I have tinnitus. I have had it for 20 years already, but it really got a lot worse almost exactly six years ago.
Recently my local university hospital contacted me and offered me a possibility to take a part in their new study about using "repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation" (rTMS) for alleviating my tinnitus symptoms.
Sadly, I had to refuse from the offer. I refused because I have found a state of mind where my tinnitus does not bother me too much, or sometimes not at all. During the study I should have kept a diary about my tinnitus sounds and levels, and my fear was that the constant "listening" to my tinnitus, would have made me more aware of my tinnitus and thus completely ruin my progress in my habituation.
I contacted the study assistant and explained my situation to him and he said my choice was probably best for me. Also my current tinnitus intensity level is somewhere around "4", maybe a little less, and the study participants must have the tinnitus intensity level at least 4.
Still, as I was interested in the study, I asked from the assistant that if the treatment really works. His answer really made me happy, he said: "Sure, it works."
The assistant told me, that if I someday feel that my tinnitus is getting too loud and I am not coping with it, I could always come by to take a treatment. Just the thought of having my tinnitus sound diminished even a little bit gives me hope and relief.
You can see more details about this rTMS study from http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01929837.
I have seen the news about rTMS not working on patients or working only as good as placebo treatment, for example http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/22/us-magnetic-therapy-idUSBRE93L14120130422.
But looking at the results of this prior study, the tinnitus intensity and also the annoyance levels were reduced using rTMS, link to the pdf: link (see page 20 for results, only in Finnish, sorry).
Life as it is.
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Showing posts with label Tinnitus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tinnitus. Show all posts
Monday, February 10, 2014
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
How to cope with tinnitus
I have been suffering from tinnitus from 1994 (since the techno rave era), but it has been severe and affecting my life heavily since 2008.
Recently (from the beginning of 2012) I have seen small steps of progress in my habituation process.
Here are my tips to coping with severe and distracting tinnitus.
1) Accept
Many of us tinnitus sufferers try to find a magical cure, which will remove the tinnitus noise immediately and completely. At the moment, there is no such a cure for tinnitus. After realizing and understanding this cold fact, the attitude towards tinnitus can be changed.
My goal in coping with tinnitus is not "completely free of tinnitus sounds and anxiety" but it is instead "tinnitus is not bothering me at the moment". This goal is a lot easier to reach!
I have accepted my situation, I am hearing tinnitus sound, which is actually quite common phenomena. It is sometimes extremely distracting, but it will be a part of my life for a long time, possibly forever. I can not remove the sound at the moment, I have stopped looking for a cure, I have moved on and now I am trying to improve other areas of my life.
2) Ignore it
One of the most difficult things with tinnitus is that when you think about tinnitus, it will have more and more meaning and the awareness of tinnitus will grow. This will create a never ending loop, unless you will break it.
To break the cycle, just ignore the tinnitus. You can not do it immediately, but you can do it gradually. Stop listening to tinnitus, do not put fingers into your ears and try to measure the tinnitus volume. Do not compare the sound from today to the sound from last week or last month.
Gradually, break the old habits of listening and measuring the tinnitus sound. Do not listen to it every morning in the same spot in the stairs, in your car, at the office elevator or what ever measuring locations you have... You will notice that it is a lot easier to live, when you do not have the compulsion to listen to your tinnitus!
3) Think positive
If you can mask the tinnitus sound and there are normal situations in life where the tinnitus sound is masked, enjoy the situation. Do not try to hear the sound, just relax and continue what ever you are doing.
For me, washing dishes or cooking food is quite enjoyable. I usually put on relaxing music and start to make food for my family. While I am concentrating to cooking, I am not actively listening to the tinnitus sound. If there is a quiet moment, I'll try to listen to the background music instead of tinnitus. This way, I am not hearing (listening to) the tinnitus as long as I am making food.
After some period of time (hour or two hours) without bothered by tinnitus, I will congratulate myself... I have proven to myself that it is possible to live with tinnitus and not get bothered about it. Yes, it was only some hours, but the time can be longer tomorrow and surely it will be longer next week!
4) Relax
Tinnitus often increases when you are under a lot of stress. Logical conclusion is that the tinnitus decreases when the stress is relieved.
I am trying to relax every day while listening to a special relaxation tape, you can found similar sound files from YouTube. I am also using spike mat (acupuncture mat) every evening, or when ever I am feeling tense.
To relax, you can do what ever you want, but it should something that calms you down and relaxes you. Some people do physical exercises, like running or swimming, but for me that is not relaxing at all... :)
5) Listen to natural sounds
I have loaded several natural sounds and relaxation sounds to my iPod. I have water falls, fountains, rain, storms, singing birds, campfire, crickets and Japanese and Chinese relaxation music.
