[tweener]

Donnah,
I'm taking CoQ10 150mg daily and the multivitamin, but have not been able to find a manganese supplement.  The multivitamin has some manganese in it.   I'm not taking extra potassium yet.  I'm going to keep after it.  

I'm still thinking that I may have some sort of low grade sinus infection.  I've been using a neti pot for a week now, and can't get anything to flow through.  I can breathe through my nose, but can't get the water to do anything.  

I need to get back on an exercise regimen.  I'm doing ok on the vitamins, but I've slacked way off on exercise and it is really getting me down.  I don't know if it'll help my ears.


----
John

[Donnah]

There are a number of us in the forum with tinnitis, so why don't we look for some sort of commonality?  

John, I have suspected some sort of low grade infection too.  My ears, particularly the right one (which is most affected by the tinnitis) are frequently itchy and the itch feels like it is both in front of and behind my eardrum.  Sometimes it feels like it's itchy in the middle of my head (very annoying, no scratching there).  Since rhinoplasty my sinuses have been constantly irritated and I've had two abcessed teeth (both teeth with roots that intrude into my sinus cavity).

[MachineGhost]

quote:Originally posted by MachineGhost
Ephedrine or any of its derivatives.  The bad news is it almost always requires LARGE amounts to clear up chronic ear congestion and this is not something you want to do by yourself without competent clinical supervision unless you have a death wish.

I have since come across what may be a safer decongestant to use in larger doeses.  It is called "synephrine" and does not act upon the heart or breathing channels as ephedrine does, just thermogenesis.  But why that would have anything to do with decongesting is beyond me.

Also, lobelia extract is another effective decongestant, mainly for the lungs.  It contains at least 10 different alkaloids.

Machine Ghost

[Ylide (OP)]

OzzieMom:  I don't think anything is ruled out yet.  Something doesn't feel "right" in my head, almost like I can sense the brain chemistry is not quite where it needs to be, but I have a hard time really verbalizing the sensation.  The stuff I'm on right now covers it up and keeps symptoms from expressing, but I don't think it's a cure.  

I've been thinking about it more lately, though, and I have a hypothesis.  I have almost constant pain in my teeth from some wisdom teeth that aren't coming in quite right and several untreated cavities.  I've been too poor to go to the dentist, so I've just been dealing it with it.  I am starting to wonder if the stress of almost constant pain can affect mental state.  I don't consciously notice it so much except for when I'm having problems focusing.  The increased frequency in anxiety coincides with the progressively greater pain.  Something to think about anyway.  (On the bright side, I'm getting my teeth fixed in about a month!)

Either that or it's all the acid I took in my early 20's.

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[Quantumcat]

Ozzymom: Question ... why did you call yourself 'ozzie' if you're from the US? 'Oz' is a familiar term for Australia, and 'Ozzie' for Australian ....

Am I dead? Am I alive? I'm both!

[OzzieMom]

2 answers. My maiden name was Osborne, and I live in a town called Ozark. No connection between the two. My father was from Ky. and my mom is from here.

Cannabinoid- have you ever seen the nerves that run around to your mouth? maybe when you get your teeth fixed some of the problem will ease!? Good luck.

[Donnah]

Jay, the nerve that goes to your teeth is in the C2 and C3 region of your neck.  My chiropractor uses gentle percussion to adjust vertebrae and when he does those two disks there's pain in my teeth.  And I can tell you from experience that constant pain affects your mental state.  The pain also tends to make people clench their teeth which can cause muscles in your head, jaw and neck to spasm.  Try massaging the muscles that run vertically in front of and behind your ears.  You can also pull your ears away from your head.  Then rub the muscle over the spot where your jaw hinges.  You might be surprised at how painful that one can be.

[OzzieMom]

Donna, clinching teeth is a big problem of mine. I do it when I get out and I have to remind myself to loosen up! I was in a halo for 4 months.
I rub those spots alot!. I have been doing that for a long time. here is a link to a cranial nerve site I thought was neat.  http://www.gwc.maricopa.edu/class/bio201/cn/cranial.htm [nofollow]
Here is another neat site.
http://faculty.ncarts.edu/generalstudies/pounds/anatomyphysiology/HeadNekMPost.htm [nofollow]
I have to see pictures to understand why things do what they do. All my muscles at the back of my head/neck are attached to a plate running across the whole back of my head. My muscles have atrophied and there is nothing I can do for it. Botox? Not quite ready for that. Don't care much for needles and more pain!

[Donnah]

Pam, you are Wonderwoman!  A halo for four months would put me in the looney bin.  I had a neck brace for a few weeks.  Why don't you try visualization to reverse your muscle atrophy?  You've said yourself that you are a visual person.  Why did you have to get a plate put in?

