The AudioNotch Tinnitus Treatment Blog

Some of you may be familiar with the animated television comedy show Archer, which is basically about a show about a comically inconsiderate, obtuse super spy by the name of Sterling Archer. It’s become increasingly popular, and interestingly, tinnitus has been featured as a running gag of sorts. Creator Adam Reed discusses this during an interview with Entertainment Weekly:
One funny thing that started in this episode was the Tinnitus thing. The characters onArcher always shooting guns in closed rooms right next to each other. In TV or movies, nobody ever talks about the … Continue Reading

Eddy-Temple Morris, a prominent British musician, has written an <a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/eddy-templemorris/-tinnitus-and-how-we-get-it-on-the-agenda_b_2472889.html” rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank”>excellent long form article</a> at the Huffington Post about advocating for patients with tinnitus. Particularly heartbreaking is his story of Mark, a friend of his who developed tinnitus:
<blockquote>Mark got tinnitus when he was 24 years old. Some of us get it worse than others, and Mark got it bad. He wasn’t aware of the BTA and he, like most men, didn’t really like talking about how he felt to those around him. He wasn’t one of the hundreds of kids that call, text, tweet, or email me via … Continue Reading

Most individuals with tinnitus appear to have the “sensorineural” variant. In this variant of tinnitus, the symptom is caused by the following cascade of events:

1. Noise exposure causes cochlear hearing cell death
2. The auditory cortex is deprived of normal input from part of the hearing range
3. A neuroplastic re-wiring occurs in an attempt to compensate, which results in tinnitus

Thus, the hope for many is to restore the normal input from hearing loss in the hope that the brain will “re-wire” and correct back to the normal, tinnitus-free perception of sound. Research on stem cell transplantation has yielded some fruit in … Continue Reading

AudioNotch provides Tailor-Made Notched Sound Therapy. One form of this therapy is Notched White Noise.

Notched White Noise has only been shown to work in individuals with less than 55 dB of hearing loss (the upper limit of moderate hearing loss). This does not  necessarily mean that it cannot work in individuals with greater than this level of hearing loss, but it does mean that we cannot claim, from the evidence that we have, that it will work in people with hearing loss exceeding this threshold.

We have had an anecdote from a user who had severe hearing loss in … Continue Reading

A recent study has validated the efficacy of the “sliding frequency scale” tuner that is available on our web site (for free) to assist users in detecting their tinnitus tone. The study indicated that our tuner is comparable in effectiveness to the tuning performed by an audiologist in an anechoic sound chamber. Check it out here!

OBJECTIVES:

We investigated the accuracy of a web-based protocol for tinnitus frequency matching compared to that of tinnitus pitch matching performed by an audiologist using an audiometer in an anechoic chamber.

METHODS:

Twenty subjects underwent tinnitus frequency-matching in a random order using an audiometer in an … Continue Reading

The New York Times features another blogger and her experience with tinnitus. I think in many ways, she accurately described the experience of many tinnitus sufferers in the following paragraph:
Dr. Cima said in an interview that, like me, most people with tinnitus function fairly well. But for about 3 percent of people with the condition, it is extremely disabling, causing intense distress, fear and anxiety, and leaving them unable to function.
The author also cautions individuals to be skeptical of individuals marketing total “tinnitus cures” (which you’ll find plenty of on the internet):
Until recently, no treatment had been shown to have … Continue Reading

Some of the other tinnitus sound therapy providers deliver their sound therapy via specialized, proprietary devices. In fact, their entire business model revolves around the perceived “value boost” that having a “special” proprietary device offers – the idea being that if the device is unique and expensive, then the therapy must be of high value and efficacy.

This is an illusion.

There is no reason why a special music player device would be required to deliver sound to a person’s auditory system. A good argument can be made for high quality headphones (to ensure that the correct frequencies are delivered reliably and … Continue Reading

If you google the term “tinnitus cure” you’ll run into a long list of treatments and remedies that are “proven” to “cure” tinnitus.

The term “cure” is a loaded term – it is the strongest of all possible claims – it is a promise that a product will eliminate your tinnitus entirely. This claim is made despite the fact that the overwhelming consensus among the leading experts and scientists in the field of tinnitus research is that there exists no effective “cure” at this moment in time. Moreover, the exact pathophysiology of the disease is still being figured out.

Among these “cures,” … Continue Reading

We posted on this earlier, but whether or not you believe the lawsuit is frivolous, the same lesson remains:

• When you go to a concert, protect your hearing

Justin Bieber’s legal team, unsurprisingly, will be contesting the lawsuit brought against him by a concertgoer who incurred severe hearing loss from one of his concerts:
Stacey Betts, mother of a young Justin Bieber fan, is suing the pop star for US$9.23-million after a 2010 concert left her suffering tinnitus and hyperacusis. Bieber, recently in the news for winning both a Diamond Jubilee Medal from Prime Minister Stephen Harper and performing at Sunday’s sold-out Grey Cup … Continue Reading

I’ve heard many complaints from individuals suffering from tinnitus relating to difficulty concentrating. While Tailor-Made Notched Sound Therapy is useful in lowering the volume of your tinnitus – and can even have an additional effect as a “masking tool” on top of that – you may have to work for, say, ten hours a day (and according to our treatment plan you should listen for about 1.5 hours a day).

As an adjunct to AudioNotch, I’ve found listening to regular music to mask my tinnitus tone can aid in concentration. In particular, I find music without words to be helpful in … Continue Reading