Hearing Loss Help  

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.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man wrote:

My 70ish mother has just started ‘hearing’ phantom singing. She is hearing hymns sung by angels and sometimes the beating of drums. She is a church-goer and as long as i can remember has been humming hymns at home.

A few months ago she became aware she was ‘hearing’ faint singing, but now it has gotten more serious. I say serious because she had no idea of what was going on. First she thought the house had an evil spirit, then she thought she was going to die because the hymns that she sings speak of going ‘home’ and those same hymns are

being sung in her ear by phantom angels accompanied at times by phantom drums.

She is healthy and is not going to die. Although God’s will is His will, she will not die because of the words in the hymns.

What’s funny is she only ‘hears’ the music and singing when it’s quiet and the heater or fridge kicks in, or water is running. Somehow those noises translate into music, then singing. Otherwise if there’s noise throughout the house, or she’s busy or even gets out of the house, she doesn’t hear the phantom singing.

Your mom’s experience and her interpretation of what she is “hearing” is not all that uncommon. Depending on their religious backgrounds, people jump to various spiritual interpretations of the phantom sounds they hear. However, the truth is that these sounds all are coming from inside her brain. Her auditory circuits are receiving some information from her memory. Thus she is “hearing” these phantom sounds as though they were real sounds.

It is not uncommon for people to hear hymns if they have been church goers and like hymns. She already had these hymns firmly in her memory long before she began experiencing Musical Ear Syndrome.

Again, depending on their religious background, some people believe that they hear angels singing beautiful music in the days or hours before they are going to die. This may be true in some cases—but I believe that the vast majority of people that hear such sounds are really experiencing Musical Ear Syndrome. I guess the proof would be if the person died soon after hearing this “heavenly music”—but in my experience this has not happened. So, like you, I don’t believe your mom has to worry about dying at this point.

I’m finding that more and more people are sensitive to constant background sounds like the furnace or fridge or air conditioner cycling on and off. These background sounds trigger Musical Ear Syndrome sounds in numbers of people. Somehow their brains either superimpose music onto a continuous background sound.

Since your mom only hears the phantom music and singing when the furnace cycles on or the fridge is running, this shows that it is a “physical” condition, not a spiritual one.

Fortunately, she only hears such sounds when the house is otherwise silent apart from the furnace or fridge running. When she is busy doing various activities, her brain is busy too. It has no time to produce the phantom sounds. However, when she is not busy doing something and the house is quiet apart from the fridge or furnace running, her brain again manufactures the phantom music.

One solution, once she understands what is happening, is for her to keep a radio or the TV on in the background to give her brain real sounds to listen to so it doesn’t feel the need to manufacture the Musical Ear Syndrome sounds.

In any case, once she understands what is happening, she is free to enjoy the phantom music if she so chooses—or to “drown it out” with real sounds if she doesn’t.

Some people love their phantom music; some just tolerate it; and others can’t stand it. If she’s in the first group, it makes life so much easier.

She can learn much more about the strange Musical Ear Syndrome sounds she hears and ways to bring them under control in my book, “Phantom Voices, Ethereal Music & Other Spooky Sounds“.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady explained:

My audiologist says I have severe recruitment and hyperacusis—sound really hurts my ears.

I’ve worn ear plugs most of my life, not so much to guard my hearing against sounds that would do more damage (though it’s common sense to wear ear plugs during those events that would damage your ears—concerts, air shows, shooting firearms, etc.), but because sound hurts my ears. I’ve “blown the top of my head off” often! The audiologist I had with my last hearing aid trials told me that I needed to expose myself to the sounds that hurt, even though they hurt, to get used to the hearing aids.

Unfortunately, I just couldn’t tolerate wearing hearing aids. My brain would be fried at the end of the day. I always had a headache, was always wincing at sound and my tinnitus would become unbearable. People even commented that I looked distressed. Is there anything you can do for recruitment and/or hyperacusis?

You betcha. It’s not easy, but you can slowly—and I emphasize very slowly—retrain your brain to reduce its sensitivity to sound.

