Hearing Loss Help  

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady wrote,

I have had tinnitus for several years. It seems to be a genetic disorder as my mother and brother both suffered from it as well. I worked in the music business for years and always attributed it to the exposure to loud music and extended use of Aspirin. Both my brother and mother had heart issues. Is tinnitus related to heart disease? Also, what would cause an increase in the sound of tinnitus?

I’ve never heard of tinnitus being genetic. Rather than your family’s tinnitus being genetic, you could all have tinnitus because of similarities in your environments, lifestyles or upbringing that result in tinnitus. When that happens, it is easy to think that tinnitus might be genetic.

Being around loud music can and does cause tinnitus. So can taking a lot of Aspirin. Fortunately, tinnitus caused by Aspirin is typically temporary.

Furthermore, tinnitus can be related to heart issues—depending on the type of your tinnitus. For example, if your tinnitus pulses in unison to your heartbeat, you have a vascular kind of tinnitus called pulsatile tinnitus. High blood pressure or clogged arteries in your neck and head can cause this kind of tinnitus.

If you have heart disease and take heart medications, one of the side effects of the heart drugs can be tinnitus.

There are many factors that can cause your tinnitus to increase in volume. For example:

— being around louder sounds
— taking any of the more than 500 drugs known to cause tinnitus
— increasing hearing loss
— stress
— anxiety
— eating certain foods
— various diseases such as allergies and diabetes
— ear infections and other ear conditions, and so on.

If you want to learn more about tinnitus and a number of things you can do to help bring it under your control,  check out the new 5th edition of “When Your Ears Ring! Cope with Your Tinnitus—Here’s How“.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Numbers of people find their tinnitus, or the loudness of their tinnitus, is related to stress. I hear from people all the time who tell me that when their stress increases, so does their tinnitus.

Researchers have found the same thing. Writing about people with tinnitus, one researcher recently noted, “On a stress free day, their tinnitus may be manageable and unnoticeable. In the presence of a stressor, their tinnitus returns. It is widely known that stress, even if it may not be the main cause of tinnitus, precipitates and/or perpetuates tinnitus. Thus, teaching patients how to manage their stress more effectively is an important component of a tinnitus treatment program.” (1)

Thus, one of the effective things that you can do to help bring your tinnitus under control is to learn to control your stress. There are many different techniques you can use to help reduce your stress. Discover which works the best for yourself and watch the stress-induced component of your tinnitus “melt away” as you learn how to “hang loose”.

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(1) Herzfeld, Melanie and Francis Kuk. 2011. A Clinician’s Experience with Using Fractal Music for Tinnitus Management. The Hearing Review. Vol 18, No 11, October 2011. p. 55.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man wrote,

I noticed an ad in the current issue of Hearing Health magazine for Arches Tinnitus Formula. Has anyone had success with this product? The absence of a company address in the advertisement makes me wary.

It seems any magazine ad I see for a tinnitus remedy offers only a toll free number. When I call the number, my experience is that the price of the product is sky high and any questions about the formula will be brushed off because the formula is proprietary.

I realize some people do experience success using a homeopathic product, yet I’m also aware that the American Tinnitus Association has stated there is no medical cure for tinnitus.

I agree with you. I like to see people stand behind their products with full contact information prominently displayed. However, sometimes ads are cramped for space so they leave this information off. The good news in this case is that if you go to the Arches website you will find their contact information—name, address, phone number and the name of the person behind this product—namely, Barry Keate. (I’m well aware that there are other tinnitus products being hawked that have no such contact information on their websites—and of those I am really leery.)

More good news. The ingredients for Arches Tinnitus Formula are not proprietary. In fact, there are only three common ingredients in the Arches Tinnitus Formula, namely, zinc, garlic and Ginkgo biloba.

The interesting thing about their Ginkgo content is that this is one tinnitus formula that actually contains a therapeutic dose of Ginkgo, in contrast to many other tinnitus formulas out there that only contain a token amount of Ginkgo. (This is one reason that so many studies of Ginkgo as a remedy for tinnitus have not shown positive results—the researchers deliberately or through ignorance used an inadequate dose in their studies.)

