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Chronic tinnitus is rightly regarded as a tough problem in medicine and there is no one treatment that will always help it, any more than there is always one factor causing it. That said, the following approaches have worked very well for some people and should at least be considered as options. As there are several treatment options, each of the following sections starts with some suggestions as to how you might know whether this was the area you needed to direct your attention towards and, if so, what might help. Then, near the end, the section called 'tuning in' describes a further process that may help so long as you have a rather open mind to giving it a try! Adequate blood flow through the tiny tubes in the middle ear and the inner ear is crucial for everything to work properly and a major cause of tinnitus are the various ways in which that circulation can be impaired. The following clues suggest that circulation matters are causing or contributing to your tinnitus
If you will attempt to improve your blood circulation to see if it will help your tinnitus then the following are some of the safest and most reliable natural allies to help you do so: One of the most reliable of all tonics to improve heart function and blood flow everywhere in the body is the herb Hawthorn. It has been proven beyond any possible doubt to strengthen the heart muscle whilst increasing blood flow through the heart, to learn more about this great friend to the heart, read here The plus to Hawthorn is its safety and reliability, the minus is that it is a rather slow-acting medicine so, if circulation matters are what you think may need to be worked on and you need to know if you are on the right track within a few weeks rather than months, it may be helpful to try to speed the process by getting and using capsules of the potent circulatory stimulant Cayenne Ideally, the way to get the best support from Cayenne is to build it up to a dose that you can feel that is strong enough to give a palpable sense of increased heat and improved circulation but not too strong that you feel uncomfortably overheated. Read more about Cayenne and how to use it here
One further herbal treatment with the potential to significantly improve blood flow around the body and into the ear is Ginkgo biloba. Not as slow-acting as Hawthorn but also nowhere near as fast to feel as Cayenne, Ginkgo may need at least a month and preferably 2 or 3 months, at a quite reasonable dosage to ascertain if it might be able to help the problem. This is a herb with numerous modern studies showing how it effectively improves blood circulation and reduces blood stickiness, more here
In practice, and especially if the condition is quite bad, there is no reason not to use the Hawthorn, Cayenne and Ginkgo all at the same time. If things to do not get better in a timely manner then at least you have given it a good shot and don't need to wonder if doing more might have worked better. If it turns out that you need to stay on one or more of them to stay well then don't hesitate. You will never get sick from using these herbs and it won't just be your inner ear that will be benefiting from the improved blood flow.
Some people with tinnitus have, at the root of the problem or as a major contributor to it, a chronic dislocation (also called a subluxation) of their neck vertebra. Tight or twisted muscles in the neck restrict blood and nerve flow to and from the ear and some signs that this may be a key area to give attention to are:
Back and neck problems are not something that you should think is out of the purview of herbal medicine to help, more on that here. Further to this, you may be wise to find a good 'hands-on' practitioner and have at least 2 or 3 sessions with them to see if it might significantly help your tinnitus. A good physical therapist could come from any field -- chiropractic, osteopathy, massage etc. but unless you already know one with an excellent reputation you may have to ask and look around to find the best person for you. Most of the principles written about above in the link on 'how to find a good herbalist' are just as useful when applied to other fields of medicine - that link again is here
Chronic infections in the sinuses are more common than people realise. For some, they can cause tinnitus through swelling of the eustachian tube that leads into the middle ear and through poor drainage of the wastes that are always a part of chronic infections. Signs that this may be a key issue include
Treating a chronic sinus infection successfully, so you can tell if it was causing or contributing to the tinnitus, may not be a simple matter and may take some time and dedicated effort, but it is certainly achievable. Two approaches have been seen to be particularly helpful in this area
Research has clearly shown that the great majority of chronic sinus infections are caused by fungi, therefore taking antibiotics for them will do nothing except harm in the long run because antibiotics do nothing to rid the body of fungal or viral infections. One of the best ways to get on top of a chronic sinus infection, especially a fungal one, is to do a daily rinse of the sinus passageways with a nose-pipe, or neti-pot. These are readily available online and will have instructions on how to use them along with a recommendation to use salt, and possibly baking soda. So long as you are able to obtain a very small amount of these herbal extracts from a reputable source, you should also find that putting just two or three drops of herbs such as Golden Seal or Myrrh into the wash can go a long way to ridding your body of the kinds of stubborn infections that can get lodged in the sinuses. The regular practice of steam inhalations has also been seen to help many people with chronic sinus infections, this process and what to use to make it effective, is described in detail here If you are prone to getting infections in general, or notice that when you get a cut or sore that it takes a long time to heal, then consider that you will probably have to build up your immune health in general to truly get on top of this problem, more info in general on immune health here
