My Cure Tinnitus

Do you own a mobile device such as a phone, mp3 or Ipod in which you listen to music on it through earphones?  If so, you should be aware that these mobile listening devices increase the odds of ringing in the ears significantly.  A recent study shows a significant increase of tinnitus and ringing in the ears for those that use earphones with portable listening devices.

Ear Phones Cause Ringing In The Ears (www.library.ttu.edu)

The real problem is that most of the damage that is being done to the ears and hearing will not be readily evident until it is too late.  You can warn young people over and over, and we do just that here on our website, but it seems to make little effect on them until it’s too late.  If you have a child that uses these devices, you should make certain that they see this article and read some of the other information here on our website.

Here is what Julie Power of www.greatlakesadovcate.com.au had to say in a recent article about the damage that using earphones creates:

While there is no definitive cure for tinnitus as of today, you can rest assured that there is new research being done for a tinnitus cure.  The work and research to stop tinnitus is continuing at a rapid pace and much progress is being made.  In fact, we have several new posts you can read here on our site that indicate a tinnitus cure is not far away.  Until then, we have some suggestions here too that have proven to help some of the worst tinnitus sufferers, so spend some time here on our site if tinnitus is a problem for you.

Tinnitus Treatment Research Grants (www.thisweekincas.com)

We are always scanning the news for information so that our web site is up today on anything related to a tinnitus cure or tinnitus remedies.  We found the following article today, and it just reinforces what we stated in the previous paragraph, and that’s the fact that the research to cure tinnitus continues at a very brisk pace.  Below is a small portion of an article we found in which PHD student Sarah Hays received a grant from the American Tinnitus Association to help her search further for the root causes of tinnitus.  Here is what the article stated that we found at www.buffalo.edu:

University at Buffalo neuroscience PhD student Sarah Hayes has won a $10,000 grant from the American Tinnitus Association (ATA) to aid her in her search for the causes of tinnitus. ATA is the largest nonprofit organization working to cure tinnitus.

While many people have never heard of tinnitus, about one in five has experienced the condition, characterized as hearing a phantom sound in the ears such as ringing or buzzing. The group of people Hayes is focusing her research on is the one percent of the population who hear the sound regularly at debilitating levels.

Hayes, now in her third year in the PhD program in neuroscience, an interdisciplinary program of the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, was first introduced to tinnitus while working in the lab of Richard Salvi, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences. She became so interested in the subject that she took up researching causes of the condition for her thesis.

“I wanted to do research that is clinically relevant — research with the goal of helping people suffering from a disorder, or helping to find cures for different neurological disorders,” said Hayes, a native of Hamburg, New York, who received her BS in biology from Canisius College. “But I’m also interested by the fact that it is a phantom auditory perception. I think trying to understand how we perceive the world is fascinating.”

Currently there is no cure for tinnitus, and Hayes believes that this is mainly due to the condition not being fully understood.

It was previously believed that tinnitus was a result of damage to the inner ear, but studies conducted in the 1990s by Salvi, a member of the Tinnitus Research Initiative, and his colleagues produced findings that suggested the condition originated in the brain.

Tinnitus has been linked to noise-induced hearing loss as well. Aside from the elderly, military personnel make up a large population of the people affected by the condition, as some soldiers are constantly exposed to loud blasts and explosions.

The U.S. Department of Defense is so concerned with the issue that they are backing Hayes’ research. They have provided Hayes with the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, which provides her with full tuition remission and an annual stipend.  You can read the rest of the original article here.

While this news is not nearly as exciting as some of the recent posts we have made in regards to progress being made for a definitive treatment, it is proof that there is a lot of new research being done for a tinnitus cure.  It gives me hope and it should give others hope as well.  Many new cures are found by researchers with grants like this young PHD.

In the mean time, if you are looking for anything at all to help you with your tinnitus symptoms, we suggest that you look at the following option.  We have used and tested this product personally, while collecting a lot of feedback on it as well.  In our opinion, it is one of the best option available for tinnitus symptoms at this point.

A recent new study shows evidence of an effective tinnitus treatment.  The Journal Lancet released information on Thursday that shows evidence that tinnitus was responding to a specialized process that was used on a controlled group of patients.  This special process consisted of tinnitus treatment by a multidisciplinary team, and the results showed both an improvement in tinnitus symptoms and overall quality of life for those people that were treated with this process.