For example, a German Commission did a detailed study on Ginkgo and determined that the therapeutic dose was 480 mg a day—and that the Ginkgo had to be standardized to 24% flavone glycosides and 6% terpene lactones.

Guess what? The Ginkgo content in Arches Tinnitus Formula is standardized to exactly that. Furthermore, their recommended dose is 480 mg per day—exactly the amount the German Commission found was needed for an effective therapeutic dose.

Even though the Arches Tinnitus Formula contains a therapeutic dose of Ginkgo, you need to realize that Ginkgo doesn’t work for everyone’s tinnitus. Ginkgo taken at the effective dose of 480 mg per day helps between 26% and 82% of the people taking it, depending on which study you look at. This is not to say that everyone’s tinnitus goes away completely, but taking a therapeutic dose of Ginkgo does help reduce the tinnitus in numbers of people—and any reduction in tinnitus volume/annoyance is a blessing to be sure.

Arches Tinnitus Formula is not a homeopathic product—it is a supplement type of product. In my opinion, it is one of the better herbal tinnitus products available. Sure it will cost you—about a dollar a day—but what drugs are that cheap?

There is no single magic pill that will cure tinnitus. The best approach is to try several things at once or sequentially—and hopefully each will help reduce your tinnitus a certain amount so that you end up with a significant reduction in your tinnitus. I give many of these tinnitus reduction strategies, including using Ginkgo and other herbals and minerals in my tinnitus book, “When Your Ears Ring! Cope with Your Tinnitus—Here’s How“.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady explained,

A horrible, loud explosion woke me up last night and made me scream out a bit. It was really scary! Has this ever happened to anyone else?

Fortunately, what you experienced is quite rare. It goes by the ghastly-sounding name of “Exploding Head” syndrome.

In spite of its grisly name, your head doesn’t really explode—you just hear a loud exploding sound—much like you did. This can occur as you are coming out of a deep sleep. It can certainly scare you and set your heart to pounding.

In my book, “When Your Ears Ring! Cope with Your Tinnitus—Here’s How” I explain:

“Exploding Head” syndrome is a relatively rare event in which you experience a very loud and sudden noise such as a loud bang similar to a bomb exploding, a gun going off, a clash of cymbals, a door slamming, a roaring sound, waves crashing against rocks, loud voices or screams, a ringing noise, a terrific bang on a tin tray, the sound of electrical arcing (buzzing) or any other form of loud, indecipherable noise that seems to originate from inside your head. It most often occurs just before deep sleep (and sometimes upon coming out of deep sleep) and wakes you up.

If you are interested, you can learn more about the strange kinds of tinnitus some people experience in this book. You can get your own copy here.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Back in 2004 when I coined the name “Musical Ear Syndrome” for the strange musical hallucinations many hard of hearing people secretly experience, I never dreamed that someone would actually make a movie about it. But that is what has just happened. In fact, this short movie was one of 12 films nominated for inclusion in the prestigious 2011 Virgin Media Shorts film competition, the UK’s biggest short-film competition.

Ian Gamester, a Liverpool filmmaker, made the short list with a touching documentary starring his grandmother, Cath Gamester, who, after being prescribed anti-depressants by her doctor, now suffers from Musical Ear Syndrome (MES). As Ian explained, “She kept hearing the same songs again and again and thought that someone was playing a record loudly.”

Unfortunately, Ian did not win any of the three top spots at the gala judging competition on November 10, 2011, but just being nominated for this prestigious competition has helped more people become aware of Musical Ear Syndrome.

You can watch this 2 minute and 20 second black and white film here.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A recent MarkeTrak study revealed some interesting things about tinnitus and its effects on our lives—what we can do to help ameliorate the effects of our tinnitus and where hearing aids fit into the equation. (1)

But first, some background on tinnitus. Tinnitus—ringing in the ears—affects a LOT of people— somewhere between 30 and 50 million people in the USA alone.