I am listening to these sounds as often as possible, actually all the time when I am at home. It gives to my ears and brains something to listen to, and specifically something else than tinnitus sound.
I have the iPod playing sounds also during the night. For the nights I have loaded "clock ticking" sound to my iPod. This way I can control the sound level for the ticking. Actually I have found that this ticking sound helps me a lot! I just place the iPod next to my bed and set the volume to comfortable level.
6) Sleep
After a bad night sleep, my tinnitus is more noticeable. At least it seems to get worsen if there are several consecutive nights with only few hours of sleep.
Thus I am trying to sleep well. Sometimes it is not possible, but if I am noticing the tinnitus more after a bad night, I can stop worrying because I know the situation will be fixed with a proper hours of sleep.
7) Medication
When the tinnitus hits you really hard, I mean really really hard, it might be a good idea to seek help from a doctor. The stress and anxiety created by the tinnitus should be minimized, because that is actually the worst part of the tinnitus, which will also lead you to the vicious tinnitus-stress circle.
If you are so stressed you can not function anymore, can not work or socialize with your family, perhaps you are crying or can not sleep at all, the doctor should see and understand your situation.
Do you agree with me or not? Do you have questions? Please, leave me a comment!
Recently (from the beginning of 2012) I have seen small steps of progress in my habituation process.
Here are my tips to coping with severe and distracting tinnitus.
1) Accept
Many of us tinnitus sufferers try to find a magical cure, which will remove the tinnitus noise immediately and completely. At the moment, there is no such a cure for tinnitus. After realizing and understanding this cold fact, the attitude towards tinnitus can be changed.
My goal in coping with tinnitus is not "completely free of tinnitus sounds and anxiety" but it is instead "tinnitus is not bothering me at the moment". This goal is a lot easier to reach!
I have accepted my situation, I am hearing tinnitus sound, which is actually quite common phenomena. It is sometimes extremely distracting, but it will be a part of my life for a long time, possibly forever. I can not remove the sound at the moment, I have stopped looking for a cure, I have moved on and now I am trying to improve other areas of my life.
2) Ignore it
One of the most difficult things with tinnitus is that when you think about tinnitus, it will have more and more meaning and the awareness of tinnitus will grow. This will create a never ending loop, unless you will break it.
To break the cycle, just ignore the tinnitus. You can not do it immediately, but you can do it gradually. Stop listening to tinnitus, do not put fingers into your ears and try to measure the tinnitus volume. Do not compare the sound from today to the sound from last week or last month.
Gradually, break the old habits of listening and measuring the tinnitus sound. Do not listen to it every morning in the same spot in the stairs, in your car, at the office elevator or what ever measuring locations you have... You will notice that it is a lot easier to live, when you do not have the compulsion to listen to your tinnitus!
3) Think positive
If you can mask the tinnitus sound and there are normal situations in life where the tinnitus sound is masked, enjoy the situation. Do not try to hear the sound, just relax and continue what ever you are doing.
For me, washing dishes or cooking food is quite enjoyable. I usually put on relaxing music and start to make food for my family. While I am concentrating to cooking, I am not actively listening to the tinnitus sound. If there is a quiet moment, I'll try to listen to the background music instead of tinnitus. This way, I am not hearing (listening to) the tinnitus as long as I am making food.
After some period of time (hour or two hours) without bothered by tinnitus, I will congratulate myself... I have proven to myself that it is possible to live with tinnitus and not get bothered about it. Yes, it was only some hours, but the time can be longer tomorrow and surely it will be longer next week!
4) Relax
Tinnitus often increases when you are under a lot of stress. Logical conclusion is that the tinnitus decreases when the stress is relieved.
I am trying to relax every day while listening to a special relaxation tape, you can found similar sound files from YouTube. I am also using spike mat (acupuncture mat) every evening, or when ever I am feeling tense.
To relax, you can do what ever you want, but it should something that calms you down and relaxes you. Some people do physical exercises, like running or swimming, but for me that is not relaxing at all... :)
5) Listen to natural sounds
I have loaded several natural sounds and relaxation sounds to my iPod. I have water falls, fountains, rain, storms, singing birds, campfire, crickets and Japanese and Chinese relaxation music.
I am listening to these sounds as often as possible, actually all the time when I am at home. It gives to my ears and brains something to listen to, and specifically something else than tinnitus sound.
I have the iPod playing sounds also during the night. For the nights I have loaded "clock ticking" sound to my iPod. This way I can control the sound level for the ticking. Actually I have found that this ticking sound helps me a lot! I just place the iPod next to my bed and set the volume to comfortable level.
6) Sleep
After a bad night sleep, my tinnitus is more noticeable. At least it seems to get worsen if there are several consecutive nights with only few hours of sleep.
