- How little is known about tinnitus
- Michael Lewis on Greg Smith’s book. Published months ago. “The dystopia often imagined in the world of artificial intelligence—in which computers somehow take on a life of their own and come to rule mankind—has actually happened in the world of finance. The giant Wall Street firms have taken on lives of their own, beyond human control. The people flow into and out of them but have only incidental effect on their direction and behavior.”
- The price of admission to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “Businessmen seeking ministry contracts learned of Zhang’s nomination and offered to help. . . . Zhang, using a slush fund provided by the businessmen, cloistered 30 experts from mostly ministry-affiliated universities and research institutes in a hotel for 2 months, during which time they churned out three books on high-speed rail technology that were credited to Zhang.”
- Why was Matthew Shepard killed? I have not yet read this book (I will) but it sounds so good I am happy to publicize it before that. It is being ignored. It supports a theme of Ron Unz and this blog, that lots of what we are told is wrong.
- Someone leaving graduate school at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne explains why he is leaving only a few months before finishing his Ph.d. His complaints about professional (academic) science resemble mine — for example, the dominant role of will this help my career? in all decisions.
Thanks to Joyce Cohen and Allan Jackson.
Seth, I wonder if you have an opinion on Dr. John Sarno and his theory of Tension Myoneural Syndrome (TMS, the idea that much physical pain, especially back and neck pain, is caused by a mindbody disorder whereby the mind represses unconscious rage by creating a physical distraction through the autimmune system via reducing the flow of blood to certain muscles). The reason I mention it is that he surmises that tinnitus could also be a similar mindbody disorder, controllable (like TMS) through a process of becoming aware of the rage-oriented contents of the unconscious. I had considerable success in eliminating back, neck and wrist pain through application of his methods. Though I did not set out to eliminate my tinnitus through his method, the tinnitus (years long and very annoying) totally went away around the same time. Regards,
Regarding tinnitus, my husband recently gave up taking statin drugs, one reason was because they gave him tinnitus – which would start after he took a dose and gradually fade (he was taking a dose every other day before he gave it up completely). It was only one of many side effects that bothered him but one I had never heard of before. And this was on a fairly low dose.
Sentinel, I’m not sure if you saw this but the 20/20 report on Dr. Sarno was awesome:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsR4wydiIBI
CC, thank you. I actually HAVE seen that! Sarno notably did experimentation on himself in the course of developing his theories.
I manage my tinnitus (right ear) by running my attention down a muscle on the right side of my neck for a few minutes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work if I try to notice the moment when the tinnitus disappears, but there’s a reliable corelation between doing the relaxation technique and the tinnitus going away for weeks or months.
Being able to manage something that’s supposed to be incurable contributes to my cynicism about medicine– this doesn’t mean I think all tinnitus has the same cause or the same cure.
I don’t have a history of exposure to loud sounds, for example. My tinnitus seems to be correlated with worrying about money.
I can’t wait to read the book about Matthew Shepard. If you like reading “everybody got it wrong” books, I highly recommend [i]Columbine[/i] by Dave Cullen. If you haven’t, everything you thought you knew about the murders is wrong.
Seth,
I think I cured my tinnitus with the low carb, high fat diet that I used to fix type 2 diabetes. My ears used to ring fairly loudly, especially at night and sometimes also had a low frequency throbbing in my right ear. The right ear problem is gone and I now go for days without hearing any higher frequency ringing. I knew from random blog reading that LCHF works for lots of people on diabetes but I haven’t seen anything on tinnitus. It probably took 3-6 months before I realized this helped and it could be that I was still tweaking my diet and something specific did it. For example I got more careful about lowering omega-6 fats which I’ve read is related to inflammation levels. In any event, it’s interesting that a generally irreversible, serious condition is fixed.
Seth,
Watching this video makes me think flavor scientists have reverse-engineered the SLD to create the Doritos Locos Taco for Taco Bell.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/dining/the-nacho-dorito.html
There is a reference to an effort to avoid adding a specific flavor to trigger satiety, and an attempt to prolong the odor so that more hunger is triggered.
It almost makes you think these scientists know exactly how to thwart efforts at appetite control.