Hi, I suffer from terrible ear ringing - Tinnitus, mainly in my right ear.
I have read both positive & negative opinions about using Healtone's healing sounds for Tinnitus.
Well here's my verdict after one week of listening.
It does ease and even eliminates the riming for several hours, but it does not cure it, at least not in my case.
It is definitely better than white noise. White noise works only as long as it's on. Once I switch it off, the ringing is back.
On a scale of 1-10 I would give the Healtone sounds an 8.
Sem, I am glad you have found benefit from Healtone sounds. Apparently, the sounds can also be used to "treat" cancer, aids, IBS, fybromyalgia, and many other conditions, and only for $14.95.Originally Posted by Sem
http://www.healtone.com/english/Article.aspx?Item=808
And I am sure you will be aware of the thread on the RNID forum, coming to the conclusion that
http://www.rnid.org.uk/community/for...quencies/?pn=1ATTENTION GROUP: For the time being can we please treat this as a scam, simply designed to defraud us. It appears to fit the profile of all other 'healing sound waves" (notably Yale audio) that we have encountered on this board. On investigation these websites appear to offering nothing better than the mp3's you can download for free elsewhere. This site has the potential to be more sinister since they have healing files for cancer, AIDS !
As I was saying, it's not a complete cure, but it's definitely not scam.
On the first day I thought it might be a placebo, but now I know it has a more into it. Actually it all connects a to brain attention. With white-noise I came to realize that the neutralizing factor is the prolonged SHSHSHSHSHSH that overrides the ringing. That draws the brain attention to a sound that is easier to listen to. The Healtone sounds however, do not create such an effect. Somehow these sounds are overriding the source that creates the ringing. I know that the way I describe it is odd, but this is exactly how I feel.
From the links that Bindeweede provided it certainly looks like Healtone is a scam.
It claims to treat cancer. Do you believe that?
Hi Sem, thanks for coming back and discussing.
This is a forum dedicated to the process of critical thinking. The examination of evidence for claims.
The evidence you've so far provided is a in category called anecdotal. It's an unreliable form of evidence.
Here's what we actually know.
Some people have tinnitus.
Some people with tinnitus experience the severity increase and decrease for various and often unknown reasons.
Certain audible tones exist which are sold for their claimed healing properties.
People buy and use these tones.
So we have two ways of categorising people.
I - Those who experience an improvement in their tinnitus symptoms.
~I - Those who don't
H - Those who buy and use healtones.
~H Those who don't
Using these two distinguishing feature we could divide the world up into four categories.
~I~H Don't experience any improvement in their tinnitus symptoms and don't use healtones
~IH Don't experience any improvement in their tinnitus symptoms despite using healtones.
I~H Experience an improvement in their tinnitus symptoms despite not using healtones.
IH Experience an improvement in their tinnitus symptoms and use healtones.
Whether healtones works or not we'd expect there to be people in all four categories.
Your anecdotal evidence merely tells uis that there's at least one person in group IH, you. However, like I said we'd expect to see that whether healtone's works or not. Remember sometimes tinnitus just reduces by itself.
But what do I know. I don't experience the pain and suffering of tinnitus. Who am I to say that the severity of symptoms just ebb and flow. You know your symptoms and you know that something unprecedented happened am I right?
Well that why it would be interesting to see just exactly how unprecedented it is. Not just in one person's experience but across the board of a large number of tinnitus sufferers.
If we look at the people who don't use healtones by looking at the ratio of I~H to ~I~H then we've got an idea of how many people simply feel better for various reason other than healtones - including unknown reasons or even no good reason at all.
If we then compared that to the ratio IH to ~IH that is the proportion of people who get better who do use healtones then we'd take a little step up the hierarchy of evidence.
You can see that this would be better evidence than just one person's testimony.
Your evidence suffers from a logical fallacy called post hoc ergo propter hoc. High fallutin' Latin for "It happened afterwards so therefore it happened because of."
What you seem to be saying to us is: "Your improvement in symptoms happened after using healtones therefore it happened because of using healtones." As you can see this fits the template of the post hoc fallacy.
