Suffering from tinnitus

Q. I have an 18-year-old son who suffers from tinnitus. You recommended 1,000mcg of B12 to be taken for tinnitus. I am unable to source these.

Some pharmacies say they can be got on prescription, others say they can only be sourced online. When I logged on, the vitamins were described as ugs as opposed to mcgs. >>

A. You should be able to get the supplement from most online stores, or your local health store. I recommend Solgar because the brand has a great reputation, plus they supply B12 nuggets in the ideal dosage to treat tinnitus. One hundred of the 1,000mcg B12 nuggets cost €12.21 from Here’s Health (www.hereshealth.ie; 021-4278101), or you can buy the larger size of 250 nuggets for €25.02 from the same store in Cork City.

‘Ugs’ is a way of writing ‘micrograms’. The ‘u’ replaces the symbol ‘µ’ (the Greek letter, ‘Mu’), with the dosage of ‘µg’ or ‘ug’ indicating one millionth of a gram (one thousandth of a mg/ milligram). Both symbols are used because the scientific standard of ‘µg’ or ‘ug’ was felt by regulatory bodies to be confusing to consumers, hence the usage of ‘mcg,’ more easily recognisable as an abbreviation of microgram.

Look closely at the dosages on your supplement labels, even with natural products - misreading ‘mg’ as ‘mcg’ would mean that you potentially increase the dosage of your remedy by 1,000.

Q. Three years ago, following an anaesthetic for a health check, I woke up with tinnitus. Initially, it was so bad I had to go on medication. Now, I am learning to live with it, and am off all medication. I tried vitamin B12 when it happened first, but got constipated.

I would like to try it again, at the daily amount you have recommended. What could I take as a supplement to counteract constipation? >>

A. I am so glad to hear that you no longer require medication. It must have been a waking nightmare to develop tinnitus after a routine health check. It is interesting that the B12 supplementation triggers constipation, since it often does the reverse - low vitamin B12 levels are linked with constipation, which is easily remedied by supplementation and/or increasing foods rich in B12 (meats, eggs, and dairy products).

Generally, low B12 and constipation, together, are indicative of digestive-absorption issues, so simple supplementation is a band-aid solution. For the constipation, I would suggest a twopronged approach, using probiotics to replenish your beneficial gut bacteria, and psyllium husks to keep you regular and optimise nutrient-absorption in the intestinal tract.

Begin with one tablespoon of psyllium in 300-400ml of water each morning, and increase or decrease as necessary (some people find that two tablespoons each morning works perfectly, while others take one tablespoon, morning and night. For others still, just a couple of teaspoons of psyllium, once daily, is all they need to avoid constipation).

You may also want to consider an alternative treatment for tinnitus, called tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT).

TRT was developed in the 1980s by Dr Jonathon Hazell and Dr Pawel Jastreboff, and is based on the neurophysiological model of healing.

The aim isn’t to treat the tinnitus itself, but to change your perception of the sounds experienced. TRT has an impressive, 80-84% success rate in terms of relief from symptoms.

The treatment is a combination of low-level steady background sounds with one-on-one patient/ clinician directive counselling to enable the individual to become effectively ‘unaware’ of the ringing and buzzing inside their head.

TRT can take anywhere from 1-2 years, before the ear-sound generators used as part of the therapy are no longer needed.