Tinnitus - do you have ringing in the ears?

I have had it for 10 months in my right ear. I have found it has improved over that time period but very slowly.
I,like lemmycaution, have also found that rigorous regular excercise is helpful in reducing the volume of the tinnitus
significantly. I bought a treadmill just for that purpose.
It also reduces stress and stress is known to increase tinnitus volume.

Unfortunately there is no clinical evidence hydrogen peroxide will get rid of noise induced tinnitus.
It may work to get rid of ear wax and if ear wax is the cause of your tinnitus, may help. There are many causes of tinnitus and what an audiologist and ENT can help with is determine the cause of the tinnitus and where your hearing loss is, if any. Once you determine the cause you and your DR. can address that. Stress, alcohol, certain drugs, high noise levels, and other factors can increase tinnitus volume, usually temporarily. Unfortunately, there are only a few medical facilities in the US that specialize in tinnitus treatment and reduction. Most ENT's and audiologists just don't have the training to deal very effectively with tinnitus sufferers. The good news is that a high percentage of tinnitus sufferers will see a reduction in tinnitus volume over time as long as they don't incur futher damage to their auditory system. For some people, their tinnitus may go away completely.

What Rockethouse is referring to is called masking. This technique involves wearing an earpiece that emits a sound
designed to replace or "mask" the tinnitus you normally hear. All you're doing is repacing one bothersome sound (tinnitus) with what is supposed to be a less bothersome sound. These masking sounds played into your head are loud enough only to mask the tinnitus, which is not that loud compared to outside sounds, unless you're unlucky enough to have tinnitus in the 50-70db range. Whether you can hear sounds in the frequency range of the tinnitus or masker gets back to whether or not you have hearing loss in those ranges to begin with. There is something called Tinnitus Retraining Therapy which is different than masking. It involves wearing earpieces all day in both ears regardless of which ear the tinnitus is in. The volume is set just below that of the tinnitus volume and gives your brain an alternative to place it's attention on. This training or
"retraining" of the brain can take a couple of years and
occurs along with therapy sessions to deal with the psychological affects of tinnitus. This therapy has helped a majority of those who complete the program. When successful the tinnitus sufferer is no longer bothered by
the tinnitus. In fact they only notice it if they "listen"
for it. At this point the brain no longer finds the tinnitus sound interesting or threatening.

Czbbcl,
No, but I play one on TV. Just kidding.
As a sufferer of severe tinnitus I had to educated myself beyond what my audiologist even knew about it. This was out of self preservation. I needed to know everything I
could so I could at first learn methods to cope and second
develope a treatment plan to recover, which I did. None of this is easy and unfortunately as I mentioned earlier most audiologists and ENT's aren't well prepared to treat tinnitus sufferers, so we're kind of on our own.
I have tremendous empathy for anyone with severe tinnitus.

You may want to contact the American Tinnitus Association
www.ata.org for facilities near you that specialize in tinnitus treatment. There is a well known one at Emory University in Atlanta on the web it's www.tinnitus-pjj.com.
There's one in New Haven, CT too. I would highly recommend
first reading a book by Kevin Hogan called "Tinnitus:Turning Down the Volume. www.kevinhogan.com/tinnitus.htm
Good Luck

Larry