I went to my ENT for my tinnitus and he suggested I try the beyondtinnitus program. He said he knew of the doctors who developed it and said that he had heard good things from other patients. I asked him about Neuromonics and he mentioned that beyondtinnitus is priced significantly lower and that I can access it online. He didn’t offer Neuromonics and would have to send me to someone else. He also said Neuromonics costs $6000. At first I was skeptical. I didn’t think that I could get relief of my tinnitus online. There are so many scams online and I wanted to make sure that this wasn’t the one of them. I figured I would trust my ENT and checked out their website.

 

Their website describes their system as a “customized tinnitus rehabilitation strategy that really works”. I said to myself, “we’ll see about that”.

 

I signed up for the 6 month subscription for $299. I got an email with the username and password and signed in. I first had to fill out a couple of questionnaires on tinnitus loudness and how it affected my sleep, life, etc. Then it took me to the first screen which has 3 options: update tinnitus match, make a music therapy file, and make a sound therapy file.

 

I clicked the update tinnitus match to start. It first asks if the tinnitus is a tone or if it’s a buzzing or hissing type of tinnitus. I clicked the tone one because my tinnitus is a very high pitch sound. It gave me a number of options and I clicked all of them and found the one that is closest to my tinnitus. It had an option where it said if my tinnitus did not fall into any of those categories. I clicked it just for kicks to see what options they had. That took me to a page with a slider, where you can move up and down the slider and it gives you sound of different pitches. It also had really high pitch sounds that I couldn’t even hear, but my kids could hear. I went back to the other screen because I had found the pitch of my tinnitus on the other one. After that it sent me to a page where I had to choose between one of 3 sounds and after that it said it was complete.

 

Then it takes you back to the so-called “Patient dashboard”. There you can select between the sound therapy and music therapy. I clicked the “create a sound therapy” icon. It started with this slider where I had to slide up and down until I hear a high pitch hissing sound. This confused me a bit because I thought it all sounded like hissing. So I sent an email through their help system so I can understand it better. They replied about 2 hours later and sent me a detailed instruction on what they meant and offered to call me to help me remotely. Anyhow, I figured it out on my own and found the spot I thought was right.

 

The next step asked whether I hear it better on one side or the other. There was again another slider that I had to move to the right or left to a point where it says “you are comfortable”. My tinnitus is a little louder on the right so I moved it a bit to the right side. In the next screen it gave you the sound therapy file and I saved it onto my computer. The file came in a WAVE format. The instructions said how to listen to the sound, etc. In the program I had to listen to the sound therapy file for 8 hours a day for the first 2 weeks.

 

At that point there is no prompt as to what to do. But I figured out that I can click the patient dashboard link on top and get to where I needed to go.

 

Then I started the sound therapy. I copied the file onto my MP3 player and I bought these open-ear headphones that they recommend (AirDrives). These headphones are a bit pricy ($25 on Amazon) but well worth it. They don’t sit in your ear but sit in front of the ear. This way I can listen to the sound therapy without having it block my ears. I can still hear people around me if they talk to me.

 

I started listening to the sound therapy file for 8 hours a day. The first day, I listened to it for an hour on an hour off. The sound therapy file doesn’t sound like white noise, it’s different. I can’t really explain it, but when I listen to it, even at a pretty quiet level (equal to my tinnitus), it makes the tinnitus disappear completely. When I stop listening to the sound therapy file [you have to gradually lower the volume per their recommendations], the tinnitus is quieter for several hours afterwards. One night, I put on my headphones and listened to the sound therapy during my sleep the whole night. The next day, my tinnitus was a lot quieter. I barely noticed it.

 

After two weeks, I switched to the music therapy. For the music therapy, they require the files to be MP3s that are 128 kpbs. Not all my music files had those settings so I emailed them about it. They told me that I can use iTunes to do it and sent me a video of how to do it. It took a little time to do each file separately but was doable. The system definitely lends itself to the do-it-yourselfers.

 

Going through the music therapy, I discovered one limitation of their system. My large MP3 files would not convert to music therapy files. The company said that there is a limit of 8 Mb for the files that can be converted. They said that they will be increasing that limit. They told me that there is a program that I can use to cut the Mp3 into smaller parts. I did that, but not all the files worked to convert to music therapy file. The customer service person told me that after cutting them, I have to reconvert them to 128 kbps MP3 with iTunes. It was a bit of work, but I finally got it done.

 

Now I listen to my music therapy files every day. I have a playlist of about 2 hours that works well. On the days that I have a lot of stress and my tinnitus gets louder, I listen to the sound therapy file because that really quiets it down. Overall, my tinnitus is quieter (I am now 2.5 months in). So here are my pros and cons of the beyondtinnitus.com system:

 

Pros

 

 

Cons: