Mytinnitus.de - Forum Archive

Glyn Flyers
Hello,
This is a really useful forum, thanks.

My tinnitus started maybe ten years ago, and looking back now I think it was about the time I had my first tape player and in-ear earphones. It was interesting to see that you have the same opinion about the cause of your own T. I too had medical tests, including a scan, but was told I had to 'live with it'.
I have resigned myself to having it now, but it does, on occasion get a lot louder. The usual sound I get is a high-pitched ringing noise... sometimes in my right ear (where I think the damage is), sometimes in both, but when it is really bad it sort of centres itself in the middle of my head and gets a lot louder, and I get an accompanying dull headachy feeling which is probably stress.
I became aware that maybe something I was doing or experiencing was causing it to flare up, sometimes for what seemed weeks at a time, and over the years I have blamed various things like neck/jaw/wax/herpes simplex/stress/drugs/electronic noise/the dentist. Maybe any or all of those play a part in aggravating it, but gradually I started linking it to food.
To cut a long story short I think I have a food intolerance that makes things worse for me. On days that I wake up with the T really going mad in my head I also have a stuffy nose (someone else mentioned that too), and a certain taste in my mouth. I also suffer unpleasant digestion problems. I have always had an intolerance for onions, even though I love them, and a heck of a lot of foods, and pickles and sauces contain them. If I eat them I get a dull headache and my concentration goes 'foggy' and I feel tired. The trouble is, when I tested for it causing my T to be worse, there seemed to be no correlation, and it appeared to be something else, and then wasn't clear about that either and so it went on in circles.
But now I think I may have 'cracked it'! ....I think the food that contains onions (including other members of the onion family such as garlic and leeks), needs to get into the very late stages of digestion and absorption before causing the reaction in me. I once had a form of food poisoning that took 24 hours to have it's horrible effect....and I think this takes as long. I had really loud tinnitus for a week while on holiday last summer. It was awful and I came back more stressed than relaxed. On reflection I ate salad with my meals most nights'and although I tried to remove the raw onion, I could not take it all out, and maybe there can be a cumulative affect.
It has taken me ages to come to this conclusion, and now I am confused because some say that onion helps ease their tinnitus'..though everyone is different I guess. I now have to try and exclude the onion family from my diet, which will be very difficult as I absolutely love pickled shallots, but if my T lowers dramatically over a long period I will let you know.

Regards,
Glyn
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Thomas Smid (Forum-Manager)
It was actually the external use of onions (or rather onion juice) that was mentioned on page 1 of this forum. I believe however that this is more a myth than fact.
With regard to food, the foremost substances to avoid (not only from my own experiences but those of others as well) are caffeine and alcohol (and you should probably reduce salt as well). Only then is it possible to tell reliably what else affects your T.

Glyn Flyers
Hello,
Many thanks for your advice.
My loud tinnitus is back today which I thought it may have been since I ate a pickled onion the day before yesterday..which is about the effect time I am beginning to think applies to me. But....I had some red wine last night.
So, what I am going to do now is to carry on eating onions in my diet for the next week (not deliberately, but not avoiding them), but I will completely cut out alcohol this week.... and if it is that then the tinnitus should reduce in intensity. I will let you know how I get on.
BTW I do not think it is coffee or salt, simply because I have both every day, without exception, and I would have thought that I would observe no reduction in intensity at any time. However, they are next on my list. If all else fails it will definitely point to the onion family (for me at least)....which will be a bit of a problem because I *love* them.