Leading Cause Of Tinnitus (jonchoo.blogspot.com)

There seems to be a lot of new information arriving almost daily in regards to new and exciting tinnitus treatment options.  Nearly 16 million people suffer from tinnitus or ringing ears, so it’s important that a definitive cure is found soon.  With the large scale use of headphones and ear buds in recent years, the number of persons suffering from tinnitus is only going to increase.  One important note is that this specialized care works along similar lines to a product we already recommend here at My Cure Tinnitus called Tinnitus Miracle, so it really reaffirms that this product is certainly on the right track as a tinnitus remedy.

A recent article on wtma.com had this to say about the new study:

For the first time, research suggests an approach that may yield a solution to tinnitus, a condition best known for buzzing or ringing in the ears.  A new study released Thursday in the journal Lancet offers evidence of an effective treatment for the nearly 16 million Americans who have sought medical attention for tinnitus.

“In extreme forms, patients are unable to function, go to work or other social events, and are deprived of enjoyment in life,” said the study’s primary investigator, Rilana Cima, a clinical psychiatrist at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.

In the study, 247 tinnitus patients received standard therapy, while 245 patients instead received treatment with specialized care involving an integrated multi-disciplinary team of audiologists, psychologists, speech therapists, movement therapists, physical therapists and social workers.  What the researchers found was that those patients treated by the multi-disciplinary team had improvements not only in tinnitus symptoms, but also in quality of life.

“The results of this trial are especially convincing and relevant for clinical practice,” writes Dr. Berthold Langguth, associate professor of medicine at the University of Regensburg in Germany, in an editorial accompanying the new study.

“Specialized care was significantly better than usual care for the whole sample,” continues Langguth.  “The researchers did not identify a new treatment — rather, they identified the most useful treatments.”

The new integrated, multidisciplinary approach outlined in this study includes a combination of standard tests and medical evaluations in addition to a special type of therapy called cognitive behavioral therapy.  Your can read the rest of the original article here.

This fact that this new study shows evidence of an effective tinnitus treatment, along with the recent news about a possible pharmaceutical treatment for tinnitus are both encouraging, as I have suffered from this malady for several years, thus my keen interest in the subject and this blog.  I feel certain that some important development will lead to a complete cure in the near future.  Until then, we really like and recommend Tinnitus Miracle.  That product and tinnitus masking have helped me personally more than any other products.

If you want some additional information on tinnitus masking, check out this YouTube video.

This is the age of the ear phones and with so many listening gadgets such as Ipod’s and other similar devices that so many young people are using, if you are one of them, you should think twice before plugging those ear phones into your ear canal.  The biggest issue is playing the sound far too loud when using these ear phones or ear buds as they are often called.  Simply turning down the volume on them can be one of the best steps to prevent that ringing in the ears issue known as tinnitus.

One of the main problems we face with tinnitus is that there is no sure fire cure or fix for anyone that suffers from it, so the best steps for our young people that are not yet experiencing symptoms of tinnitus and ringing ears is preventative measures and education as to the damage that can be done by the continuous exposure to loud noises.  We found this article that explains these preventive measures very well, so we thought we would share this special report that we found at WSAW.Com:

Before you plug headphones into your iPod, think twice about it. You could be affecting your hearing for years to come. It all comes down to how loud you’re playing those tunes. And the younger you are the worse it can be.

“We have seen an increase in the incidents of hearing loss in younger people…teenagers and even younger,” says Dr. Michael Dahlke, of ENT Associates. “You have a smaller volume for that sound pressure and therefore it can be worse in children than in adults.”

On a weekly basis he sees a number of noise induced hearing loss. Tinnitus, or ringing in the ears caused by loud noises, can strike at a young age and haunt you forever.

“When you start losing hearing from noise exposure, it’s something that is permanent it’s something that is not going to get better, but may increase and get worse or progress,” he adds.

His advice is to check the maximum power output when you buy headphones and then only play music at half to two-thirds of the maximum volume.

Some experts say listening to music at full volume with earbuds for even five minutes can increase the chances of hearing loss. 90 decibals or higher is when you’re starting to get into the so-called “danger zone.” But at most retail chains, earbuds are still selling fast. Target is one example.

“Mostly because of the price point they’re definitely very affordable and on top of that they have adjustable ear buds, ” says Melissa Cottrell, an Executive Team Leader at the store.  You can read the entire original article here.

If you have kids or know someone that uses a listening device with these ear buds or ear phones, it is important that you educate them now, although they will be hesitant to listen.  If it’s your own kids, you might even be wise to refuse to allow them to have these products until they are old enough to know better.  At a young age, they see everyone else doing it, so they assume that they have to do it too, and they don’t want to be left out of the latest craze either.

