Hey Doc, What I Can I do About this Ringing in My Ears?

by Baxter

In the 20 odd years I have been working with patients, this question comes up a lot! And the challenging part for me as a healer is that western medical treatments don’t have much to offer the problem of Tinnitus, or ringing in the ears. Often related to exposure to loud noise over time (whether from work setting, environment or loud music), and therefore more common as we age, Tinnitus can range from a mild annoyance to a truly disruptive condition. I was hopeful for a while that acupuncture might provide some relief for my patients, but that modality has had minimal impact for those I have tried it with.  So you can imagine my delight when a friend of mine, who just happens to be a research psychologist at UCSF, mentioned in passing a study she had just completed, applying Mindful Meditation (MM), a system developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, to Tinnitus. 

Although our resident scientist will immediately point out that the number of participants (only eight) makes predicting benefits to all suffers of Tinnitus a bit premature, I am still pleased to see that there was significant improvement for those in the study. If you don’t know about MM, it involves sitting meditation practices, breath awareness techniques and gentle movement practices--wow, that sounds like some other system I have heard of…yoga! And not surprisingly, since it is based on yoga asana and Buddhist meditation techniques. To read all about the study by Jennifer Gans and Robert Sweetow, click here. And to learn more about Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work, check out one of my favorite of his books, Full Catastrophe Living, while listening to your favorite music at a reasonable volume.