like an incidental comment over a cup of tea. “I have this vexing TIN-i-tis while reading. Like a car alarm vibrating in my skullll… Frightfully annoying, my old chap”

Americans (or perhaps New Yorkers, since we don’t know anything about anybody else) tend to pronounce it, tin-AYY-tis.

(Think Fred Stoller)

“So I’ve got this ringing in the ears thing? You know I think it’s called tin-AYY-tis? Yeah, I think I want to blow my brains out”.

tin-AYY-tis. I like this better. It reflects the annoyance more.

ANY-way… it is not technically classified as a disease but rather a condition. Semantics aside, ignoring it is (if you can)  probably the only real cure for it. That is to say, without conscious effort, learning to habituate the annoyance of a non-audible pitch produced by the brain continually ringing in the ears is a matter that can be controlled cognitively. This is similar to people that for example, learn to cope with living near a railroad or really loud and obnoxious siblings.   At least, if you are able to do this. Under certain conditions it can drive you batty and after all, we have only one head and we have to live in it.

The dual nature of this issue concerning both the actual fact of the ringing and your reaction to it is concisely discussed by Susan Adams, TRT Specialist for the Center of Hearing and Communications.

In a recent party, I acknowledged to a few friends that I have had this issue all of my life. Many were surprised to hear it. In fact, I surprised myself that I had never shared this fact. We discussed the usual reasons for it having to do with the death of cilia hairs in the ear that are now translating a confused signal to the brain.

True confessions, my tinnitus experience likely resulted from a foolish act I committed when I was around 10 years old. I attempted to throw a cherry bomb out my window, it hit the blind and it exploded in front of me. I bloodied my leg a bit and ran out of the house with my ears ringing and it kept up for days. I never saw a physician because I was too ashamed of what I had done and (to my knowledge) Mom never found out. How the hell I got away with such potentially catastrophic tomfoolery I’ll never now. These days there would cops, landlords and social services visiting. 

In my defense, I was only trying to imitate my older brother, Doug who had demonstrated to me once how it was done and left his stash of fireworks in a secret place in his drawer. In his usual “Joe Cool” nonchalant way, he let the fuse run right near the end and then in a split second, chucked it out the window, exploding just before hitting the ground. Freaking guy. He was always tempting me with deliciously wrong things to do and I was always trying to imitate him… unsuccessfully.

Eventually the ringing sort of faded away from consciousness. I would hear it just before jumping into bed but since I was accustomed to it and tended to fall asleep fast, it wasn’t a big deal. But lately it’s been getting worse and also I’ve begun trying to meditate in the mornings to improve my concentration and overall well-being. One of the meditations is a listening exercise. Now I’m noticing it because, well that’s the point, listening. So I have:

• cars, people and plane sounds
• in the building sounds
• my inner dialogue (aka, “The Narrator”)
• Tinnitus pitches
• Ear Worms (Oliver Sacksian type. Will discuss in another post)

And the annoying thing is that in the building and directly outside near a roof or something, there seem to be drone tones that mimic my head tones at a very similar pitch and volume. Since the tinnitus problem happens in the head  it’s rather a nasty trick that actual droning tinnitus-like pitches are playing outside my head wouldn’t you say?  I literally took my phone out, went next to the window, recorded it and listened back to prove to myself it was really not in my head. Next stop, tin foil hat, dark corner of my room, looking up at the night sky…

One night last week I woke up and my head was just ringing off the hook with a bunch of pitches and couldn’t make it stop. That was scary. So now literally I was becoming a 2am WebMD nutjob looking at all the causes, symptoms and cures for tinnitus.

Here’s the bottom line summary on non-temporary tinnitus condition:

• It doesn’t in fact have any known reliable cure
• It tends to get worse
• It is most often associated with hearing loss
• It can be associated with a whole host of related illnesses such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, benign brain tumors and thyroid conditions (in some medical circles) and many others.
• It can be associated with Meniere’s Disease (my father had that rare disease as many of you know)

The pathology is little understood as well, since hearing is quite a complex process. The cochlea, auditory pathways, blood flow near the ears, facial bones and auditory processing centers in the brain are all involved in producing the final pitch that we perceive as sound.  So experimentation, medically speaking, can involve a number of areas and methods at any place in the chain of pitch production.

Back to the British again. The UK seems to be the only country that is actively trying in earnest to take the condition seriously, looking for a cure and devoting money and resources to it. There is one cure that has been worked on for a few years called Acoustic CR Neuromodulation which seeks to treat the issue by delivering a patient-customized sequenced set of tones via an audio player over a specified period. It is a patented process that is on the European market  but unfortunately hasn’t quite stood up to the riggers of peer review testing. The realistic efficacy I recall is in the 25% range, as discussed by Dr. Jay Hobbs who has dove in and parsed the testing results.

There is a lot of hocus pocus and quackery promoted on YouTube as well. Some use strong wave tones that you should be careful with as they might make your condition worse. There is one particular chiropractor who will remain nameless that has several videos devoted to different, very truthy sounding cures for tinnitus. I’m sure he’s well intentioned, but I see no one saying specifically that it helped/didn’t help or follow up comments to specific user questions by the author; just a lot of holistic “God Bless what you do” praise thru the Youtube comment echo chamber. To me, these videos have about as much proven effectiveness as Willie’s jamming a meat thermometer into his ear (I hate when that happens).

At the moment I’m pursuing these over-the-counter type remedies, and plan to try each of them one at a time:

• Lipoflavonoid
• Zinc
• Spirulina
• Ginkgo Biloba

Overall I see some slight improvement in my condition with the first remedy, but I don’t know yet if it’s significant or a placebo effect. And you’re supposed to allow at least 30 days for it to work. Will let you know what I found out in my next blog.

Cheers

Jon