"daguma" <daguma2@gmail.com> wrote in part:

You didn't say what caused your tinnitus. But in almost all cases
there is no way to reduce the sound at present. But most people
get much, much better over time and come not to notice it much.
Avoiding silence can help. Use some sound for sleeping so that you
don't focus on the tinnitus.

The first thing you need to do is find out if there is a specific
medical condition causing your tinnitus. It could be due to an ear,
sinus or tooth infection. It could be due to a pinched nerve or other
neck and spine problems. It could even be a rare type of benign tumor
of the inner ear that can cause permanent damage. First see an Ear,
Nose and Throat doctor. Try to find one that is familiar with tinnitus.
Do this to eliminate some of the possibilities listed above. Do not, in
my unprofessional opinion, get on a drug regimen. Because if he can't
find anything medically wrong with you for him to cure, then he will be
left with only being able to treat the symptom with drugs.

Now, that having been said, I know just how you feel. I have been
there. The worst part about tinnitus is that feeling of desperation,
which for me at times led to outright panic. It's that effect that
tinnitus has on us that makes it so bad. It's not the sound that's
bad per se, it's the effect that it has. When I fist got tinnitus I
thought for sure that it would eventually drive me insane. Now, about
10 weeks later, I still have it (my ears are screaming pretty good as I
type this as a matter of fact) but... I'm no longer being driven
crazy by it. A lot of the time today I haven't even noticed it was
there. Okay, so what is my secret? Well, its called "habituation".
This is a method in which you "retrain your brain" as to how it
reacts to the tinnitus; the desperation find some sort of relief. You
can find out a lot about this by typing "Jastreboff Model" into
your internet search engine, or by going to: www.tinnitus.org

The way the brain reacts to tinnitus is sort of like a really bad
pollen allergy; something harmless is preconceived as a severe threat.
Once you read about how tinnitus effects the mind, which leads to
unnecessary distress, you'll learn about the concept of letting
tinnitus become part of your life rather than something that's
perceived as an unwanted invasion. Then you can actually over a period
of time, fail to be bothered by it most of the time. If you (and your
doctors) can not find a specific curable medical reason for your
tinnitus (which is usually the case), then give habituation a sincere
try. As a matter of fact, you can start putting it into practice right
away while you're seeking out any possible medical causes. The
Jastreboff method, also called Tinnitus Retraining Therapy or more
commonly, habituation, has worked wonders for me. And I didn't have
to go to a clinic or see a specialist to achieve it. I simply
researched how it works, accepted the concept (this is vital) and then
put it into practice. I use no drugs, no herbs, no supplements and no
devises (except a white noise generator while sleeping, which I used
even before getting tinnitus to block outside noises as I'm a light
sleeper). Be careful of those telling you to take this or that, because
I've found out that just about every "remedy" carries one type of
side effect or another. I used to take Zinc supplements as one of many
examples, until I found out that too much Zinc causes copper
deficiencies. Each drug, each supplement, used to treat tinnitus,
usually carries some sort of side effect with it. Some of witch can be
serious or even downright dangerous.

Please let us know how you're progressing.

You can listen to all the advices but eventually it is you that suffers
and no one else.

So consider the following steps:
(1)check with an ENT and see if anything is wrong with your ear.
(2)if (1) turns out to be negative, you then proceed to try the
following.
(3)visit a chiro and have your spine relaxed.  mind you, you may have
to visit him once a week for a few weeks before you feel the effect.
so give it a min of 4 treatments before considering a stop.
(4)take a tablet of ginkgo biloba and observe it for a couple of weeks
and see if anything ticks.
(5)take a tablet of betahistine AFTER  dinner daily.

Stay on the above program for at least 3 months.  Habituation is coming
to you as a result of your having no other choices, but is going to be
made easier if only the sound, but no other symptoms, is being
experienced.

FP