I have a friend who is quadraplegic and gets terrible muscle spasms.  She goes a couple of times a year for botox injections and it helps her tremendously.  Is botox something your doctor has recommended?

[MachineGhost]

quote:Originally posted by cannabinoid
I've been thinking about it more lately, though, and I have a hypothesis.  I have almost constant pain in my teeth from some wisdom teeth that aren't coming in quite right and several untreated cavities.  I've been too poor to go to the dentist, so I've just been dealing it with it.  I am starting to wonder if the stress of almost constant pain can affect mental state.  I don't consciously notice it so much except for when I'm having problems focusing.  The increased frequency in anxiety coincides with the progressively greater pain.  Something to think about anyway.  (On the bright side, I'm getting my teeth fixed in about a month!)

Sad to say, but when I had both of my wisdom teeth extracted, it did not get rid of the ear fluid and tinnitus.

If you suspect you have a sinus or dental infection, then you should take a course of roxithromycin (generic name) which is one of the safest antibiotics (commonly prescribed antibiotics are not) and especially effective for ENT problems.  It will not kill the good bacteria in your gut either.

Erythromycin (while less safe than roxithromycin) has a special affinity for stimulating inactive cilia in the Eustachian tubes.

Neither of the above helped me, but may help others.

Machine Ghost

[Aldobelli]

Mikek - Congrats on your clever and successful endeavor!  I can hardly wait to play with some tunes and tones of my own.  I have often felt that my 'narrow range' unilateral hearing loss was longing for the input just as you describe, and I almost had an audiologist who would 'play with me' but alas, she did not.  But I'm going to find my particular tones and volumes (unfortunately there's a pack o'them) and feed my ear some similar input and see what happens.

So far for me (5 yrs of constant, raging tinnitus), Xanax helps.  And I'm a pretty calm guy to begin with... so I say the Xanax works in a more direct fashion on the tinnitus, as opposed to calming me down... there's not much to calm down...

[gsmollin]

quote:Originally posted by Donnah

There are a number of us in the forum with tinnitis, so why don't we look for some sort of commonality?  

John, I have suspected some sort of low grade infection too.  My ears, particularly the right one (which is most affected by the tinnitis) are frequently itchy and the itch feels like it is both in front of and behind my eardrum.  Sometimes it feels like it's itchy in the middle of my head (very annoying, no scratching there).  Since rhinoplasty my sinuses have been constantly irritated and I've had two abcessed teeth (both teeth with roots that intrude into my sinus cavity).

Me too. The tinnitus started abruptly a couple of years ago after a bad cold, when I got an ear infection. It's in my right ear, and is a single tone at 4 kHz. It is accompanied by selective loss of hearing at 4 kHz. I too get that itchy feeling on my right side, about an inch or so inside my head, where I can't really scratch it. I can stick my finger in my ear and work it around for a while and kind of reach it, but not exactly.

[Aldobelli]

Mikek - Congrats on your clever and successful endeavor!  I can hardly wait to play with some tunes and tones of my own.  I have often felt that my 'narrow range' unilateral hearing loss was longing for the input just as you describe, and I almost had an audiologist who would 'play with me' but alas, she did not.  But I'm going to find my particular tones and volumes (unfortunately there's a pack o'them) and feed my ear some similar input and see what happens.

So far for me (5 yrs of constant, raging tinnitus), Xanax helps.  And I'm a pretty calm guy to begin with... so I say the Xanax works in a more direct fashion on the tinnitus, as opposed to calming me down... there's not much to calm down...

[gsmollin]

quote:Originally posted by Donnah

There are a number of us in the forum with tinnitis, so why don't we look for some sort of commonality?  

John, I have suspected some sort of low grade infection too.  My ears, particularly the right one (which is most affected by the tinnitis) are frequently itchy and the itch feels like it is both in front of and behind my eardrum.  Sometimes it feels like it's itchy in the middle of my head (very annoying, no scratching there).  Since rhinoplasty my sinuses have been constantly irritated and I've had two abcessed teeth (both teeth with roots that intrude into my sinus cavity).

Me too. The tinnitus started abruptly a couple of years ago after a bad cold, when I got an ear infection. It's in my right ear, and is a single tone at 4 kHz. It is accompanied by selective loss of hearing at 4 kHz. I too get that itchy feeling on my right side, about an inch or so inside my head, where I can't really scratch it. I can stick my finger in my ear and work it around for a while and kind of reach it, but not exactly.