The older we get, the more likely we are to experience tinnitus. (1) For example:

Notice that by the time people reach 55, at least one person in five has tinnitus. This rises to one person in four for seniors. That’s a lot of people living their lives listening to the phantom racket we call tinnitus.

Tinnitus affects the quality of life for many people. A study of 3,431 people with tinnitus (1) revealed:

(Note: these figures add up to more than 100% because tinnitus often affects several aspects of a person’s life at the same time.)

The good news is that almost half of the people with tinnitus report it does not affect their lives at all. Basically, they just ignore their tinnitus and live happy and fulfilled lives in spite of the racket in their ears. I’m one of these. Sure, sometimes I wish my tinnitus wasn’t there, but I choose to ignore the constant tinnitus I experience and live my life as though it didn’t exist.

That’s a bit of background on tinnitus. Now, let’s look at how we can help bring our tinnitus under control. One of the treatments that few people apparently consider to help bring their tinnitus under control is simply getting and wearing properly-fitted hearing aids.

In a study of 1,314 people with tinnitus, 52.4% found that wearing hearing aids didn’t make any difference to their tinnitus. That’s the bad news. However, looking at it the other way, the good news is that if you have tinnitus you have approximately a 50-50 chance that wearing hearing aids will help reduce the impact of your tinnitus. Any treatment that has a 50% chance of helping you is definitely worthwhile trying!

Here’s a note of caution: If you have tinnitus, you still have to be careful when wearing hearing aids because the above study further revealed that 4.2% of the people with tinnitus found that wearing hearing aids actually made their tinnitus worse. If you are one of these unfortunate people, you need to keep the volume on your hearing aids set to a level that doesn’t provoke your tinnitus. If that won’t work, you probably should not wear hearing aids.

However, the good news is that 43.5% of the people found that wearing hearing aids helped mitigate the effects of their tinnitus. Here’s the break-down of the results: 15.7% of these people reported a mild reduction in their tinnitus; 14.1% reported a moderate reduction in their tinnitus; and the really good news was that 13.7% reported a significant reduction in their tinnitus. (1)

How often did this reduction of tinnitus occur when wearing hearing aids? Of the 553 people that reported an improvement in their tinnitus when wearing their hearing aids, here’s the break down:

Notice that almost 2 out of 3 people reported that wearing their hearing aids gave them reduced tinnitus most or all of the time! That’s impressive for any tinnitus treatment.

Now here’s the best news of all. 3.4% reported that the improvement in their tinnitus continued even when they took their hearing aids off! (1)

With results like these, if you are bothered by your tinnitus and you have some degree of hearing loss, you owe it to yourself to try hearing aids and see whether they will help your tinnitus too.

This study also looked at the various things people tried in order to reduce their tinnitus. Of the 3,473 people in this study—all of whom had tinnitus—notice that only a miniscule 6.1% tried wearing hearing aids in an attempt to reduce their tinnitus. This shows how foreign it is to people’s thinking that hearing aids are an effective way to help control tinnitus. Now that you know the truth, don’t make the same mistake.

Here’s the break-down of the various ways people tried to reduce their tinnitus.

Notice the low percentages of people with tinnitus that tried each of these various treatments—the highest was only 6.8%. The total only adds up to 33.9%. Assuming each person only tried one treatment (and this is not likely), this study reveals that only one person in three even tried to help themselves deal with their tinnitus.

Why is that? Could it be that because many doctors tell people suffering from tinnitus that there is no cure for tinnitus, and that they have to live with it—thus leaving them without any hope—that these patients buy into this dismal mindset and thus don’t believe there is anything they can do to help reduce their tinnitus, and so they give up and do not try anything?

If you have tinnitus, don’t believe this. Yes, it is true that at the present time there isn’t a cure for everyone’s tinnitus. Yes, it is true that you have to deal with your own tinnitus. However, it is not true that there is nothing you can do that will help reduce your tinnitus. Do not give up hope. There are many different things you can do to help yourself deal with your tinnitus. Wearing hearing aids is just one of them. You can read about many more in my book, “When Your Ears Ring! Cope with Your Tinnitus—Here’s How“.