Kind regards,
Glyn
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Glyn Flyers
Yes, without a shadow of a doubt it is one or more of the chemicals in the onion family sparking off my tinnitus. I have been avoiding alcohol all week, and I know that coffee and salt are not the culprits.
Last night I had a wonderful pizza. It was peppery, but I knew there would be no problem because there was no garlic or onion. Well this morning I woke up with the tinnitus absolutely screaming in my head, really badly, and I had that familiar taste in my mouth and a low-grade muzzy headache. Well I dug the label of the pizza out of the bin (fortunately it was at the top), but no there was no sign of garlic or onion in it; peppers, some meat, cheese, tomato; that was all. But then I looked right at the bottom of a very small-print ingredient listing which I just didn't read to the end of when I bought it, and there it was: garlic puree. I couldn't taste the garlic because of the peppers.
It's now about 24 hours since I enjoyed the pizza, and the tinnitus is still screaming in my head. I expect it will start to abate somewhat during the night. All I can hope for is that the effect of garlic is stronger than that of onion, or loudness equates with amount/strength of substance ingested. Garlic could be more easily excluded. The reaction to the puree did seem to come on faster. The pizza was lovely, but it wasn't worth the price of this sound raging in my head all day.
I'll post anything else I find just in case there is someone out there who thinks they may be having a reaction to the onion-family too. Best of luck to you and everyone else in the search for some kind of relief.

Cheers for now,
Glyn
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Thomas Smid (Forum-Manager)
With pizzas I would also consider the possibility that they contain the flavour enhancer Glutamate. This is known to aggravate tinnitus and I had problems with it in the earlier stages as well. It is also often used for instance in instant and canned soups and sauces, crisps and other snack food. It is usually labelled as 'Monosodium Glutamate', 'Flavour Enhancer' or 'E621'. Naturally, it occurs in tomatoes. So, maybe you should try to cut down on these (and ketchup) as well.

Bryan
My age is 53. I first became aware of having tinnitus in about 1978 or 1979 while stationed in active duty in the U.S. Navy. I was in my late twenties then. I went to the corpsmen on board ship and they had no significant information as to cause or cure. I had some hearing tests and had a significant loss in the 3000 KHz range. For lack of anything else I attributed the cause to the noisy shipboard environment. The fan noises are often quite loud and never stop. It has been with me in both ears ever since.
The frequency is about 3000 Hz and they seem to be the same in both ears. The intensity changes on occasion. There have been many times when I suddenly realize that the ringing just became much louder that it was a second ago. I never notice a reduction in the loudness. I don't drink alcohol, coffee, tea, or beer. No special reason other than I don't like the taste of any of them. I use very little spices or salt. I take almost no over the counter medications. I don't smoke and I do exercise regularly and intensely. I have been to few concerts and have not spent a lot of time listening to very low music or to headphones. (Am I a boring person? < grin?)
I recently visited an EENT specialist because it seems to be getting worse. He tested me for sensitivity and being able to distinguish various types of syllables. The dip in my sensitivity remains significant at about 3000 Hz. This doctor said that the tinitus is caused by the loss of hearing. I don't really believe that.
I read an article several years ago in which doctors (scientists?) put a microphone in a dog's ear and picked up a ringing sound. I don't remember what they said about people, but I suspect that in some cases given a sensitive microphone, the ringing could be heard.
During the day when I am busy and there is a high level of background noise, I frequently forget about it. If I think about it, I can always hear it. When the background noise is very low, the ringing is very pronounced and cannot be ignored or forgotten. After more than twenty years of this crap I would really like to cure it, or at least reduce the intensity.

I used the anonymous email address due to spammers and their trolling. If you want to send email I am can be reached via b1 then add the at followed by bkelly add the dot, followed by ws. I think spammers are catching on to the concept of tom at somewhere dot com format so I added in a bit more.
Bryan

