Tinnitus

If you dash out the door and into the street to meet the ice cream truck, but there’s no truck in sight then you just might have tinnitus.

I don’t mean to make light of this condition (characterized by a constant ringing in the ears), because we receive frequent questions about tinnitus, like this one from an HSI member named Carol:

“I wondered if you could tell me some help for tinnitus?”

Sure can, Carol. I’ll start with a 2002 study in which German researchers tested ginkgo biloba against a drug called pentoxifylline, which improves blood flow and sometimes improves hearing. Seventy-two patients who had recently experienced sudden hearing loss were randomly assigned to receive either 200 mg of ginkgo biloba or 300 mg of pentoxifylline each day for 10 days, both via infusion. Forty-one percent of the ginkgo group and 39 percent of the drug group reported tinnitus at the outset of the study.

After 10 days, both groups showed similar gains in hearing. (The gingko group’s hearing improved an average of 13.4 decibels, while the pentoxifylline group improved an average of 12.4 decibels.) But the gingko group reported marked improvement against tinnitus. On average, patients taking gingko reported greater decreases in the severity of their tinnitus symptoms compared to the pentoxifylline subjects. And overall, patients gave gingko higher efficacy scores than the medication on a five-point rating scale.

In addition to ginkgo biloba, an HSI member named Hoggman posted a comment about tinnitus on the HSI Forum. Hoggman says that his “extreme case” was helped enormously by the combination of a low-carbohydrate diet, along with supplements of CoQ10.

Tinnitus is a topic that pops up frequently on the HSI Forum. To read what other members have to say about treating this annoying condition, just go to our web site at www.hsionline.com, choose “Forum” from the menu, and then search with the key word “tinnitus.”

And, Carol, please let us know if you have success with any of these suggestions.