Anyone who has experienced tinnitus — an uncontrolled ringing or roaring noise in the ears — knows how maddening it can be.

All the more so because there really is no treatment to stop it. Doctors typically offer patients an array of remedies that may or may not help, including tranquilizers, antidepressants and mechanical devices that attempt to mask the plaguing noises.

But thus far there is nothing that has worked well and consistently. I was thrilled, then, to learn that a recent study reported in the January 12, 2011, online journal Nature offers something completely different — a new way to train the brain to ignore the nerve signals that simulate ringing.

The research, conducted by scientists at the University of Texas at Dallas, examined a way to reprogram the brain so that it no longer “hears” the tones that have become so intensely disturbing.

Using a form of treatment called vagus nerve stimulation (VNS), already in use to help patients with treatment-resistant epilepsy or depression, the scientists first induced tinnitus in rats (how they did this is way too complicated to go into here, but believe me, they did it

– and confirmed it by the rats’ failure to respond to a gap in the background noise) and then set out to see if they could correct it.

They delivered painless electrical pulses to the vagus nerve, which leads to the auditory cortex in the brain. The rats were exposed to tones with frequencies just above and below the range of the tinnitus sounds.

Results: The rats now responded appropriately to the gap in the background noise (they recognized the silence) — and scans of their brains three weeks after the therapy showed what the researchers expected to see, that tinnitus had been stopped in all of them.

HOW GREAT IS THIS?

To get an expert perspective on this research, I called Steven Lamm, MD, a member of the clinical faculty at NYU School of Medicine, who told me that tinnitus is “probably one of the most annoying, irritating and exasperating complaints that a patient can have.

It’s like an alarm clock that can’t be turned off.” According to Dr. Lamm this research demonstrates that the nerve activity of the brain is capable of modification.

“Tinnitus involves an abnormality of the brain circuitry,” he said. “If you reshuffle the circuitry, you may be able to eliminate the unwanted noise.”

ON THE HORIZON

VNS treatment could be an improvement over current tinnitus therapies because it may offer a possible end to the condition without any significant side effects — unlike antidepressants and tranquilizers — say the study’s authors.

Research on this therapy in humans is due to begin this year. People with tinnitus will participate in clinical trials much like those that worked with the rats.

They will have electrodes attached to their vagus nerves in an outpatient procedure and then, every day over a period of three weeks, they will visit the clinic to listen to a range of tones and receive electrical impulses to the vagus nerve.

The hope is that researchers will for the first time be able to “reset” the brain’s circuitry to actually eliminate tinnitus for these people.

We don’t know whether the treatment will result in any collateral problems — such as, perhaps, the inability to hear certain actual tones.

But given the fact that about 10% of adults are plagued by tinnitus, this treatment could be nothing less than a godsend… an end to the ringing alarm clock in your head that refuses to turn off. I’ll keep a very close eye on this research!

Source(s):

Steven Lamm, MD, practicing internist, clinical faculty, NYU School of Medicine, New York City.

He is a panel physician for the New York State Athletic Commission and is coauthor of The Hardness Factor: How to Achieve Your Best Health and Sexual Fitness at Any Age (Harper Paperback).

I wish I could have responded earlier. I wish to say you are more trueful than you know. Most arab women would leave this life if we had the opportunity. We are a little more than the herded sheep hear.

Please, if it will help I apologize for the terrorized woman. I hope she made it easy for the border patrol to discover her bombs.

I thank Allah and your God for everybody’s safety.

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I, Doctor Arieh Eldad, was instrumental in establishing the Israeli National Skin Bank, which is the largest in the world. This skin bank is hosted at the Hadassah Ein Kerem University hospital in Jerusalem where I was the Chairman of plastic surgery. This is how I was asked to supply skin for an Arab woman from Gaza, who was hospitalized in Soroka Hospital in Beersheva, after her family burned her. Usually, such atrocities happen among Arab families when the women are suspected of having an affair.

We supplied all the needed Homografts for her treatment. She was successfully treated by my friend and colleague, Prof. Lior Rosenberg and discharged to return to Gaza . She was invited for regular follow-up visits to the outpatient clinic in Beersheva.

One day she was caught at a border crossing wearing a suicide belt. She meant to explode herself in the outpatient clinic of the hospital where they saved her life. It seems that her family promised her that if she did that, they would forgive her. This is only one example of the war between Jews and Muslims in the Land of Israel. It is not a territorial conflict. This is a war between civilization & barbarism.

I have never written before asking to please forward onwards, so that as many as possible can understand radical Islam and what awaits the world if it is not stopped.

Humanitarian