When you have recruitment as I have, or hyperacusis, all or certain sounds seem to “blow the top of your head off”, give you headaches, make you wince or jump and/or make your tinnitus worse as you well know. That’s the bad news. Now for the good news. Such sounds do not physically damage your ears. It just seems like they do.

If a sound is not so loud that people with normal hearing wince, jump, etc. then it almost certainly won’t physically damage your ears either. You won’t lose further hearing from a sound that recruits and sounds dangerously loud because in reality, it isn’t anywhere’s near as loud as you perceive it to be.

My article, “Recruitment from Hearing Loss Explained“, explains why you now perceive normal sounds as much too loud.

When you wear ear plugs when you don’t absolutely need to wear them, especially if you have recruitment or hyperacusis, you are doing yourself a disservice. Here’s why. Your brain wants to hear sounds and when you wear earplugs to block the sounds, your brain turns your internal volume up more to try to hear through the ear plugs. Ultimately, this just makes your hyperacusis worse and worse.

Thus, your audiologist is basically right—you may be overprotecting your ears. The solution is to only wear ear protectors when you really need them. One way to do this is to use your hands—clap them over your ears whenever sounds get too loud for you, but take them away as soon as the sound level drops. You can do this at a railway crossing for example. A train is going by—cover your ears—when the train is past, uncover them again.

You should also carry several strengths of ear protectors, but only use the minimum strength you need at any particular time.

Over time (and this can take a couple of years or more) you will slowly build up your tolerance for louder sounds again. This is what you need to do.

Begin to learn to tolerate sounds a bit louder than you are now—not loud sounds, just a tiny bit louder—and when you can tolerate those sounds, a little bit louder sounds, and so on.

Incidentally, recruitment only affects people with a sensorineural hearing loss. Hyperacusis can affect anyone whether they have a hearing loss or not.

If you have recruitment and wear hearing aids, you need your audiologist to set the maximum output on your aids by frequency. In order to do that, first she has to test you for recruitment by frequency (which audiologists almost never do—they typically use an overall average—and this just doesn’t work well at all) in order to see exactly where your recruitment kicks in. Then she needs to set the compression on your hearing aids a few decibels below that level. If she does this properly, you should be able to stand almost any volume of sound as your aids will keep them all below the level at which they would recruit.

Unfortunately, when you do this, it causes a certain amount of distortion. As a result, you may not understand speech as well as you would otherwise. This is the tradeoff—understand speech better but yank your aids out because certain sounds recruit, or have the compression set so sounds won’t recruit, but not understand speech as well as you should.

I walk a fine line here. I have the compression set on my aids such that they work for me in most normal listening situations but if certain frequencies of noise are present, I have to take my aids off as they still recruit. I then either rely 100% on speechreading or I speechread and use various assistive listening devices.

At the same time, just setting the compression as much as I have costs me 12% in lost discrimination. Thus, when I wear my aids I still have to speechread to try to fill in the “mushy” words I miss. Nothing is perfect, but I’ve found this trade-off typically works for me.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

One of the reasons I have not published this eZine for the past three months is that I have been enormously busy working on several projects with unmovable deadlines. (I hope to get back to a regular publishing schedule for this eZine now.)

One project that took a lot of my time was researching the latest information concerning Meniere’s disease for some presentations I was to make on this subject.

In the process, I completely revised and greatly expanded my book, The Agony of Meniere’s Disease—Please! Make My World Stop Spinning.

If you are suffering from this mysterious condition—I say mysterious because researchers still don’t know what Meniere’s disease really is, don’t know exactly what causes it, and thus, don’t know how to effectively treat it—you might want to check out the new third edition of this book.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man asked,

In September 2011, after drinking with friends, we went to a bar and just before we left, there was a very loud song. When I came out of the building, I heard loud tinnitus in my right ear. I didn’t realize it was a big issue and went to the doctor’s three days later. The doctor said I had sudden hearing loss, and I received treatment for the next two months. The medicine the doctor used was mainly trophic nerve, anti-coagulation and vasodilation medicine. The result is not good—my hearing loss only improved from 80+ dB to 70 dB.