In truth there may be many things that happened just before you experience an improvement in symptoms. You walked a certain way back from the library the first time, you stood behind the Widow Johnson in the post office queue for the first time. We focus on healtone because they make healing claims, but that’s rather circuitous logic
The sort of comparison I described above is an improvement over anecdotes but it still suffers from some similar flaws. One of these is regression to the mean.
Imagine as I say, symptoms ebbing and flowing. It tends to be when symptoms are at their worst that people try desperate measures. Also when symptoms are at their worst is when they can't get any worse. They can only get better.
Such a study as I described would be subject to this confounding problem. It could like like healtones was causing the improvement but really it was just people choosing to use it when their symptoms were peaking. We could try to correct for this problem but ideally what we'd do it try to remove it.
As such a more rigorous trial would be to have a groups of people and we'd decide who got to use healtone and who wouldn't. That would be a controlled trial one step up again.
Here the placebo effect raises it's ugly head and if you think that the placebo effect simply effect subjective reporting you'd be wrong. Suggestion alone can produces profound measurable physiological changes even including death.
So the next step up would be to give everyone tones, some would be healtones, others would just be random sounds. A blind test.
Except the placebo effect doesn't just work on suggestion but expectation too. If the people measuring dishing out the CD's know which one is supposed to work and which one isn't then this can affect the result. Also when the results are measured expectation can play a role. Furthermore when these measurements are statistically analysed, expectation can play a role there. At this stage we're looking at double and triple blind studies.
Then of course there's the allocation of test subjects into groups. You could if you chose put the hopeless cases in the control group and the promising cases in the group with healtones. Turns out your subconscious mind has ways of tricking you into doing this sort of thing without any conscious intention to cheat. So we have another step up the heirarchy of evidence a randomised controlled trial.
I've no idea weather healtones works for tinnitus or not. I've no idea whether, if it does work, it only works as a placebo of if there's a plausible mechanism for it's healing power.
Certainly claims that it can heal a wide range of ailments such as cancer and AIDS etc. positively scream SCAM! Do you believe these claims or is tinnitus all you're concerned about?
I'm not calling you a liar (nor for that matter discounting that shills might be dishonestly employed by scam artists) but even believing all the evidence from your story, I can't reach the same conclusion without better evidence.
I am not an augmentative person, yet I'm quite impressed by your deep analysis and the way you express yourself intellectually. I am sorry, but I do not have the ability to comply with complicated arguments.
I have no way to verify Healtone's overall validity of their sounds. But I can testify that the sounds for Tinnitus work and have real impact on me.
I respect your doubts and I am ready to accept the possibility that the improvement came as a result something different than the hesltone sounds, yet still my personal experience is that the improvement came as a result of these sounds.
Small correction: you have observed that there is an association between your use of these sounds and a reduction in your suffering. That is different to saying one is the result of the other.
Well isn’t that kind of association the basis of any novice's ground to decide if any treatment works or not?
If I suffer from head cash and I take Aspirin and the pain goes away, I will probably ascribe it to the Aspirin, though it is possible to say exactly what you said:
“You have observed that there is an association between your use of the Aspirin and a reduction in your suffering.”
I do not have the means to scientifically examine the sounds for Tinnitus, but I see that after few days of using them, the ringing is subsiding. That did not happened before I was using the sounds. So my common sense conclusion is that there is a connection between the two occurrences and there is positive impact of the sounds on my Tinnitus. On the practical level that is all I care about.
Despite your previous protestations it is clear that you are argumentative if a clear statement of the obvious leads to this rather circular restatement of your original position.
Hey Tinnitus folk!
I want to show you how i have almost cured my tinnitus with my own therapy which is free for everyone!!!
My short story:
I am suffering from tinnitus for a year now and it killed me in the beginning. But with my own developed therapy its 70% better. I cannot promise you anything but i just want to help people like me (22years old) suffering from the same noise. So here it is:
Therapy:
1) Download/Buy Adobe Audition
2) Open and go to "Generate" and "Tones"
3) Step by step get closer to your tinnitus frequency. (Mine is very high at 15000hz like a tv high tone)
5) Make sure it is quiet!
4) Now start this training:
Over about 3 month every day try to sing/whizle/think the tones near to your personal tinnitus frequenzy up and down (best for me: third). Please make sure the volume is very low so your brain has really to listen closly!