It can be reported that some people with quite bad tinnitus have said that it has cleared up or improved when they detected and removed a long-standing food allergy or intolerance. This may be because chronic inflammation created by intolerance was causing swelling into the middle ear, or perhaps because a healthier immune system in the absence of allergies was finally able to resolve a chronic sinus or middle-ear infection. In any case, if you need to look further into this area, then food allergy or intolerance is a subject that needs a careful approach to accurately diagnosis and treat, more here
Everyone with bad tinnitus gets their nerves affected by it. In fact, any kind of problem in the head tends to deeply disrupt a person's peace of mind! So, tinnitus certainly causes stress, but does stress cause tinnitus? There is only one person who can really answer that question so, if you believe within yourself that your stress is a big part of what is causing your tinnitus, then don't put it in the too-hard basket but rather start by letting Nature help. Two herbs in particular can be generally recommended here because they are very safe, they relieve a lot of tension and anyone can take them. They are the evocatively named Skullcap, more about it here and Withania root, more here Further to using such herbs, there are a other practical tools that have been seen to reliably help heal nervous systems that have accumulated too much tension or anxiety, more here
This final suggestion is one that can be recommended to anyone with tinnitus to consider, but it is hard to explain it in just a few sentences and harder again to convey without being able to talk it through in person! Everyone I have ever met with bad tinnitus says that it is significantly worse when they are resting or relaxing but that it usually at least somewhat fades away when they are busy or engaged with other activities. What is happening there is that the cause, whatever it might be, that has created the tinnitus in the first place has not changed, but our level of attention to it naturally varies according to what else we have going on. Understanding this, and understanding how the brain works, we can apply a strategy that alters our perception of the tinnitus in a different way, when we need it the most. In a nutshell, instead of needing distraction from it to get any respite, we can tune our attention into it and, by doing so, our brains can learn how to process the signal in a different way. At first this will all seem terribly counter-intuitive to someone suffering from bad tinnitus and, once you realise what I am suggesting you to do, you would be forgiven for thinking 'easy for him to say, he doesn't know what it's like'. As it happens I do, and that is why I am offering this suggestion to you, because the 'tuning in' thing is what I found could cure my own tinnitus better than anything. Moreover, whenever it comes back, which it does from time to time, I continue to find that it keeps working, and quickly too. Of course, I realise that a sample of 'one' is never going to be good evidence for what might help others but, having been doing this work for quite some time now, a good number of people afflicted with tinnitus have also benefited from this approach, so I know for sure that it can help others too...
Firstly, you need to get comfortable and relax your body and your breathing. This part is not meant to be hard but for many people it is actually very hard to relax -- especially if they have good reason to be tense! It may help you to get started in this regard to listen to one or more the relaxation commentaries put up here After beginning to relax, the next step is to 'tune into' the tinnitus. Simply focus your attention on that exact same sound (or sounds) that have been with you for however long it's been. Of course you won’t like it at first and you will probably want to stop soon after you start. Don’t stop, it will get easier with time but you have to get through that first hurdle of the stress-response, the 'fight or flight' reaction that sends off alarm bells in your brain and actually makes the tinnitus louder or more discomforting when you first give it your attention. Your brain is giving more of its attention to the sound so at first it is going to sound louder, or more piercing, or more unpleasant... Let the thoughts and feelings about the tinnitus, and anything else for that matter, just come and go. Keep listening, passively and attentively. You aren't trying to do anything, you are just listenening, and for this moment and this moment only, you are accepting and not resisting it at all. This truly does get easier with practice but, in the beginning, you just have to do it. At some point it will quite suddenly start to feel better, in which case watch carefully because whilst it may well recede away and stay away it may suddenly come back too! If that happens, again tune in to the sound or sounds, simply observe the sound and your reaction to it. Keep 'watching and listening' and eventually you will see how the tinnitus softens and fades. Your brain is releasing the intensity of the negative reaction to the sensation of tinnitus and so, by processing the signal, you simply don't get anywhere near as much of it...
It's hard to explain the 'how' of this process. The analogy to the alarm bell ringing is that you have to go close to in order to see that there is no real danger, so that it can now turn off, kind of explains it, somewhat... There is a tremendous amount of research going into brain function in recent years that show we can literally 're-wire' our brains to change our perception to all kinds of things, including distressing thoughts, feelings, smells, images... and sounds.
Finally, you might benefit from learning about your constitution to know what kind of foods, herbs, exercises etc. will work especially well for your health in general.
Please understand that I cannot personally advise you without seeing you in my clinic. |
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© 2011 R.J.Whelan Ltd