Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Sound Therapy for Tinnitus, Neuromonics Device

Full Article at: Sound therapy helps quiet the din

By Sarah Avery

"For people with tinnitus, a phantom sound that only they can hear plagues their every waking moment. Imagine a Salvation Army bell ringer camped out in your head every day, all day.

Despite afflicting about 50million people in the United States, often as a result of injury or repeated exposure to loud noises, the condition has no cure and few effective treatments, though a new approach is now available at Duke University.

Neuromonics retrains people to manage how they hear the internal sound. But it's not covered by insurance and is expensive - about $4,500 for a device that resembles a portable music player and for sessions with an audiologist to tailor the treatment.

Teri Kim, 48, of Cary, started the therapy in August, and almost quit a month into it when she still hadn't gotten relief from the high-pitched whine that has blared in her head for years. Then she gradually began having good days and even good weeks as the whine began to diminish.

"It was wonderful," Kim said.

The therapy works on the finding that many cases of tinnitus (pronounced teh-NYE-tus or TIN-eh-tus) are produced inside the brain, not the ear.

Rebecca Price, an audiologist at Duke who provides the Neuromonics therapy, said the internal sound of tinnitus is often accompanied by hearing loss. When the ear can no longer pick up a certain sound frequency, scientists theorize, the brain fills the void, causing a nonstop din.

For most, the sound is a minor nuisance, but about 12 million sufferers in the United States find it so troubling they seek medical help, according to the American Tinnitus Association, an advocacy group. About 2 million people claim some degree of disability from the disorder.

Brain imaging has provided researchers with clues to the cause, homing in on areas involved in auditory processing, as well as regions associated with memory and emotion.

And that's where sound therapy can be effective.

Using the Neuromonics device, people like Kim can reprogram their brains to filter out most of the offending sound. The process starts by creating a recording of the person's unique internal menace, as the patient describes the sound and the audiology team works to mimic it. The sound is then masked under a benign "white noise" such as waves or a radiator hissing.

That combined sound is then layered under a series of four different musical compositions, including classical and New Age selections. Each of the pieces has been further modified to reduce the bass and amplify the higher tones.

For at least two hours a day for two months, patients listen to the special music with a portable player - any combination of the four tunes they want. The doctored music drowns out the ringing.

"Patients love it," Price said, adding that by easing the phantom sound, patients begin to associate relief with the music.

After two months, the second phase starts, this time with the white masking noise removed, leaving just the music and the recording of the patient's sound.

"We've already trained their brains to respond positively to the music, so when they hear ringing, they don't freak out about it," Price said.

After about four to six months in the second phase, the brain is retrained to filter out much of the phantom sound.

Kim, who has stayed in the first phase for four months, possibly because her case was so severe, recalled that before the treatments, the ringing in her head grew so loud as the day wore on, she suffered physical pain."

"Jennifer Born, director of public affairs for the American Tinnitus Association, said research funding into the condition has increased tenfold in five years, to $10 million, in large part because of interest from the U.S. Department of Defense.

Born said tinnitus is the leading cause for disability payments to service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, whose training and combat missions involved heavy equipment, explosions and loud gunfire.

The Department of Veterans Affairs reports that more than 760,000 former service members have been diagnosed with the condition, which is typically grounds for a partial disability payment."

Military Sexual Assaults up 11%, Systemic Problem Turned Epidemic ?

Sexual harassment in the US military is not a new problem but a systematic one that has turned into an “epidemic.” Statistics and soldier testimonies have revealed that sexual assault is a recurrent crisis in the US military, with over 3,230 complaints recorded in 2009.

Full Article at: 'Sexual abuse rampant in US military'
Wed Dec 29, 2010 1:52PM

"In the fiscal year 2009, the department of defense reported an 11 percent increase in sexual assaults compared to the previous year, putting the reported number of sexual assault cases at 3,230.

The shocking survey also said that one in every three women reports being sexually assaulted while serving in the US military.

This is while according to the US Department of Veterans Affairs, sexual abuse happens in the US military at rates twice that of the civilian average.

This means that women, who join the military to help fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, are more likely to be raped by a fellow American soldier than they are of getting killed by enemy fire.

An annual Pentagon report on sexual harassment and violence at three military service academies has yielded shocking results.

The survey released in mid December, showed a 64 percent increase in the number of reports of sexual assault and harassment, from last year.

Veteran Administration statistics also showed that more than 50 percent of the veterans who screen positive for Military Sexual Trauma (MST) are men.

According to the US Census Bureau, there are roughly 22 million male veterans compared to less than two million female ones.

Despite the shockingly high number of recorded sexual assaults, analysts believe that the real figures are sure to be higher as many victims refuse to report assaults to military authorities due to extreme shame and trauma.

On December 13, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups filed a federal lawsuit against the Pentagon for refusing to release records of sex crimes occurring within the United States military.

The groups say official records of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment in the military are needed to determine the extent of the problem and the measures taken to address it.

They have also underlined the fact that withholding the documents is against the Freedom of Information Act."