A Look Into Tinnitus

At Origins Incubator, we host discussions on the topics that our members/mentees care about. A recurring topic of interest was that of tinnitus and how we are to treat this common issue in our patients. First we identified that one of the major reasons for tinnitus is, of course, auditory damage. What we see is when that damage occurs, it creates these warning signals in the brain that we're under alert; something is creating a stress to our system, and those warning signals will stay augmented until you get the proper signal or the proper counter to calm the brain down.

Help for Tinnitus

Wouldn’t you know that that signal to calm the brain down is magnesium? And so, suggestions, like magnesium, orally or even in topical forms over the TMJ, can both be helpful in terms of tinnitus. But ultimately, we have to have really good saturation of brain magnesium in order to calm those warning signals down that are resulting in that sound of ringing in the ear. 

The nutritional components are really strong with tinnitus. It also turns out that the cochlea has the highest concentration of zinc of anywhere in the body, so repletion with zinc can often be shown to help hearing loss. 

We talked about some of the other needs in terms of things like ginkgo. And why is that efficacious? Well, it increases cerebral blood flow. So, if we can get more blood to the area, there’s more potential of healing. 

Then we thought about some underlying causes, of course. Higher carbohydrate diets, but also food allergies, can play a role here. We talked about toxicity, heavy metals, and even other antioxidants like melatonin that really have a strong sense of presence in the data. 

Conclusion

As we go back and walk through things, we like to really talk about, “Okay, where's the strength of the evidence?”  It's so fascinating to see things that we would think would be calming, in general, like magnesium also specifically calm the brain in the incidence of something like tinnitus.

We will continue to collaborate and work together to uncover the best courses of action for individual patients. These Incubator discussions help bring clarity to a vast variety of obstacles we come to face as physicians. We are continually grateful for the opportunity to work together to improve the care we provide and to establish a deeper understanding in our practices.