My questions are:

1. Is there any possibility that I can further improve my hearing?

2. Apart from the tinnitus, I have another problem that bothers me even more that the hearing loss and tinnitus. My right ear is very sensitive to certain sounds/noises, for example noisy crowds of people and the noise from plastic bags. When I hear the noise, my tinnitus will get much louder than when I am in a quiet environment. My doctor said there is no good method to cure this except to let my body heal itself. Do you have any suggestions?

There were a number of factors that set you up for your hearing loss and tinnitus. First, loud sounds, whether music or noise can damage your ears and cause your ears to ring. I doubt that this was the first time your ears ever rang after being in a noisy bar. When your ears ring, that is a sign that you are damaging your ears and you need to take protective action so it doesn’t happen again. If you don’t, the next time your ears may ring longer (and louder), and eventually they will ring forever—you will be left with permanent loud tinnitus day and night. This is not exactly a fun experience and can quickly take the joy out of your life. So the first step is prevention so you never experience this.

Other factors besides the loud noise included the alcohol you drank. Alcohol alone can cause hearing loss. So can smoking, or being in a smoky environment such as bars often are.

In addition, smoke and noise can have a synergistic effect on your hearing—causing the resulting hearing loss to be even greater if you are around loud noise in a smoky atmosphere at the same time than either of these factors by themselves. The same holds true for carbon monoxide—often found in higher concentrations in smoky environments.

You can read more about these factors in two articles that previously appeared in this eZine back in 2008.

The first one was called “Can Alcohol Cause Tinnitus?” and the second one was entitled, “Alcohol and Hearing Loss“.

I doubt that your hearing loss was all the result of that one loud sound. Certainly the loud noise you have exposed your ears to over the years has taken its toll on your hearing. In addition, there are a number of factors that can cause sudden hearing loss such as a viral infection in your inner ear, a mini-stroke (blood clot in the tiny arteries leading to your inner ears), various diseases, a blow to the head, etc.

Apparently your doctor was thinking mostly that you might have had a mini-stroke—so he gave you medicine to break up blood clots, and dilate (expand) your arteries to try to get more blood to your inner ears in case you might have clogged arteries. At the same time he provided you with good nutrition for your auditory nerves.

Unfortunately, these treatments didn’t improve your hearing much—around 10 dB. This is certainly a step in the right direction, but it still leaves you with a severe hearing loss.

With sudden hearing loss, sometimes your hearing comes back without any treatment (or in spite of any treatment), sometimes it comes back because of treatment, and sometimes it never comes back no matter what treatment you receive. Whether the treatment you received helped you or not, we’ll never know.

This brings me to my two rules of thumb regarding sudden hearing loss.

1. The greater the sudden hearing loss, the less hearing typically comes back. With say a 40 dB loss, you might expect to get 30 dB back, but with an 80 or 90 dB loss, you might only get back 10 or 15 dB, such as in your case.

2. The hearing level you have at the end of 30 days after the sudden hearing loss is likely what you are going to be left with for the rest of your life. In other words, seldom does more hearing come back after 30 days (barring a miracle) unless it has been continuously coming back day by day throughout the initial 30 day period. If this is the case, more hearing may continue to come back. Since your sudden hearing loss happened several months ago, it is very unlikely that any medical treatment now will help restore your hearing. The damage has been done—the hair cells have died—and thus you now have a permanent hearing loss.

At this point, you need to turn your attention from trying to recover more hearing to learning how to successfully live with a hearing loss. This means learning all sorts of coping skills and using amplification (hearing aids and assistive listening devices) to help you hear better. My book, “Keys to Successfully Living with Your Hearing Loss” will certainly help get you well on your way down this new road you are destined to travel.

The other problem you have where certain sounds now sound much too loud and make your tinnitus worse is quite common in people who have lost hearing due to exposing their ears to loud sounds.