Thus I am trying to sleep well. Sometimes it is not possible, but if I am noticing the tinnitus more after a bad night, I can stop worrying because I know the situation will be fixed with a proper hours of sleep.
7) Medication
When the tinnitus hits you really hard, I mean really really hard, it might be a good idea to seek help from a doctor. The stress and anxiety created by the tinnitus should be minimized, because that is actually the worst part of the tinnitus, which will also lead you to the vicious tinnitus-stress circle.
If you are so stressed you can not function anymore, can not work or socialize with your family, perhaps you are crying or can not sleep at all, the doctor should see and understand your situation.
Do you agree with me or not? Do you have questions? Please, leave me a comment!
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Notched music therapy with Winamp
Notched music therapy is a therapy that reduces tinnitus sound, specifically if the tinnitus sound is tonal with one distinct tone. Music therapy requires hearing, but apparently (?) slight hearing loss does not affect to the outcome.
The notched music therapy in a nutshell: Listening to music, where the frequencies matching your tinnitus frequencies have been removed, may reduce the tinnitus sound. The positive effect becomes measurable after months of regular therapy.
You can download the original article from http://www.tinnitusmusiclab.com/downloads/tinnitusnotchedmusic.pdf.
Notched music therapy at home
These instructions apply to Windows machines only.
What you need to do:
1. Find out what is the frequency of your tinnitus sound
2. Select relaxing music of your choice (classical, natural sounds etc)
3. Remove tinnitus frequencies from your music
4. Start listening to the music regularly from 1 to 3 hours every day
1. Finding out the tinnitus frequency
1. Download application capable of producing tones from different frequencies, like Sinegen (Download from Tucows)
2. Put on your headphones, make sure the volume is at minimal level!
3. Start listening to tones, keep your eyes closed and use keyboard keys up and down to change the frequency
4. Adjust the frquency and volume until you think they match to your tinnitus. This may be very difficult! You can try to match your tinnitus sound on several days, to make sure you have got it right, or you can be relatively sure you have found the frequency at least "near" the tinnitus sound.
2. Select relaxing music
You should listen to relaxing music, as the relaxation reduces stress and anxiety, and that way reduces also the effect of tinnitus in your life!
I personally like to listen to Asian meditation music, which is very calm and relaxing. You can find a lot of samples from this kind of music from Youtube.com (link performs search).
Shoutcast.com has a lot of internet radios with this kind of "meditation" music, and you can listen to these radios with Winamp! See the stations with this search: shoutcast, meditation.
3. Remove tinnitus frequencies from your music
1. Download Winamp music player
2. Download Winamp plugin: Equalizer v1.6
3. Install Winamp and Equalizer plugin
4. Open your favorite internet radio
5. Open Equalizer plugin visualization
6. Use your mouse to remove the tinnitus frequencies from the music
7. Listen to the notched music, 1 to 3 hours each day
What frequencies to remove?
The paper says: "By means of the target notch modification, the frequency band of one octave width centered at the individual tinnitus frequency was removed from the music energy spectrum."
I interpret this as follows: The tinnitus frequency (f) is at center for octave starting from f1 and ending at f2. We can calculate the starting frequency, knowing from the definition of octave that the end frequency is twice the starting frequency,
Example: in my case the tinnitus frequency is 6600 Hz. Putting that to equation f1 = 2*f/3, we have f1 = 2*6600/3, which results f1 = 4400 Hz. And we knew f2 = 2*f1, so f2 = 2*4400 Hz = 8800 Hz. Thus personally I need to remove frequencies between 4400 Hz and 8800 Hz.
The notched music therapy in a nutshell: Listening to music, where the frequencies matching your tinnitus frequencies have been removed, may reduce the tinnitus sound. The positive effect becomes measurable after months of regular therapy.
You can download the original article from http://www.tinnitusmusiclab.com/downloads/tinnitusnotchedmusic.pdf.
Notched music therapy at home
These instructions apply to Windows machines only.
What you need to do:
1. Find out what is the frequency of your tinnitus sound
2. Select relaxing music of your choice (classical, natural sounds etc)
3. Remove tinnitus frequencies from your music
4. Start listening to the music regularly from 1 to 3 hours every day
1. Finding out the tinnitus frequency
1. Download application capable of producing tones from different frequencies, like Sinegen (Download from Tucows)
2. Put on your headphones, make sure the volume is at minimal level!
3. Start listening to tones, keep your eyes closed and use keyboard keys up and down to change the frequency
4. Adjust the frquency and volume until you think they match to your tinnitus. This may be very difficult! You can try to match your tinnitus sound on several days, to make sure you have got it right, or you can be relatively sure you have found the frequency at least "near" the tinnitus sound.
 | ||
| Sinegen screen capture |
You should listen to relaxing music, as the relaxation reduces stress and anxiety, and that way reduces also the effect of tinnitus in your life!