Thomas Smid (Forum-Manager)
It is of course difficult to give any advice if you are doing apparently already everything one should do as a tinnitus sufferer (e.g. avoidance of caffeine, alcohol etc.) but still have not been able to get rid of the ear-ringing after more than 20 years. However, from my personal experience I still feel that in the long term the tinnitus should improve by itself given the right conditions. Maybe the daily background noise you are being exposed to is still too loud i.e. it irritates the hearing nerve. The catch-22 situation is of course that silence on the other hand forces you to hear the ear-ringing i.e. the hearing system irritates itself. One has to find a kind of compromise here. I personally tended more towards the more quiet surroundings if possible, only exposing my ears to normal noise levels a few times a day (e.g. when listening to music, TV etc.). Ear-plugs helped me here to reduce the noise whenever I felt it would be too much (I always carried a pair with me). I also would like to mention again that the occasional use of painkillers (Aspirin or Paracetamol (acetaminophen (Tylenol) in the US)) has not only helped my over bad patches but also contributed to the improvement of my condition in the long term (my T. has continuously, albeit slowly, weakened over the last 3 years, has barely caused my any problems any more in the last 1-2 years and is now barely audible; I hope it vanishes completely in the course of the next 6 months or so).

Dave
Hi Thomas.
Dave from Norway again.
I Found your site last year when I got my tinnitus.
I tried just about everything possible. I went to 3 different ear specialists, found out where in Scandinavia they had a pressurizing tank and was just about ready to order a trip to the tinnitus cure hotel in Estonia etc etc.
Then the last ear specialist I went to see told me that using the pressurized tank had a success rate of about 30 %, but that he had measured a greater success rate with his patients using a device called "Tinnitronic"!! This was an electro magnetic device with headphones developed by a engineer from Austria who wanted to cure his own tinnitus. I had read up on and searched the internet on every subject regarding tinnitus, but I never came across anything of what he was talking about.
Anyway he told me his office had two of these devices that his patients could borrow. Unfortunately, there was a queue for borrowing them and I would have had to wait three months before I could lay my hands on one. Since I was desperate and had nothing much to lose (except 300 Euro! ) I got the telephone number of the importer and purchased a device myself. After three days of using this device my tinnitus was reduced enormously and I had a tingling feeling in my ear. I have used it for 30 minutes in the morning and at night for going on three months and I have got to the point that my tinnitus doesn't bother me much at all.
I know this sounds too good to be true, but it worked for me!! I am back playing and singing in my bands. If you want some more documentation on this device let me know. Maybe others can benefit from my experience!

Best regards
Dave, Norway

Thomas Smid (Forum-Manager)
I am glad your condition has improved. I found out that the device is actually called Ti-Ex (previously Tinnex) and is sold over the website http://www.ti-ex.com. You are however the first person I have come across who has used it (successfully anyway). If anybody else has tried this device, he/she is welcome to email the experiences to me.

Asbjørn Sørensen
I am 52, male , retired after 25 years in Airline Operations, both due to other medical problems and tinnitus.
I got tinnitus 01 march 1997 at 0200 am ! After several hospital/doctor consultations I was told to "live with it". I first tried a homeopractition in Stavanger, and I got considerably better after approx 3 years. Unfortunately this improvement lasted only 6 months, and I was back in a very traumatic situation. I therefore was not very optimistic when I saw a program in Norway that described the TINNEX ( now called TI-EX). Most doctors were dismissing this method as "a way to make money" for the owner of Tinnitronics ! Even though Gerald Neuwirth claims success for himself in only 10 weeks ! Today I do not regret that I bought the TINNEX in june 2001. I am still not completely cured, but I believe that moment is around the corner.
To doctors: the only problem that I can see, is this: How on earth will it be possible to supply millions of patients? Many of these are poor people.. The tests claim 50 to 60% curement, but they only last a fraction of the time that I have spent !! Doctors should revise their thinking. This set is designed to cure patients, not doctors.
(P.S.: The earphones, the plug, the cable and the unit were of a lousy quality ! After using it for about a year, I started feeling it didn't work correctly. I was correct. 5 times I opened the earphone, every time to find broken plug, or cable, or even one time a loose soldering point. I only hope the new set is heavily improved.)
Email Asbjørn Sørensen

Thomas Smid (Forum-Manager)
Thanks for your comment. I just would like to point out that it is difficult to ascribe such a long term improvement (over several years) to a specific cause or therapy. It is always possible or even likely that other factors may have contributed here as well. In many cases will the avoidance of caffeine and alcohol alone lead to a significant improvement. Reduced stress (as you mentioned you are retired now) usually also improves the situation. This is not to say that I would question the positive influence of the Ti-Ex device, but one should really expect a somewhat quicker effect if it should be worth the money (although one should probably not necessarily expect an improvement within a few days as reported by Dave above). Having said this, other therapies usually cost several times as much, so one has to weigh his options here.
Still, as my own case shows, it should be possible through appropriate measures to achieve a long-term improvement or even cure without spending any substantial money at all on therapies, drugs or devices.

