Will the Ringing Ever Stop? I'm a massage therapist. One of my clients has experienced ringing in his ears for months. The only treatment his doctors advise is to continue on steroids, even though there has not been noticeable improvement. I read in "Spontaneous Healing" about a German physician who experienced great success with yoga and stress relief techniques. Can you recommend an alternative? Any herbs? Tinnitus - ringing in the ears - was relatively rare when I was in medical school, but it's definitely not rare these days. It has become almost epidemic in the United States, and there's not really any clear understanding among medical doctors of its cause. It seems to affect people of all ages, and the medical treatments for it aren't very good. Some people think that it's due to a viral infection, but that's just the ready Western answer to many medical riddles. What you hear are noises you might ordinarily hear outside, except that they come from inside the body and won't go away. It feels like there's no way to escape, which can be upsetting and annoying. The noises can make it hard to hear other people's voices, to concentrate, or to sleep through the night. As I wrote in "Spontaneous Healing," my German physician friend, Helmut Milz, MD, of Marquartstein, Bavaria, works at a psychosomatic medical clinic and regards tinnitus as essentially a stress-related condition. He believes that chronic muscle tension in the head and neck interferes with blood circulation to the inner ear. If he's right, then increased use of computers, television watching, and the general stress in our culture could explain why we see so much more tinnitus these days. I would recommend two approaches. First, your client should do some kind of stress-reduction technique aimed specifically at the musculature. I would recommend yoga, or bodywork using the Alexander technique. I would also suggest acupuncture. Second, I would use the herb ginkgo. Ginkgo is nontoxic and increases blood circulation in the head and neck. Many people have reported improvement on it. Your client would need to take it for about two months before making a decision about whether it had helped. The dose would be two tablets of the standardized extract three times a day, with meals. Check out the book "Tinnitus: Dealing with the Ringing in Your Ears" by Richard Hallam (Thorsons, London; 1993), based on the philosophy that the best way to deal with ringing is to stop fighting it. Hallam, who is a psychologist, helps readers learn to tolerate the sounds until they stop being annoying and aren't particularly noticeable. Another good source is the American Tinnitus Association in Portland, Oregon.