http://ata.org/sites/ata.org/files/pdf/March_2002_Tinnitus_Today.pdf Check out page 6.
As you well know, the kind of studies demanded by most American allopaths cost a great deal of money; and obviously Big Pharma is not going to pay for research into something that they can't patent. If they can't isolate a single compound whose structure they can manipulate enough to make it patentable, they're not interested. In many cases, none of the compounds in a plant seem to be effective when isolated from the whole. In other cases,
laboratory-synthesized analogues simply don't have the same efficacy as Mother Nature's variety, and no one knows why.
As for academia, consider where most of their funding comes from. Do you seriously think universities are going to jeopardize the gravy train to carry out research that may find that an inexpensive plant that grows like a weed in South American or Asia works as well as or better than their benefactors' proprietary products? Don't hold your breath. Other than Cornell, the colleges don't care, either.
I use herbs after allopathic medicine has run out of options, by the way. I'm not anti-medicine. When I have a medical problem I call a doctor first, not an herbalist. Most times they have something that works. Sometimes they don't, but nature does. That's when I give nature a try.
The reason I know something about the tinnitus is because I had it all my life, but it never really bothered me, so I did nothing about it. But I had some serious, sudden, unilateral hearing loss about 15 years ago (before I met my D.O. lady friend) and spent many months and dollars on conventional remedies that did nothing. An MRI had ruled out acoustic neuroma, and the tests he did in the office had rules out neurological issues, Meniere's, etc.
So he started throwing pills at the problem. Diuretics, antihistamines, decongestants, tranquilizers, sedatives, steroids, even quinine. No joy. The hearing loss was getting neither any better nor any worse.
After several months, my pharmacist, who had been a physician in China, took me aside and advised me to take the three herbs I mentioned above, along with others that I've since stopped taking. The others included capsicum and licorice root. Two or three weeks later, my hearing in the affected ear was close to normal; and as an added bonus, the tinnitus was gone.
The capsicum and licorice root actually had some immediate effect in terms of opening the Eustachian tubes. I could actually feel it and hear it. But the relief was short-lived and there were gastric side effects, so I stopped taking them.
In any case, a few weeks later I went back to the ENT and told him my hearing was back. He didn't believe it. So he set up another hearing test with the audiologist: but even after that showed that my hearing was within normal limits again, he still didn't believe it. So he did it two more times, two weeks apart. Finally the insurance company balked at paying for any more hearing tests for a patient whose hearing was WNL.
At that point, the ENT came close to accusing me of faking the whole thing -- as if I had nothing better to do with my time and money for all those months. The possibility that some herbs from a Chinese pharmacist were effective when nothing he'd tried had been was outside of his framework of reference, I suppose: but he needed some way to explain away that pesky little detail that I could hear out of my right ear again.
That's when I told the ENT that his services were no longer required. A couple of years later I started dating a D.O. and happened to mention the experience to her, and she said it made perfect sense that those particular herbs would be helpful, and explained the reasons to me. The information's out there and easy to find if you search for it. It may not meet the FDA's requirements for an NDA, but I'm not the FDA.
Rich