A lot of people think of hearing loss as, well—hearing loss. But few realize that along with hearing loss, we often also have either recruitment or hyperacusis, such as you are experiencing, where some normal sounds are now too loud.

Thus, in addition to learning successful hearing loss coping strategies, you also have to learn how to live with this extra racket. Here are a couple of guidelines.

First, you need to protect your ears from loud sounds in the future. Each time you expose your ears to truly loud sounds, you can make your tinnitus worse and your sensitivity to loud sounds even greater. This means avoiding loud venues, or wearing appropriate ear protection—ear plugs or ear muffs.

Second, you must be careful not to overprotect your ears from sounds. Thus only wear ear plugs when it is truly noisy. If you wear them in normal sound situations, you will make this condition worse and worse. The simple rule is to protect your ears when you need to, but never overprotect your ears.

Finally, do not obsess over your ears and this sound sensitivity. The more you worry about it, the worse it will become. Learn how to protect your ears, then learn to ignore these louder sounds as much as you can and let your brain slowly turn down its internal volume. You will probably always be more sensitive to sounds than you were before, but by doing the above you can learn to successfully live with them.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady wrote,

I am 64 years old, and I have had tinnitus since around 1990. I have been taking Propranolol since 1979, which was originally prescribed for my migraines. At this point in my life, I have developed hypertension which is not controlled by this dose of Propranolol. My doctor is trying to find the proper blood pressure drug for me, but unfortunately, she knows little about ototoxic drugs, so I have to make my own suggestions to her. I realize that most ace-inhibitors, calcium channel blockers, and beta-blockers can be ototoxic.

My question is, ‘Are there any blood pressure drugs that do not seem to cause tinnitus or harm our ears?’ I understand that no drug is perfect and may cause other side effects, but I am feeling desperate to find a medication that would help control my blood pressure without worsening my tinnitus.

I sure understand your desire, but I can’t tell you which drugs do not cause tinnitus because I don’t compile information on non-ototoxic drugs, just on ototoxic ones. Thus, I really don’t know if there are other drugs in the above classes that are not ototoxic.

Since I list all known ototoxic drugs in the above classes in my book Ototoxic Drugs Exposed, if you find drugs in these classes that are not in my book, there is a good chance they are not ototoxic (unless they are new drugs just on the market).

If you want to stay on the typical prescription drug blood pressure medications, rather than use natural means to lower your blood pressure, then you need to look for the drugs with the fewest ototoxic side effects—and in your case, specifically for drugs that are not listed as causing tinnitus.

You can quickly and easily find this out if you have the latest edition of Ototoxic Drugs Exposed. All you’d need to do is turn to Table 14-1 and under section 20.8 you’ll find all the ototoxic anti-hypertensive drugs listed by class.

Thus, for example, if you wanted to know whether there are any Beta-blockers (section 20.8.12) that are not known to cause tinnitus, of the 19 Beta Blockers listed there, 4 of them are not listed as causing tinnitus. Therefore, you might want to suggest to your doctor that if you have to take a Beta Blocker, you’d like to try one of these four drugs if he thinks they will do the job—namely Labetalol, Levobunolol, Nebivolol or Sotalol—since none of these are known to cause tinnitus.

You can take this one step further and of these 4 drugs find the one that is the least ototoxic by looking each of these up in the main drug listings and compare all their ototoxic side effects. If you did this, you would find that Levobunolol is the least ototoxic, followed closely by Nebivolol. These two drugs are much less ototoxic in my opinion than the most ototoxic Beta Blockers such as Betaxolol and Propranolol.

However, if you want to bring your blood pressure down by natural means and not use prescription drugs you have other choices.

First you need to determine whether your blood pressure is too high or not. Far too many doctors want everyone to have ridiculously low blood pressure according to complementary medicine standards. You see, some people naturally have higher blood pressure and that is normal for them and is not wrong.