I personally like to listen to Asian meditation music, which is very calm and relaxing. You can find a lot of samples from this kind of music from Youtube.com (link performs search).
Shoutcast.com has a lot of internet radios with this kind of "meditation" music, and you can listen to these radios with Winamp! See the stations with this search: shoutcast, meditation.
3. Remove tinnitus frequencies from your music
1. Download Winamp music player
2. Download Winamp plugin: Equalizer v1.6
3. Install Winamp and Equalizer plugin
4. Open your favorite internet radio
5. Open Equalizer plugin visualization
6. Use your mouse to remove the tinnitus frequencies from the music
7. Listen to the notched music, 1 to 3 hours each day
What frequencies to remove?
The paper says: "By means of the target notch modification, the frequency band of one octave width centered at the individual tinnitus frequency was removed from the music energy spectrum."
I interpret this as follows: The tinnitus frequency (f) is at center for octave starting from f1 and ending at f2. We can calculate the starting frequency, knowing from the definition of octave that the end frequency is twice the starting frequency,
f2 = 2*f1.
The center frequency is then atf = f1 + ((f2-f1) / 2)
And we knew that f2 = 2*f1, so when we substitute f2, we will havef = f1+((2*f1-f1)/2).
Multiplying with 2, we end up2*f = 2*f1+2*f1-f1,
further2*f = 3*f1.
Solving the starting frequency f1 is thenf1 = 2*f / 3.
And the end frequency is
f2 = 2*f1
Example: in my case the tinnitus frequency is 6600 Hz. Putting that to equation f1 = 2*f/3, we have f1 = 2*6600/3, which results f1 = 4400 Hz. And we knew f2 = 2*f1, so f2 = 2*4400 Hz = 8800 Hz. Thus personally I need to remove frequencies between 4400 Hz and 8800 Hz.
 |
| Winamp with Equalizer v1.6. Here I have removed frequencies around my tinnitus tone (approx. 6600 Hz). Image showing frequencies removed almost completely between 4600 Hz - 10 000 Hz. |
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
90's techno and tinnitus
I remember when I took this poster off from the venue wall. It was early Saturday morning 10th July 1993. The "raves" had just ended at 7 am and my ears were ringing like a kettle.
That was the first time I realized I may do damage to my ears with too loud music. The ringing eventually faded away almost completely (in a month), but after that incident, in total silence, I was always able to hear a faint ringing sound inside my head.
From that day, I used ear plugs every time when I went to the bars or clubs. However, in February 2008, I was in Barcelona attending to a cocktail party, when suddenly a band started to play. I reached to my pocket to get my ear plugs, but couldn't find any. I thought I could stay for a moment anyway, and continued to mingle and have some drinks.
After 30 minutes or so I decided I have had enough noise, and left the building. There, while standing in a warm Spanish evening in a taxi line, I heard the ringing again. I was slightly worried when I heard the ringing sound when going to sleep. But I was really worried when I woke up next morning, and the ringing was still there!
I will be posting more tinnitus related texts soon. For example what are the tricks I use to cope with intrusive tinnitus.
...
Now back to the 90's again. The Typpihappo parties were great! As you can see from the poster, on Friday there were Utah Saints and the Shamen. Between the sets, a DJ group Hyperdelic Housers played their records. I remember how good The Orb's Blue Room sounded through a massive speaker set. No, wait... actually, that memory might be from 92 :P.
That was the first time I realized I may do damage to my ears with too loud music. The ringing eventually faded away almost completely (in a month), but after that incident, in total silence, I was always able to hear a faint ringing sound inside my head.
From that day, I used ear plugs every time when I went to the bars or clubs. However, in February 2008, I was in Barcelona attending to a cocktail party, when suddenly a band started to play. I reached to my pocket to get my ear plugs, but couldn't find any. I thought I could stay for a moment anyway, and continued to mingle and have some drinks.
After 30 minutes or so I decided I have had enough noise, and left the building. There, while standing in a warm Spanish evening in a taxi line, I heard the ringing again. I was slightly worried when I heard the ringing sound when going to sleep. But I was really worried when I woke up next morning, and the ringing was still there!
I will be posting more tinnitus related texts soon. For example what are the tricks I use to cope with intrusive tinnitus.
...
Now back to the 90's again. The Typpihappo parties were great! As you can see from the poster, on Friday there were Utah Saints and the Shamen. Between the sets, a DJ group Hyperdelic Housers played their records. I remember how good The Orb's Blue Room sounded through a massive speaker set. No, wait... actually, that memory might be from 92 :P.
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