Teresa’s Book Review: Rewiring Tinnitus by Glenn Schweitzer

Rewiring Tinnitus: How I Finally Found Relief from the Ringing in My Ears by Glenn Schweitzer.

A note from Bill: This book review appears here because it fits in with Teresa’s philosophy behind “Fed, Safe and Sheltered,” which is to discover low-cost ways to make your life better. This applies to your health, and the methods she discovered in Glenn Schweitzer’s book on how she’s managing tinnitus are easy to implement and cost nothing beyond the price of the book.

I have had tinnitus for years. Mine generally sounds like static on the radio with a faint, high-pitched whine. Sometimes I get bees, either a few or worse, an entire hive full of bees buzzing around aimlessly. Angry bees are the worst. The tinnitus would rise and fall and I didn’t have any idea what to do. Sometimes it would be easier to tolerate, for no reason I could see. Keeping busy, white noise, background music; sometimes those things helped and sometimes they didn’t.

Dr. Google and the internet were no help.

I figured I would have to live with it, suffering every step of the way. Then, I cannot remember why, I saw Rewiring Tinnitus: How I Finally Found Relief from the Ringing in My Ears and bought it. Unlike most of the snake-oil salesmen on the internet, Mr. Schweitzer didn’t promise my tinnitus would go away and it hasn’t. He didn’t promise effortless results and he’s right about that too.

But since reading his book, I’m better.

I did not know where tinnitus comes from and now, I do. While it’s annoying to the point of maddening, tinnitus is physically harmless. It is the operating noise in your inner ear, similar to the whir of a fan in operation. People without tinnitus don’t hear this normal body noise –lucky them! Tinnitus sufferers do get to hear the ears’ built-in operating system.

Mr. Schweitzer discusses the background of tinnitus, tinnitus triggers, keeping records of those triggers, tinnitus as a symptom of your overall health, and most importantly, what you can do about it.

There is no cure.

But and this is important, you can habituate yourself to your tinnitus. He does it with meditation. Now I have meditated in the past. It helps me keep a clearer focus. Unfortunately, as with flossing, I am inconsistent with my meditation. Like exercise and flossing, mediation works best when you do it every day and frequently, I don’t seem to find the time. More importantly, my tinnitus got in the way.

So, I started meditating again and this time, did something I would have never thought of: I focused on the sound of my tinnitus as Mr. Schweitzer recommends rather than trying to ignore it. That is, I used the tinnitus like an “om” mantra or focusing on my breathing.

I learned a few things right away. My tinnitus is primarily located not in my ear canals, but on the other side of the ear drum. Yes, I can now locate its point of origin. It’s primarily on my right side. I now realize that it rarely pops up on my left side. I don’t know why that happens. It must be something in my own brain’s wiring pattern. Considering how ubiquitous and annoying the buzzing is, it turned out to be surprisingly difficult to focus on it.

The idea behind focusing on the tinnitus during mediation is to habituate yourself to the sound, remove all the negative emotions that make it worse, and perhaps, learn to not hear it as much. Mr. Schweitzer suggests that this process will take several weeks to several months. I’d have to agree with that assessment and yet, within a few days, my tinnitus got easier to tolerate. Not a lot. But a little bit and I didn’t believe that would ever happen.

I had also never considered tinnitus triggers even though I knew my tinnitus was always worse after I had a poor night’s sleep. I had discovered on my own that aspirin made my tinnitus worse. I hadn’t realized that alcohol or caffeine were triggers, along with many prescription medications. Learning your tinnitus triggers and avoiding them does not merely lessen your suffering. It gives you a much-needed sense of control.

Thanks to this little book, I understand my tinnitus much better. The better I understand it, the better I can cope with it. It was a tremendous relief to discover that what I was hearing, what was sometimes driving me crazy, was just another body noise like my heartbeat.

I can’t live without my heartbeat and I don’t want to live without my ears functioning either. But like my heartbeat, I now have hope that my tinnitus will recede into the background, there but no longer as much of an annoyance.

I am very happy that I spotted Rewiring Tinnitus: How I Finally Found Relief from the Ringing in My Ears. The meditation process and an understanding of tinnitus triggers might help you too.

If you want more information about Glenn Schweitzer, he keeps a blog about tinnitus: https://rewiringtinnitus.com/.