If your experiences with tinnitus are at all like mine, then you’ve probably spent more than a few hours in a doctor’s office and gotten little relief from your symptoms. Before you start jumping on the latest fad for tinnitus treatment, here are 5 essential facts that will help you find relief from the ringing.

1. The right cure depends on the cause of your tinnitus. Most doctors don’t diagnose the cause of your tinnitus — they leave it for the hearing specialists. The truth is that most people have tinnitus because of over-exposure to loud noises, but there are some other causes (allergies and stress) that require a completely different treatment. Be sure you know exactly what is causing your tinnitus before you start looking for treatments.

2. Healing can take a long time. I struggled with ringing in my ears for almost 10 years before I found the right cures. You can get relief from your symptoms fairly quickly, but healing tinnitus is a trial and error process for most people. Of course, if you’re looking at the right information (like this blog ), then you can cut down on the time needed.

3. Surgery is expensive and dangerous! Sure, your tinnitus might be obnoxious and cause you to lose sleep (I know mine did), but how do you feel about being deaf? Complete hearing loss is a side effect of surgical tinnitus treatment. To add insult to injury, there have been some cases where the patient losing his hearing, but still retains the tinnitus noises! Only consider surgery if you’ve exhausted all other treatment options or if your tinnitus is a result of another condition that is causing worse symptoms than ear ringing.

4. Vitamins, supplements and dietary changes do work. Most people don’t believe that eating certain foods could help relieve your tinnitus symptoms, but this holistic approach is one of the most effective (and least known) ways to really cure tinnitus. The problem most people is that they give up on this approach too soon. If you go on a diet, do you stop it if you don’t lose 10 pounds in 5 days? No! So please give dietary changes, supplements and vitamins at least 30 days (if not 2 months) before you decide on their effectiveness.

5. Track your tinnitus symptoms! Go out and get a notebook today to record your winning battle against ear ringing. This diary is going to help you figure out which tinnitus treatments are working for you. Keep track of things like your diet, supplements and intensity of your symptoms. Sign up for the mailing list if you’d like to see a template .

Keep these 5 points in the back of your mind as you assess and evaluate your tinnitus treatment. For more tips and a free report, sign up for our mailing list — and good luck!

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