Teen Inventors Fight Tinnitus

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=teen-inventors-fight-tinnitus-09-09-28

by alexandros • 17 years ago

36 20 17 years ago

So potentially you could use an iPod to fix the damage caused by an iPod.

Personally I choose not to use earbuds or even earphones because the dB level produced in the ear is far too high. I prefer headphones (on ear or over ear) with noise cancelling, I barely need the volume up to get the feeling of loudness as they better produce bass noises and the most damage done to our ears is typically by high-frequency noise that most people don't desire when listening to music.

brodie• 17 years ago

Sounds interesting, but looking at http://www.restoredhearing.ie/ it seems they're running some kind of pay as you go system. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I guess any therapy is like that, but I'd like to see clinical trials for this, assuming their idea has validity.

I suffer from chronic tinnitus myself, and I would be a changed man if I could get the ringing to go away. But I'm also pretty skeptical of any treatments that claim to reduce ringing, considering everything I've heard from doctors is, "you're stuck with it."

tomjen2• 17 years ago

As far as I can see, they take about 3 pounds to try it out.

If there is a 10% change that it will work, will 30 pounds be worth it to you?

WinterAyars• 17 years ago

The problem is... that's exactly how quacks operate.

SlowOnTheUptake3• 17 years ago

According to their site, they claim to be treating "temporary tinnitus" of the kind that is brought on by exposure to loud sounds. Being a "temporary" symptom, I'm assuming that they are claiming to relieve it sooner than it would otherwise clear up naturally -- that's frequently an area where medical quacks operate.

Here is a link from Wikipedia to a site at UC-Irvine http://today.uci.edu/iframe.php?p=/news/release_detail_ifram... about substantially the same thing and you can listen to a sample of the therapeutic sound for free.

I also have the chronic (and unexplained) kind of tinnitus and my understanding is that there is no treatment for it. I know it can be quite bothersome for some people.

Tichy3• 17 years ago

Have you and brodie tried Ostheopathy? Anyways I think there are all kinds of things that can cause tinnitus, but present day medicine seems to have a problem with diagnosing the cause, so you are stuck with experimenting yourself. Ostheopathy and Yoga could alleviate the varieties caused from stress and "jammed bones" (don't know how to express it in english).

thras• 17 years ago

Where is the control group?

They seem to have tested this cure for temporary Tinnitus. But I can easily see this being a placebo effect. Since this was a temporary condition they were trying to alleviate, would it have gone down to the same degree just from waiting?

tptacek• 17 years ago

Especially given the fact that so many of the "conventional" treatments for tinnitus (like conditioning) seem more psychological than medical.

boggles• 17 years ago

Their business is based on selling an mp3? If the music industry is any guide, it won't be long before their therapeutic sound recording is all over the file-sharing networks.

RyanMcGreal• 17 years ago

As I write this, someone is pressing an acetate of a grime/dubstep remix of the Tinnitus Treatment song that they will play during their second club set tonight.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

Do not underestimate the commercial power of human stupidity; http://www.i-doser.com/

adrianwaj2• 17 years ago

"But those hairs can get stuck in a bent position."

In tinnitus, the hair cells beneath their stereocilia hair component die, and they don't readily regenerate, just like brain cells.

I am really skeptical of this treatment for noise induced permanent hearing loss.

modeless• 17 years ago

Tinnitus is not necessarily caused by dying cells or permanent hearing loss. Tinnitus is merely the name for a false perception of sound in the ears (normally but not always a ringing sound) and can be caused by a number of things. This treatment is not intended to cure hearing loss but simply to relieve tinnitus.

Edit: well that's the impression I had based on the article, but at their actual site (restoredhearing.ie) they make claims like "restore hearing sensitivity back to the level it was before the damage was incurred" which sound rather dubious.

adrianwaj2• 17 years ago

It's basically a scam. Temporary threshold shifts revert to normalized hearing from 3 hours to 3 days. Restoration is going to happen anyway: it's like waving a leaf over your stomach for a stomach ache.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

First Steorn, and now this. I apologize on behalf of my nation :(

SlowOnTheUptake3• 17 years ago

No apologies necessary. After all of Ireland's contributions of culture, music, brewing and -- in my opinion at least -- some of the prettiest girls in the world, you are entitled to the occasional lapse.

Teen Inventors Fight Tinnitus

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