Kelly
I've had tinnitus for 10 months. At the beginning I tried everything I could to help eliminate or minimize the ringing (ginkgo, loads of vitamins, B12, B6, B everything, vitamin C, Magnesium, niacin, zinc, T-Gone - you name it) without any benefits to help ease the ringing. The high pitched ringing only kept getting louder and louder.
After a while I would discontinue taking some of the vitamins and felt the ringing had calmed down in the high pitch tone. So, I completely eliminated taking all the vitamins except for a daily vitamin. And, to my surprise the high pitch ringing (it was so severe that I thought I would go insane) had stopped. I was left with a loud but mild water facet sound.
I avoid all the necessary items to avoid - caffeine, salt, sugar, etc. I take a .25 mg. of Xanax when I need it at night. Especially if I've eaten sugar or salty food that day - which I avoid but only eat on various occasions. If you have not tried Xanax it has been a life saver for me. I had no side effects from it at all. It helps ease the tension this condition causes.

So, I completely agree with you that this condition is a nervous system condition, at least mine is. My father and mother both have tinnitus 24/7. My sisters both have it but their ringing stops after a few seconds and does not happen again for months at a time if not yearly. My guess is I got tinnitus from high blood pressure for which I am being treated for. I started out taking 80 mg. a day down to 40 mg. With proper diet and exercise this medication will be eliminated.

Anyway, I just wanted to tell my story for those of you who buy into everything you read (as I did) because it only worsen my tinnitus and did not help me. Experiment on what helps you. I only hope that my tinnitus continues to ease itself to where I don't even give it a thought.

Ted
I wanted to thank you for sharing the practical tips that helped you. Keep up the good work!
I wanted to tell you of two other great sites that helped me without using medication:
Tinnitus Association of Canada (good summary of how negative emotions affect the sound level of Tinnitus).
One of the links from this site that I found was Noiserelief.com. The site provided some good tips including how to cope with Tinnitus using White Noise and explaining Tinnitus Retraining Therapy and how stress and negative emotions make Tinnitus worse. There was a lot of good information that really helped me. I followed the sites' tips (reduced alcohol and caffeine) and play background sound when sleeping.

Thomas Smid (Forum-Manager)
One should be aware though that both the Tinnitus Retraining Therapy as as well as noise maskers primarily aim at a tinnitus 'management' rather than a cure. Of course, especially in the early phase it is important to find some ways to get at least some temporary relief from the persistent ear ringing, but on the other hand, noisers can actually make the habituation to your own ear noises more difficult.
Anyway, for some people (including me) a persistent external noise may be as irritating and unwanted as the tinnitus noise, so this would hardly be an acceptable option in these cases, especially as one becomes dependent on mechanical devices. I have actually also heard of some cases where the masker aggravated the tinnitus.
With regard to TRT (Tinnitus Retraining Therapy), it is worth noting that this is a rather long term therapy (1-2 years) and thus it is not inexpensive as it may not be covered by health insurances. Anyway, improvements over such long periods are often achieved without any therapy at all just by introducing some simple changes to your life-style (as in my case).

For those who feel they would benefit from artificial sound environments in this respect, there are by the way a couple of good free programs around:
Atmosphere Lite is a fully configurable program to produce your own background of natural sounds and burn this directly to CD if you want.
Aire Freshener is primarily intended to produce a sound background for your PC (natural and other sounds), but using a sound recording/conversion program like dBPoweramp one can also record this to a sound-file.