Well, I've long since habituated and once or maybe twice a week do I
notice any 't' at all.
Does that make me an oxymoron or just a moron?

C.O. LLC

So.... you want to hear only from researchers who are not PhDs or would
you settle for 'unjust' doctors in lieu of 'just' doctors?

So - it is all mind over matter then?  Does this work with any other
medications?

Puddle

Dr. Grossan,

Please pay close attention to a scenario which I as a PATIENT have
personally gone through.

I was suffering from a 'mix' or TWO ills that existed side by side:
(1)tinnitus
(2)nerve discomfort or call it XYZ

The use of gingko biloba might have had an effect on (2), which in some
mysterious ways was 'related' to (1).  The patient reported an effect
or an improvement after taking gingko because his feeling of the ill
came from his reaction to the whole ill 'complex'.

Now the questions:
(1)What is the percentage of tinnitus patients in the controlled
studies who were experiencing both tinnitus sound and other kinds of
discomfort in their heads 'side by side' or 'at the same time'?
(2)What is the average time period in which the tinnitus patients had
been suffering from tinnitus symptoms since the onset before they were
enrolled in the controlled studies?  That is to say, if you subscribe
gingko biloba to new tinnitus patients, you might get a different kind
of feedback from the one that is obtained after their tinnitus get old
after say a year or so.
(3)The 30% improvement cannot be solely defined as having come from the
placebo effect. It can only be said that some patients experienced
improvement as a result of gingko while some placebo.  Thus the result
from the controlled study you have cited can best be said to be only
INCONCLUSIVE!

I would not discount the placebo effect.  If a sugar pill makes you believe
you will get better, and you get better as a result of your new found hope,
then I would call this sugar pill a real treatment.  Of those 30% who said
they got better, I am wondering how many really had dramatic reductions in
their tinnitus.

The good news is chocolate won't kill you, the bad news is it will.
August 5, 2005

What are we to make of the findings of medical studies, asks John
Allen Paulos, when they always contradict each other.

How many times have you heard people exclaim something like: "First
they tell us this is good or bad for us, and then they tell us just
the opposite." In case you need more confirmation of the iffiness of
many health studies, Dr John Ioannidis, of the University of Ioannina
in Greece, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association,
analysed 45 well-publicised studies that appeared in leading journals
between 1990 and 2003.

His conclusion: the results of about a third of these studies were
flatly contradicted or significantly weakened by later work.

There's the story of hormone replacement therapy, which is supposed to
protect against heart disease and other maladies, but apparently does
not. A good part of the apparent effect may have been the result of
attributing the wellbeing of upper-middle-class health-conscious women
to the hormones.

Another bit of health folklore that "everybody knows", but which
turned out to be unfounded, is vitamin E's protective effect against
cardiac problems. Not so, says a recent large study.
AdvertisementAdvertisement

And how about red wine, tea, fruits and vegetables? Surely the
anti-oxidant effect of these wondrous nutrients cannot be doubted.
Even here, the effect appears to be more modest than pinot noir
lovers, among others, had thought.

A common procedure to remove fat from neck arteries, prescription
drugs used by millions of people - the examples go on and on, but the
general point is that a single health study, by itself, cannot be
taken as indubitable. The totality of the available evidence,
appropriately weighted, is what counts, and this balanced appraisal is
difficult to fit into a news article, much less into a catchy
headline.

One obvious problem is that studies vary in size and quality. Some are
well designed, others are not, yet most media reports give them all
the same status - the medical variant of "astronomers say one thing,
astrologers another, so let's hear from both".

Margins of error, low correlations, or very large ones that mask
confounding variables seldom make it into the lead of news stories,
whereas "X will cure you" or "Y will kill you" always seem to.

Many health studies rely on self-reporting, which is notoriously
unreliable. The number of heterosexual sex partners reported by men,
for example, is almost always considerably larger than the number
reported by women.

And the evaluation of all studies must contend with wishful thinking:
people want to believe in the value of new treatments, sometimes so
much that their critical faculties are dulled or extinguished.

In the other direction, people often overreact to bad news and fall
subject to the "tyranny of the anecdote". For example, TV viewers see
parents keening about the unfortunate effect of some vaccine on their
child and give little weight to the hundreds of thousands of children
who have benefited from the same vaccine.

A distinction from statistics is marginally relevant. We're said to
commit a type 1 error when we reject a truth, and a type 2 error when
we accept a falsehood. In listening to news reports, people are often
inclined, initially, to believe what they want to believe in order to
be cheered, and thereby risk making a type 2 error.

In evaluating medical claims, however, researchers generally have an
opposite inclination - to suspend their initial belief in order not to
be beguiled, and thereby risk making a type 1 error.

There is, of course, no way to always avoid both types of error, and
we have different error thresholds in different endeavours.

Moreover, the questions that health studies address are often subtly
different, so seemingly contradictory or confirmatory results are
difficult to compare and evaluate.

Also sobering is the realisation, acknowledged by Ioannidis, that
there's no conclusive proof the results of later studies will not also
be rescinded or modified.

So what should you conclude about, say, a new study that flavonoids in
dark chocolate help lower blood pressure? It's your call, but how
credible you find this chocolate study may say more about your
psychology than the biochemistry of chocolate.

The Guardian

John Allen Paulos is a professor of mathematics at Temple University,
Philadelphia.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/both-good-and-bad/2005/08/04/1123125851931.html

Elly's Tinnitus Resources
http://eebee.net/