Relief for tinnitus

“Ringing in the ears,” suggests the sound of bells, which is not really an accurate description of tinnitus.

A friend of mine with tinnitus describes it more like a steady, high-pitched electrical tone that slightly modulates in pitch. So it’s not like living in a bell tower that’s constantly chiming noon, but that’s about how annoying it must be.

An HSI member named Richard recently sent an e-mail with a tinnitus question. He says he saw a doctor on television who claimed that millions of dollars have been spent to address hearing problems in the armed forces. Richard writes: “He said that the government sciences found a cure for this ringing in the ear and it could be as simple as a pill. Has anybody heard of this?”

After doing some research I’m afraid I can’t confirm the government millions spent on helping the armed forces cope with hearing problems. But I can’t help but wonder if that simple pill the TV doctor was talking about might have been ginkgo biloba.

In a 2002 study conducted in Germany, 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.

On average, 40 percent of each group had tinnitus. After 10 days, both groups reported slight but similar gains in hearing. But the gingko group showed marked improvement against tinnitus. Patients taking gingko reported greater relief from their tinnitus symptoms compared to the pentoxifylline subjects, and overall, patients gave gingko higher efficacy scores than the medication.

Tinnitus is a topic discussed with some frequency in the HSI Healthier Talk community forums. In one posting, a member named Hoggman says that his “extreme case” of tinnitus was helped enormously by the combination of a low-carbohydrate diet, along with supplements of CoQ10. And a member named Brynda – who had tinnitus so bad it kept her awake at night – writes: “I learned that my Atlas (which is at the top of your spine) was out of alignment. Went to my chiropractic physician and now I do not have this problem.”

To read how other HSI members have coped with tinnitus, just go to our web site at hsionline.com and select “forum.”