[ronaldo81]

Dear,

I too have been suffering from the same, it all started with an ear infection, initially the sound was too much to bear but now after two weeks it is very much negligible.  As am from India my parents suggested me one home remedy, since I do not know from which place you are I am not sure if that is available at your place also.

You have to fry and eat a Goats brain along with an egg before dinner and do not take anything else.  The rest of the head of the Goat has to be prepared as a soup and drunk before going to sleep, take this soup for atleast 4 days.  If you can do this and see if the Tinnitus diminishes.  I hope you do know that how to prepare the soup.

PRASAD DAMODARAN
ronaldo81@rediffmail.com

[ronaldo81]

I've had tinnitus (ringing in the ears) since I was a teenager.  I'm not sure how it developed, I never listened to headphones very loud or very often..maybe from one too many blows to the head during football and wrestling.  I learned quickly to tune it out, however.  It's been over 10 years since I first got it.

But lately, it's been getting worse, sometimes the ringing is so loud it hurts.  Normal sound always overrides the ringing, even when it's really bad, so it doesn't interfere with my hearing, just with my sanity.  (especially when I'm trying to sleep!)

Is there a way to treat tinnitus or do I just need to readjust to the new level of volume?

Dear,

I too have been suffering from the same, it all started with an ear infection, initially the sound was too much to bear but now after two weeks it is very much negligible.  As am from India my parents suggested me one home remedy, since I do not know from which place you are I am not sure if that is available at your place also.

You have to fry and eat a Goats brain along with an egg before dinner and do not take anything else.  The rest of the head of the Goat has to be prepared as a soup and drunk before going to sleep, drink this soup for 4 days.  If you can do this and see if the Tinnitus diminishes.  I hope you do know that how to prepare the soup.

PRASAD DAMODARAN
ronaldo81@rediffmail.com


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[Olibert]

Sorry for the epic bump of this thread. I've just been reading it. Further to what Mikek said, I had a go myself with some musical instrument software. I didn't find anything high pitched enough.

newbielink:http://www.nch.com.au/tonegen/index.html [nonactive]

This generates tones from 1Hz to 20KHz, which makes it much easier to find your exact pitch of tinnitus.

[techmind]

There's also a simple free audio sinewave tone generator on my webpage which you can download:
http://www.techmind.org/audio/#siggen

[SkyWriting]

I don't know about the origin, but mine sometimes sounds like a piece of tin being rubbed with a file.
Hey!  maybe that's why I'm so sensitive to certain scraping sounds (we had another thread on that).  The scraping sounds cause interference/dissonance with my internal sounds and freak out some of my brain cells.
----
John

That makes sense.  My irritation sound was an electric hand saw that made me cry as a child.  The sound still reacts as if the saw was IN my ear.

I now know that snoring causes tinnitus.  When I know I've been snoring (bacause I wake up on my back) I find my ears ringing.
Plus my ears "pop" and that clears it up some.  I wonder what the decibel level is if my ears tubes open during snoring? Cause I think that's happening.

I'm open to fried goat brains and eggs.  If we can talk McDonalds into serving that plus the soup, we'd all have the cure available. 
Anybody with a good recipe should send it to them.

The sound stimulation theory sounds accurate.  Somebody said one solution is playing the sound at a inverse phase frequency to cancel the noise.
But if playing the sound does all the work, then matching the phase wouldn't be needed.
Especially sinse phase matching would be all but impossible to do anyway without a good feedback loop inside your ear.

[AussieBloke]

Hi All,

Not sure how many of the original posters are still here. I have been "googling" tinnitus since I got it 4 weeks ago after having wisdom teeth removed. The oral surgeon has wiped his hands and passed me onto a ENT specialist which I will be seeing in a few weeks time. I am researching like mad before then to understand what tinnitus is about.

In my case it appears to have settled in the left ear which happens to coincide with a upper left wisdom tooth which was removed under a general anethsetitic. It is constant 24/7 it does seem to increase and decrease in level depending on I think how tried I am. Loud sharp noises will trigger it to a higher level and will eventually settly back to a lower level but never goes away. I have not been to an audioligist yet but using the signal generator that was kindly posted here I would say my frequency is around the 9kHz mark. Interesting if I play a tone as close to the frequency to my condition it actually reduces the condition for a short time but it always returns. Short time is minutes...

I also have noticed after the procedure I had done which was two wisdom teeth removed and two titanium implants inserted that my left jaw clicks and pops when I chew normally. God know what happened when I was under, the surgeon doesn't want to talk to me! One can only wonder.....

At least I don't feel like I am alone. If there are any other reference sites that might be useful I appreciate any links to them as I grapple with what tinnitus is all about.

Regards,

AussieBloke