Until a more permanent and lasting cure for tinnitus is available, preventing the damage that causes it is one of the best steps to prevent that ringing in the ears.  If it’s too late for you and the damage has already been done and you are simply looking for options in which to get help from your tinnitus, then you need to see and review one of  the best options we have found to date that will actually help stop tinnitus symptoms.

New research into tinnitus at the University of Leicester’s Department of Cell Physiology and Pharmacology has lead to an important new tinnitus finding that could allow for new drugs that could be used to treat tinnitus or ringing in the ears.  These new findings could bring a pharmaceutical to cure tinnitus.  There currently is no such treatment or drug therapy that will effectively help reduce tinnitus symptoms.

Picture from blog.heartland.org

According to the journal “Hearing Research,” scientists believe that they have discovered a cellular mechanism that could be the culprit for the onset of tinnitus symptoms after exposure to loud sounds or noises.  Since there is no cure for tinnitus currently, this finding could bring an important new tinnitus treatment to the 10% of our population that is currently affected by ringing ears and other ear related maladies that are eventually diagnosed as tinnitus.

I found this news article at medicalnewstoday.com, and because it is written in medical speak, it is certainly not a sexy read, but if you suffer from tinnitus, that is of little consequence, because we all would like to have a permanent cure to tinnitus in the form of medication or some simple procedure.  While there are some holistic treatments that bring relief for many tinnitus sufferers, a medication that would prevent or cure tinnitus completely would be a great breakthrough for many people.  Petra Rattue of Medical News Today writes the following….

The journal Hearing Research now reveals that researchers from the University of Leicester’s Department of Cell Physiology and Pharmacology have discovered a cellular mechanism, which could be responsible for the development of tinnitus after exposure to loud noises. The finding could pave the way for the development of new drugs to treat tinnitus, and researchers are currently investigating potential drugs that could prevent the condition.

Research leader, Dr. Martine Hamann from Leicester University explained:

“We need to know the implications of acoustic over exposure, not only in terms of hearing loss but also what’s happening in the brain and central nervous system. It’s believed that tinnitus results from changes in excitability in cells in the brain – cells become more reactive, in this case more reactive to an unknown sound.”

The researchers examined cells in the brain’s dorsal cochlear nucleus area, which carries acoustic signals from the ear’s nerve cells into the parts of the brain that decode and ‘interpret’ sounds. Exposure to loud noises affects some of the neurons in the dorsal cochlear nucleus to behave in an uncontrolled manner by starting to fire erratically, which ultimately leads to tinnitus.

Dr Hamann declared:

“We showed that exposure to loud sound triggers hearing loss a few days after the exposure to the sound. It also triggers this uncontrolled activity in the neurons of the dorsal cochlear nucleus. This is all happening very quickly, in a matter of days.”

A major breakthrough was the team’s discovery of the particular cellular mechanism that leads to the neurons’ over-activity. They discovered that if potassium channels that help to control the nerve cell’s electrical activity malfunction, the neurons are unable to return to a balanced resting state. These cells normally fire regularly and also regularly return to a resting state, yet if the potassium channels are malfunctioning, the cells are unable to return to a resting state and therefore continuously fire in random bursts, which creates the sensation of a constant noise even though there is no noise.

Dr Hamann explained:

“In normal conditions the channel helps to drag down the cellular electrical activity to its resting state and this allows the cell to function with a regular pattern. After exposure to loud sound, the channel is functioning less and therefore the cell is constantly active, being unable to reach its resting state and displaying those irregular bursts.”

Even though numerous scientists have explored the dynamics of why tinnitus occurs, this is the first time that researchers have managed to characterize the cellular bursting activity in association with specific potassium channels. The ability to identify the potassium channels in the early stages of tinnitus paves the way for the development of new potential drug treatments to prevent the condition.

You can read the full original article here.

As a long time tinnitus sufferer myself, this is welcome news regarding a possible new breakthrough in tinnitus treatment options.  It is certainly our hope that these new findings could bring a pharmaceutical to cure tinnitus in the near future.  We will continue to monitor this story for further developments, but at the moment the research team is now exploring potential drugs that will control any damaged cells that are the root cause to ringing in the ears.  It appears that this drug is still a few years away, but at least we know that there is hope and that someone is doing the necessary research to bring a more permanent and lasting tinnitus cure.

In the interim, this does little for those of us that have tinnitus, particularly if your tinnitus symptoms are on the more extreme side.  If you are suffering from tinnitus and need help, and until a more complete cure for tinnitus is available, our top tinnitus treatment suggestion is located here.

Sources for this post:

APA