The rule of thumb seems to be that you should keep your blood pressure below 140/90, so if it is lower than that, you probably don’t have to worry about it. The book “Prescription Alternatives” explains that if you are over 60 (which you are), your blood pressure can be up to 180/100 and still be “normal” (although that is a very high “normal”). Thus, trying to get your blood pressure down to 120/80 may be completely wrong for you (but its a good way to sell more drugs).

You want to keep your blood pressure at a reasonable level to be sure. I suggest you first try to do this naturally, and only use drugs as a last resort.

The four main factors that can help reduce your blood pressure naturally are weight loss, exercise, diet and stress reduction. Here are a few examples to get you started.

Weight Loss: If you are overweight, for every 2 pounds of weight you drop, your blood pressure will drop at least 1 point.

Exercise: Just a brisk walk for 30 minutes 3 or more times a week can lower your blood pressure between 3 and 15 points in just 3 months.

Diet: Eat lots of fiber-filled vegetables and whole grains and drink plenty of water. For example, just eating 4 stalks of celery a day can significantly reduce blood pressure. So can taking garlic every day. Another secret to reducing blood pressure is drinking 6 to 8 glasses of clean water a day. It’s so simple that few people believe it works.

Stress Reduction: Getting your stress under control is almost guaranteed to bring down your blood pressure.

There are many natural and healthy ways to reduce your blood pressure if you are so inclined to try. I took much of the above information from the book “Prescription Alternatives” (1st edition) by Earl Mindell and Virginia Hopkins.

If you are serious about reducing your blood pressure the natural way without taking drugs, I recommend you carefully read the chapter “Drugs for Heart Disease and Their Natural Alternatives” in this book.

To find a good price on this book, go to Amazon and in the search box type the words “prescription alternatives”. You will have a number of choices from the 1st to the latest editions.

You can actually get this hardcover book on Amazon for as little as 1 cent to 10 cents (plus shipping which is typically about $4.00) so it is well worth it. There are newer editions too—you can get the latest edition in paperback form for as little as $11.48 (used).

Don’t let ototoxic drugs inadvertently damage your ears and cause hearing loss, tinnitus or balance problems. To learn which drugs are ototoxic, get the 3rd edition of  Ototoxic Drugs Exposed. This book contains information on the ototoxicity of 877 drugs, 35 herbals and 148 chemicals.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man wrote,

Three weeks ago I started taking Esomeprazole (40mg) 1 tablet daily in the morning before breakfast because of a case of stomach and gastric reflux sufferings. Everything was going well, but about four days ago I started to suffer from strange noises in my ears like bells—very sharp ringing sound. This makes it impossible to lead a normal life, and I can hardly sleep. Yesterday I decided to stop the drug and consult with my doctor. Please, I need your advice because I am concerned that my persistent tinnitus will not go away.

It is interesting that you are the second person in the past few days to tell me much the same thing about this side effect of taking Esomeprazole. A man on the other side of the world from you also took Esomeprazole for three weeks and then began experiencing tinnitus too.

And you two are not the first to report this either. I’d previously heard from another man with much the same story. Furthermore, officially, Esomeprazole causes tinnitus in somewhere around 1% of the people taking it.

Stopping taking the drug as soon as you realized that it was causing your tinnitus was a good first step. The sooner you do this, the greater the chances that your tinnitus will go away.

However, tinnitus doesn’t typically go away immediately after stopping a drug. It can take some days for the drug to get out of your system and your tinnitus to die down. As a rule of thumb, I tell people to give it at least two weeks before they start worrying whether their tinnitus will go away or not.

There are no guarantees that your tinnitus will ever go away—it may or may not. Hopefully it will go away. However, one of the best ways to help it go away is to completely and totally ignore your tinnitus by focusing your mind on other things.

If you worry over, and focus on, your tinnitus, it will just become even louder and more intrusive, and it won’t go away. So treat it as a “non-person”, as though it were a constant inconsequential sound such as a fridge motor running, or a fan, or traffic noise—and just ignore it. Hopefully, it will begin to fade into the background and finally you’ll realize its gone, or it will become very faint and you will only hear it when you really listen for it.

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