Now, back to this study. What were the results of the various things people tried? I have broken them down into three classes no improvement (0%), modest improvement (1-39%) and significant improvement (greater than or equal to 40%). I think these results will encourage you.

Notice that roughly somewhere between one-third and three-quarters of the people found no help with any of the above treatments. That does not mean that these treatments don’t work—just that they don’t work for numbers of people. The good news is that between one-quarter and two-thirds of the people that tried these various treatments did receive help. So these treatments DO help many people. The trick is to find which treatment or treatments work for you.

Now let’s look at the results again, but this time just zeroing in on the results of the highest level in the significant improvement category—namely 80%+.

If you could reduce your tinnitus volume and the impact it has on your life by 80% or more, that would be a real blessing, right? How many people were so “lucky”? Here are the results.

Notice that wearing hearing aids tops the list with 27% of the people that tried wearing hearing aids had a greater than 80% reduction in their tinnitus! That’s impressive. (Remember, that only 6.1% of the people in this study tried hearing aids.)

If these results hold true for all the people with tinnitus, then 13.5 million people in the USA alone would find that wearing hearing aids would reduce their tinnitus by 80+%. Millions more would find that wearing hearing aids would reduce their tinnitus by a lesser amount. Thus, if you have a hearing loss—even a mild one—wearing hearing aids should rank high on the list of things you try to reduce your tinnitus.

As I have said many times in the past, tinnitus arises from a number of different causes and affects people differently, thus a treatment that works for one person won’t necessarily work for another. The results in the various (above) tables prove this.

Since there is no single treatment for tinnitus that works for everybody all the time, and since there are many different treatments that do work in reducing tinnitus for some people, you need to try a number of them and see what works for you. If something doesn’t work for you, try something else. Unless you try, you’ll never know which treatment might reduce your tinnitus by 80% or more.

What have you got to lose? There IS something that will help you. You need to find out what it is and do that. A good plan of attack is to try several different tinnitus reduction treatments at the same time. Together they may make a significant reduction in your tinnitus. Some of that reduction may come from wearing hearing aids. Additional reduction may come from using relaxation techniques, and further reduction may come from taking herbals, or receiving counseling or wearing sound generators or listening to background music, or…the list goes on and on.

Based on the above study, if you are bothered by your tinnitus and have a hearing loss, you may find considerable relief from your tinnitus through the simple expedient of wearing hearing aids.

Note that the degree of your hearing loss and the severity of your tinnitus “are significantly related to the level of tinnitus reduction via hearing aid use. In general, people with milder degrees of tinnitus are more likely to experience mitigation of their tinnitus with hearing aids.” (1)

One final word of advice—you need to be properly fitted with hearing aids. One of the results of this study indicated that “people receiving a more comprehensive hearing aid fitting protocol are nearly twice as likely to experience tinnitus relief from their hearing aids than if they received a minimalist hearing aid fitting protocol.” (1) Don’t skim over the above sentence too fast. You need to insist on a complete and comprehensive audiological evaluation AND careful hearing aid fitting backed by real-ear measurements in order to get the best tinnitus-reduction results. When you do that, you’ve just doubled your chances that wearing your hearing aids will bring you significant tinnitus relief.

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(1) Kochkin, Sergei, et. al. MarkeTrak VIII: The Prevalence of Tinnitus in the United States and the Self-reported Efficacy of Various Treatments. The Hearing Review. Vol. 18, No. 12. November, 2011. pp. 10-26.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A musician explained,

I suddenly began experiencing a strange phenomenon with my hearing. I now hear music through my right ear at the correct pitch, while, at the same time, I hear the same music a semitone higher in my left ear. This is frustrating and scary. I can no longer perform my music. A major part of my life has suddenly been snatched from me. Have you ever heard of this before? Am I going crazy? What can I do to correct this condition?

Another person related,

I’ve suddenly begun to experience a rather disturbing auditory phenomenon. Sounds as heard by my right ear are pitched a bit lower than the same sounds as heard by my left ear. This gives music a very frightening and eerie chorus effect that is becoming more and more disconcerting. What causes it? Does it ever go away?

