Show me the Evidence 

Occasionally I am approached to give approval to a product claimed either to stop tinnitus or greatly reduce its severity. By getting the TAV on side, the manufacturers know that their product will gain credibility. I have also had hundreds of calls from TAV members and other people with tinnitus who want to know whether I would recommend a particular 'alternative' treatment or medicine they have read about or heard about from a well meaning friend.

I actually consider ' alternative medicine' to be a misnomer. A treatment or medicine is whether it works or it doesn't. Why are products or treatments that cannot be tested or are not tested, or consistently fail tests, considered 'alternative'?

If a treatment is demonstrated to have curative properties in properly controlled double-blind trials, it ceases to be alternative and simply becomes an accepted treatment or medicine.

If a therapy or treatment is anything more than a placebo, properly conducted double-blind trials, statistically analyzed, will provide the evidence.

In double-blind, placebo-controlled study, approximately half the patients in the study are given the active drug and half are given a placebo or 'sugar pill'. It is double-blind when neither the patients nor the experimenters know who are receiving the active drug and who are receiving the placebo. The patient does not know initially that a placebo is involved. The implication is that all patients in the study are getting the active drug. When the study is completed, the code is broken and everyone finds out who took what. The results are then recorded. If the active drug does not do better than the placebo, the drug is considered of little or no value as a treatment.

For example, in the case of the Chinese herb, ginkgo biloba, a double-hidden, placebo-controlled study was conducted at the Medical School in Birmingham, England. This extensive, year-long 1,115 patient study showed that ginkgo biloba had no greater therapeutic effect than the placebo for tinnitus relief.

As a result of this study, I have the confidence to inform people that the evidence indicated that ginkgo biloba does not provide relief from tinnitus.

However, the problem has more complex implications for your general well-being than just wasting time and money. Whilst experimenting with a range of 'purported cures' for your tinnitus, each dashed hope is followed by a feeling of deeper disappointment and despair. And as I know from personal experience, you manage your tinnitus less successfully after each successive failure.

So the next time you are considering embarking on the 'latest' treatment for tinnitus, ask not only to see the evidence, buy in the absence of such evidence and ask why proper scientific tests have not been conducted.

And do not be deceived by anecdotal evidence. When two or three people are reported as getting relief from a particular product, this does not constitute proper scientific evidence.

Some members have argued that surely it can do no harm for the TAV to print such anecdotal experiences in the newsletter. I hope this article has demonstrated why the TAV believes such information would be counter-productive. As we tell participants at our monthly Tinnitus Management Seminars, when a proven treatment for tinnitus is discovered you won't read about in some obscure health column in a glossy magazine. It will be banner headlines around the world.

We can all continue to hope that someday there will be a cure for tinnitus. In the meantime, it is important to remember that with accurate information and a change in the way you think about your tinnitus, it can be successfully managed.

Many years ago in Scotland, a new game was invented.

It was ruled "Gentlemen Only ... Ladies Forbidden"

and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.