Can Magnesium Relieve Your Tinnitus?

Tinnitus is the perception of sound when there is no external sound present. Others can't hear what you're hearing. Tinnitus is commonly referred to as "ringing in the ears", but the sounds that are heard when someone has tinnitus isn't always ringing. It can be hissing, buzzing, whistling or swooshing sounds.

Bouts of tinnitus may resolve after a few days, or they could go on for years. About 2 million people have a debilitating form of tinnitus.

Currently, there is no official "cure", but there are treatment options that give sufferers a better quality of life and may also reduce the severity of the symptoms.

Nutritional supplements and chiropractic adjustments may help. The chiropractic adjustments may also include adjustments of the cranial bones. The majority of chiropractors don't adjust cranial bones. Practitioners who practice Koren Specific Technique (KST), have been specifically trained to adjust cranial bone subluxations. I have also found that besides adjusting cranial bones, cold laser therapy over the ear canal is sometimes helpful.

Historically, tinnitus develops in those over the age of 50. Research is now demonstrating the incidence is rising, even among young people, which is thought to be the result of increased exposure to loud environmental noise.

Tinnitus may also be a future predictor of hearing loss.

How Tinnitus Develops:

After listening to loud music, you may notice a slight ringing in your ears that resolves over a short period of time. This is usually accompanied by something called temporary threshold shift or TTS. TTS is when you can't hear sounds that are very low decibels. A decibel is the measurement of how loud a sound is.

Due to the innate healing intelligence of the human body, your hearing will usually go back to normal. If however you are exposed to more loud noises before that healing can occur, this may lead to permanent threshold shift or PTS, which is commonly referred to as "hearing loss" or being "hard of hearing".

It is predicted by 2050, 50 million Americans will suffer from hearing loss. the damage occurs to the cilia or small hairs that are in the cochlea, or the inner ear. Those cilia in the inner ear vibrate in response to sound waves. When they vibrate too severely, damage can occur.

Permanent hearing loss can also come as a result of a onetime exposure to an extremely loud noise.

OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, has U.S. government standards dealing with noise in the workplace. These standards include an 85 decibel rule. This means that a worker who works in an 85 decibel environment for 8 hours, should have hearing protection. Every time you increase the noise volume 3 decibels, that time of exposure is cut in half. For example, 88 decibels has a 4 hour limit and so on.

The average rock concert is about 115 decibels, which means, according to OSHA standards, you should be wearing hearing protection in less than one minute of exposure! To my knowledge, a one minute concert has never existed.

Magnesium Supplementation May Reduce Tinnitus Symptoms:

Magnesium intake in the U.S. is well below recommended levels, which may increase your potential risk of tinnitus. Magnesium Glycerate and Magnesium L-Threonate are good forms of magnesium. You can start off with 100 mg a day of magnesium and slowly increase your magnesium dose, until it has a slight laxative effect. Then you know that you are taking too much. You can then back off a bit until your stools are normal. This way you can find out how much magnesium you need to supplement the magnesium that you are consuming in your diet. I don't recommend taking more than 350 mg/day of supplemental magnesium.

In general, you should consult with your physician and pharmacist, prior to taking any new supplements. This will make sure that there are no possible negative interactions with anything else that you are taking.

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