6) After some time do that with some sound in the background like a mp3. sound of people in a Bar/Restaurant or classic music. Try again to hear out the tones near you frequency thourgh the background noises and most of all try to sing them!
Theory: Your damaged hearing-cells will do their real job again and the noise will be better and better thourgh that hearing training.
Remark:
I know it sound wired to sing along stupid tones near your tinnitus. But the effect is awesome and its a good training for your hearingsystem.
You should additionaly try alternative therapy like :
a) Read good informativ books about tinnitus so you will be less afraid about the orchestra in you.
b) Do sport twice a week.
c) Sauna (helped me a lot)
d) Enjoy life, go out with friends!
e) Avoid loud places like pubs, concerts, discos
f) If you go to those loud places make sure you have earpluggs and don't stay more then 4 houres once a week. (Was important for my type of Tinnitus because mine was probably caused by loud music --> a played in several rock bands in switzerland)
g) Laugh!
h) Listen to classic music you like (not doing anything but listening) and try to hear out the instruments.
I assume that you can cure your tinnitus like that without spending all the money the doctors spend. I have read a lot of books abouit tinnitus and i know that there is no cure but only individual therapies that help. Before you donate your money try to do what i recommended you.
If you have any questions you can mail me: [edit by JJ: actually, no you can't.]
I can not always answer everything so dont be made when it takes some time.
I have one last wish for you guys reading my article: Please copy it and paste it in every Tinnitus Forum you know, so that everyone can profit from this free home therapy. I have not enough time to do so, so please make this wish come trough and let the internet be a help for everyone who can not afford expensive therapies. Try it out and you will see it works!
Best wishes!
Mika!
Last edited by Admin; 7th June 2009 at 01:33 AM. Reason: Spam email address removed.
I am glad you have almost cured your tinnitus. Can you explain how buying Adobe Audition 3 for £316.25 makes your therapy free? I do apologise if I have misunderstood, but having had tinnitus for 3 years, I do get a bit angry when people post cures.
https://store2.adobe.com/cfusion/sto...&view=ols_prod
I had a similar comment. Get Audacity for free - it does everything you want.
The idea of treating tinnitus with sounds is not at all implausible, but it doesn't need to cost anything, either for software to generate sounds or for ready-made tapes or CDs.
For anyone with tinnitus, I came across this excellent site via the RNID Tinnitus forum. I got my Sennheisers out and tried all 9 pulses. No 8 is weird and 9 a bit uncomfortable. DO start at low volume and then adjust to what is comfortable.
Unfortunately, I am not aware of any change to my tinnitus, but some people might find some benefit.
http://lets-beat-tinnitus.co.uk/blog...pulse-therapy/
Hi All,
It's taken me a while to get back to this forum but I'm glad I've made it, there's some really interesting posts.
Bindeweede, the resource you link to is suggesting the use of residual inhibition which has been discredited as a therapy for Tinnitus for many years. There is evidence to suggest that it can even lead to a worsening of Tinnitus due to central changes in Auditory gain.
There's a free Tinnitus management programme just started which people might well find useful. If you search for Clitheroe Therapies you'll find it.
I have also started a skeptical blog looking at the evidence base for purported Tinnitus treatments which has been audited positively by some of the most senior Tinnitus experts in the country. It's called BadTinnitus.net, I have so far covered Hopi Ear Candles, Low level Laser Therapy and an overview of .ritical thinking in healthcare.
Looking at both Sem and Mika's posts I can certainly see why they both may be deriving some benefit. Sem is probably getting simple sound enrichment effects, but Mika as he has arrived at his own solution also has the benefit of feeling very empowered and self-satisfied. It's easy to see how someone naive to the science may feel that there's something inherently healing in the sound waves if they are also experiencing some benefit.
I'd been very keen to hear from people thoughts about the BadTinnitus blog and maybe ideas for further treatments (such as Healtone) for me to cover in future posts,
Regards,
Tim
Hi Tim,
There seems to be problem with my browser as the link to UK Skeptics doesn't seem to be showing up.
Also for some reason I seem to be getting a link to Jack of Kent, surely a mistake.
Nice blog.
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