In a previous eZine, I wrote about people who hear music off-pitch—either certain notes, or all notes. (See “When You Hear Music in the Wrong Key” including all the comments.) In most cases, these people heard the same music off-pitch with both ears. This alone was disconcerting and destroyed their enjoyment of music.

However, it is even more frustrating when you hear the same notes at different pitches in each ear and you don’t know which ear to believe. For example, your left ear may hear a note as F while your right ear may hear the same note as F# (F sharp).

Rest assured, when this happens you are not going crazy, but something definitely has messed up the pitch perception between your ears. This condition is known as diplacusis (dip-lah-KOO-sis).

What is Diplacusis?

Diplacusis is a disconcerting condition, especially for musicians, because you hear the same note at two different pitches—often at the correct pitch in one ear and either higher (sharp) or lower (flat) in the other ear. This makes playing, singing or listening to music sound sour (sharp or flat depending on the direction of the frequency-shift). This can be devastating to a musician who has previously had perfect pitch.

The dictionary defines diplacusis as “abnormal perception of sound either in time or in pitch, such that one sound is heard as two. This fancy name comes from two Greek words “diplous”—double, and “akousis”—hearing. Thus, diplacusis is really double hearing or hearing double. (1)

Diplacusis occurs when your ears have a significant difference in frequency selectivity. This results in clashing interpretations (dissonance) of the tones you hear.

Fortunately, although many people hear tones at different pitches in each of their ears, this difference is normally slight. In fact, when the difference in pitch is less than about one semitone (halftone), the average person typically does not notice it. This difference in pitch normally escapes our notice because the slightly different pitches of sound from our two ears merge in our conscious perception such that we only hear one pitch of sound. (2)

Musicians, however, because of their musical training, may be considerably more sensitive to these slight pitch differences. As a result, they may be aware of, and bothered by, smaller pitch differences than even a semi-tone.

Kinds of Diplacusis

Diplacusis or “double hearing” comes in various “flavors”.

Diplacusis binauralis (by-nar-RAL-is) is where you hear the same sound differently in each of your ears. For example, you may hear a different pitch of sound in each ear, or the timing may be different in each ear.

A subset of diplacusis binauralis is diplacusis dysharmonica (dis-har-MON-ih-ka) where only the pitch is different in each ear. Some authorities use the term “Interaural Pitch Difference” (IPD) rather than diplacusis, but they both refer to the same condition. (2)

Diplacusis echoica (eh-KOE-ih-ka), as it’s name implies, is where you hear the same sound repeated in the affected ear—thus you hear the original sound followed by an “echo” of the original sound.

Finally, there is diplacusis monauralis (moh-nar-RAL-is). This is where you hear a single sound as two different sounds in the same ear. (1)

In my experience, by far the most common “flavor” of diplacusis is diplacusis dysharmonica. This is the annoying condition that numbers of musicians experience and the “kind” of diplacusis we will discuss here.

What Causes Diplacusis?

Diplacusis involves a shift of pitch perception. This can happen when the hearing in one ear is damaged (unilateral hearing loss), or the hearing in one ear is damaged more than it is in the other ear (asymmetrical hearing loss). However, the degree of pitch distortion does not appear to bear any simple relationship to the degree of hearing loss. (3)

Incidentally, diplacusis was first observed way back in the 1880s in people with unilateral hearing loss. (2)

If one ear has normal hearing, and the other one has sensorineural hearing loss, you can have a lot of diplacusis. Bilateral sensorineural hearing loss results in less diplacusis but there are probably pitch distortions because both ears are likely messed up in the same way. (4)

In fact, there is a high degree of correlation between the occurrence of diplacusis and damage to the inner ear. (2) Diplacusis is typically experienced as a result of sensorineural hearing loss. Onset is usually spontaneous and can occur at the time of an acoustic trauma or in the midst of an ear infection. Sufferers may experience the effect permanently, or it may go away on its own. (4)

For people who have some degree of sensorineural (inner ear) hearing loss, here is a detailed account of how diplacusis may develop…. (Read the rest of this article here.)

