This article by Rober Dobson of the Daily Mail, describes using sound vibration in a recent research study. The therapy developed by researchers in New York and Virginia University uses a music player, amplifier and headpiece with an aluminium ceramic transducer that has a tiny disc which is placed against the mastoid bone behind the patient's ear. During this early trial patients aged 35 to 72 with severe tinnitus had two half-hour treatment sessions with high frequency sound based vibrations for four weeks. Early results were encouraging with 8 out of 10 patients reporting improvements in their symptoms. The duration of the improvements known as residual inhibition varied with some experiencing improvement for several weeks. Further trials are planned.
Diet and tinnitus - is there any connection?
There has been a lot of debate regarding the potential impact changing your diet may have on the severity of your tinnitus, including triggering tinnitus symptoms. However, there has been very little published research on this topic.
This research article looks at the impact of coffee, tea and chocolate on tinnitus and the main conclusion we would draw is there is little evidence that eliminating any of those food groups will change the severity of your tinnitus.
However, results will of course be different for each person and we would not want to discourage anyone from experimenting with altering their diet in controlled way to check if it makes any difference. Even for people without tinnitus it can be interesting to periodically alter our diet, for example by eliminating alcohol to assess the difference it makes to how we feel.
Our Tinnitus Tunes website includes many different types of sounds to help improve your tinnitus at each stage of treatment, including masking, attention refocusing, relaxing and adaptation. To access the library of sounds you will however have to join as a member.
Most of our sound files are between 20 to 30 minutes long, but you can use your own MP3 player, or phone to repeat the file. You may for example want to have a sound playing for up to one hour as you drift off to sleep.
In our Products area we recommend the SanDisk MP3 player as being one of the best. You can click here for simple tips on how to repeat (loop) a sound file on the SanDisk player.
We have also included instructions on how to repeat (loop) a sound file on an Apple iPOD.