

Teen Inventors Fight Tinnitus - alexandros
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=teen-inventors-fight-tinnitus-09-09-28

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brodie
Sounds interesting, but looking at <http://www.restoredhearing.ie/> it seems
they're running some kind of pay as you go system. I'm not sure how I feel
about that. I guess any therapy is like that, but I'd like to see clinical
trials for this, assuming their idea has validity.

I suffer from chronic tinnitus myself, and I would be a changed man if I could
get the ringing to go away. But I'm also pretty skeptical of any treatments
that claim to reduce ringing, considering everything I've heard from doctors
is, "you're stuck with it."

~~~
SlowOnTheUptake
According to their site, they claim to be treating "temporary tinnitus" of the
kind that is brought on by exposure to loud sounds. Being a "temporary"
symptom, I'm assuming that they are claiming to relieve it sooner than it
would otherwise clear up naturally -- that's frequently an area where medical
quacks operate.

Here is a link from Wikipedia to a site at UC-Irvine
[http://today.uci.edu/iframe.php?p=/news/release_detail_ifram...](http://today.uci.edu/iframe.php?p=/news/release_detail_iframe.asp?key=1570)
about substantially the same thing and you can listen to a sample of the
therapeutic sound for free.

I also have the chronic (and unexplained) kind of tinnitus and my
understanding is that there is no treatment for it. I know it can be quite
bothersome for some people.

~~~
Tichy
Have you and brodie tried Ostheopathy? Anyways I think there are all kinds of
things that can cause tinnitus, but present day medicine seems to have a
problem with diagnosing the cause, so you are stuck with experimenting
yourself. Ostheopathy and Yoga could alleviate the varieties caused from
stress and "jammed bones" (don't know how to express it in english).

~~~
StrawberryFrog
_present day medicine seems to have a problem with diagnosing the cause_

Not true, the cause is well understood. How to fix it is another matter.

 _"jammed bones" (don't know how to express it in english)._

It's pronounced "Voodoo placebo"

~~~
Tichy
So what is "the" cause?

As for the "jammed bones", I wasn't actually referring to the ostheopathy
stuff, but to nerves that are caught between bones in the spine (again, I can
not explain it better in english). This is something "normal doctors" consider
as a cause, so I don't think "voodoo" does it justice.

As for ostheopathy, as some doctors say: who cures is right.

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electromagnetic
So potentially you could use an iPod to fix the damage caused by an iPod.

Personally I choose not to use earbuds or even earphones because the dB level
produced in the ear is far too high. I prefer headphones (on ear or over ear)
with noise cancelling, I barely need the volume up to get the feeling of
loudness as they better produce bass noises and the most damage done to our
ears is typically by high-frequency noise that most people don't desire when
listening to music.

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adrianwaj
"But those hairs can get stuck in a bent position."

In tinnitus, the hair cells beneath their stereocilia hair component die, and
they don't readily regenerate, just like brain cells.

I am really skeptical of this treatment for noise induced permanent hearing
loss.

~~~
modeless
Tinnitus is not necessarily caused by dying cells or permanent hearing loss.
Tinnitus is merely the name for a false perception of sound in the ears
(normally but not always a ringing sound) and can be caused by a number of
things. This treatment is not intended to cure hearing loss but simply to
relieve tinnitus.

Edit: well that's the impression I had based on the article, but at their
actual site (restoredhearing.ie) they make claims like "restore hearing
sensitivity back to the level it was before the damage was incurred" which
sound rather dubious.

~~~
adrianwaj
It's basically a scam. Temporary threshold shifts revert to normalized hearing
from 3 hours to 3 days. Restoration is going to happen anyway: it's like
waving a leaf over your stomach for a stomach ache.

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boggles
Their business is based on selling an mp3? If the music industry is any guide,
it won't be long before their therapeutic sound recording is all over the
file-sharing networks.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
As I write this, someone is pressing an acetate of a grime/dubstep remix of
the Tinnitus Treatment song that they will play during their second club set
tonight.

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anigbrowl
First Steorn, and now this. I apologize on behalf of my nation :(

~~~
SlowOnTheUptake
No apologies necessary. After all of Ireland's contributions of culture,
music, brewing and -- in my opinion at least -- some of the prettiest girls in
the world, you are entitled to the occasional lapse.

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thras
Where is the control group?

They seem to have tested this cure for temporary Tinnitus. But I can easily
see this being a placebo effect. Since this was a temporary condition they
were trying to alleviate, would it have gone down to the same degree just from
waiting?

~~~
tptacek
Especially given the fact that so many of the "conventional" treatments for
tinnitus (like conditioning) seem more psychological than medical.