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady wrote,

I have an acoustic neuroma (since 1992) and have profound hearing loss on one side but extremely sensitive hearing on the other side as well as bilateral tinnitus. I would love to be able to show people what tinnitus sounds like. Do you know of any videos/DVDs that may be available. I would greatly appreciate your assistance.

I can’t say that I know of available CDs/DVDs that contain tinnitus sounds, but tinnitus sounds are available on the Internet. Following are the links to two websites that have a variety of tinnitus sounds.

http://www.ata.org/sounds-of-tinnitus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpEuzOtc9LE

I think both of the above websites use the same basic files—but they present them differently.

Now you can let people hear a few of the many different tinnitus sounds. If you have the volume up when they listen to them, it should drive them “buggy”. Some are pretty piercing. Then just say, “This is what I have to listen to every minute of every day—and here you can’t even stand it for a few seconds!” That should get their attention.

If you want to learn more about tinnitus and what you can do to help bring it under your control,  check out the new 5th edition of “When Your Ears Ring! Cope with Your Tinnitus—Here’s How“.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

For the past few months I have been hard at work researching the latest findings on how tinnitus develops and more importantly, what we can do to help bring our tinnitus under control.

The result of all this work is the completely revised, updated and expanded 5th edition of my book “When Your Ears Ring! Cope with Your Tinnitus—Here’s How“. This new 5th edition is 60% larger than the 4th edition as it contains so much new information regarding tinnitus.

If your ears ring, roar or rumble, now’s your chance to get a copy of this new edition and save yourself some money in the process. For you loyal readers of the Hearing Loss Help eZine, you can save 25% off the regular price of $22.49 if you order it now.

To get this special price, you must do two things. First, place your order for this newly-revised tinnitus book before midnight October 8th. Second, be sure you put the coupon code “tinnitus5″ in the shopping cart’s coupon box upon checkout and click “apply”.

To get your copy of this newly updated and expanded book at your special price click here.

Note: this offer is only good for the printed version of the tinnitus book (the eBook version has not yet been updated).

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady explained,

I just wanted to send you this link to see if you have seen this before and if it is anything worth looking into for my tinnitus. I’m very hesitant.

I checked out this website. This website is basically a high-pressure sales website that is long on hype and short on facts. (In fact, I couldn’t find a single helpful fact regarding tinnitus on this website at all.) All they sell you for $37.00 is an eBook that is only 25 pages long—and written in very large print—otherwise it would only be about 10 pages long.

I downloaded and read through the entire “book” in about 7 minutes. That alone tells you there is not a lot of information in it—to put it mildly.

Much of the information in this “book” is probably good, although the details are skimpy. I have never come across some of the so-called “popular” cures for tinnitus like putting 2 or 3 onion juice drops in your ears. Thus, I have to wonder just how popular and effective this method really is. I’ve never come across this “cure” before, and I’ve been researching and writing about tinnitus for a good number of years.

One of the “cures” it lists is ear candling. It touts ear candling as an “old home remedy” that “can be extremely effective”. The truth is that ear candling is a known quack “cure”. It does not work, and furthermore, it can harm your ears if you “slip up” and let hot wax get in your ear canals.

This “book” recommends getting more exercise, watching your diet, cutting down on alcohol and coffee—things like that. None of these things are bad in themselves, but do not cure tinnitus in most people. If they did, the cure for tinnitus would be within easy reach of every person and no one would be complaining of their tinnitus.

This “book” does not cite any research, or contain any references, so you cannot check things out for yourself.

Personally, I think you could spend your money much better elsewhere. I know I just wasted my money.

If you want to learn more about tinnitus and what you can do to help bring it under your control, you would do much better to check out “When Your Ears Ring! Cope with Your Tinnitus—Here’s How“. Not only is it much cheaper, packed with solid information to help you, but it also contains 7 pages of references so you can check things out for yourself.