The AudioNotch Tinnitus Treatment Blog

Imagine you’re writing an exam. You’re concentrating heavily on the material, weighing different variables in your mind, balancing equations, and remembering facts from 2:30 AM (which was six hours ago). Suddenly, a fire alarm goes off, and doesn’t stop screeching. It cuts into your ears, and the examiner looks at you.

“Thirty minutes left.”

You try to complete the test, but it’s difficult – the loud sound persists, distracting you, consuming valuable cognitive resources, wasting attention, sapping focus.
This is what it’s like to think with tinnitus. Indeed, many patients afflicted with tinnitus often comment on how they “hate quiet rooms” and have … Continue Reading

Add another one to the long list of musicians who’ve developed tinnitus from loud noise exposure. Chris Martin has tinnitus:
‘I’ve had tinnitus for about ten years, and since I started protecting my ears it hasn’t got any worse – touch wood. 

‘But I wish I’d thought about it earlier.

‘Now [the band] always use moulded filter plugs, or in-ear monitors, to try to protect our ears.
This article highlights the importance of prevention, and the importance of prevention of worsening of tinnitus. Ideally, one would prevent noise induced hearing loss and tinnitus by protecting their hearing. However, even for … Continue Reading

Here is a link to an interesting abstract drawing a link between Tinnitus and PostTraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Researchers observed an interesting set of similarities between the way tinnitus and PTSD affect the auditory system:
 Similarities between the way PTSD and tinnitus influence auditory behaviors include exaggerated startle responses and decreased loudness tolerance. Tinnitus loudness is often exacerbated by sounds that trigger PTSD-related anxiety.
This paper underscores the complexity of tinnitus: what once may have been viewed a simple problem affecting the ear has increasingly been shown to a highly complex pathological abnormality of the brain. As always, the scientific research on … Continue Reading

From time to time, it’s helpful to look to others for inspiration when we’re having difficulty coping with our tinnitus. Throughout history, many individuals have been afflicted with this condition, and although it poses severe challenges in going about daily life, they can be overcome. You’ll note that many of these celebrities with tinnitus are musicians – which is unsurprising, given that noise induced hearing loss is one of the leading causes of tinnitus. To be fair, many of these individuals were already successful by the time that they acquired tinnitus, but the take home message is that they didn’t … Continue Reading

The International Tinnitus Journal is a biannual peer reviewed publication that publishes articles on new research efforts in the study of tinnitus. What’s particularly good about this journal is that, unlike many other journals, their articles are free to view on-line. Check them out here!

Cheers,
AudioNotch

The relationship between stress and tinnitus is an interesting one. The association between tinnitus and anxiety has been well documented. Certainly, this association appears to be causative, given the anecdotal evidence that chronic tinnitus creates a subjective perception of anxiety. In one of several studies that more clearly investigates the link between tinnitus and stress, researchers found that individuals with chronic tinnitus were less reactive to stress than their healthy control group peers. This reactivity to stress was demonstrated by a blunted increase in cortisol (an acute stress hormone) that is released by the body’s Hypothalamic Pituitary … Continue Reading

In an earlier post, we discussed the importance of determining whether or not your tinnitus is pulsatile, since pulsatile variants may be more amenable to successful treatment and cure. Here is a link to another article on pulsatile tinnitus (it’s a journal article, so you may have difficulty accessing the paper and not just the abstract). Why is the diagnosis of pulsatile tinnitus so important?
Pulsatile tinnitus is an uncommon symptom that often presents a diagnostic dilemma. Correct diagnosis is imperative because the majority of patients with this symptom have a treatable cause.
Furthermore, the article discusses the … Continue Reading

Do you have pulsatile tinnitus? Pulsatile tinnitus is a form of tinnitus that results in a subjectively experienced, rhythmic tinnitus perception that is synchronous with your heartbeat. In order to determine whether your rhythmic tinnitus is truly pulsatile (that is, the tone occurs with every beat of your heart), simply listen to your tinnitus sound and determine if it syncs with your radial pulse.

Why is it important to know whether or not your tinnitus is pulsatile? Pulsatile tinnitus, unlike more common variants, is  more likely to be amenable to successful treatment or cure.

From the British Tinnitus … Continue Reading

The American Tinnitus Association is a reputable, non-profit organization that advocates for tinnitus sufferers. A great deal of internet resources on the subject of tinnitus are written by individuals with a commercial interest in tinnitus treatment (such as this blog, for example), and as such, are not a perfectly neutral resource. I’ve lost count of how many links emphasize the keywords “natural tinnitus cure,” as if there was some plant extract that could magically rewire the errant neurons in our auditory cortex. In contrast, the ATA has compiled an excellent list of realistic tips for managing tinnitus that I’d like … Continue Reading

We’ve recently had some questions from users who aren’t familiar with how to sync their iOS devices with AudioNotch.

The short answer is as follows:
1. Download your custom therapy files from the “Step 3 – Listen” page.

2. Open iTunes.

3. Go to “File–> Add File to Library”

4. Select the white noise file you want to import into iTunes from the location folder your downloaded it into.

5. After you import the file into iTunes, sync your iOS listening device (such as an iPod, iPhone, or iPad) with iTunes, ensuring that you synced the white noise file.

6. Play the white noise file on repeat, … Continue Reading