Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Tinnitus

Episode Date: May 5, 2016

We continue our exploration of the ear with an examination of one of history's most annoying (and hardest to treat) ailment: Tinnitus, otherwise known as ringing in the ears. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We were sawed through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Some medicines, some medicines, the escalant macaque for the mouth. Wow! Hello, everybody. Welcome to Saul Vones, a mental tour of Miscite Admedicine. I am your co-host, Justin McAroy. And I'm Sydney McAroy. Sydney, I don't count last week. That's what I say. Like in general, last week didn't happen.

No, last week. No, last week. Pretending like last week didn't occur. Last week we had a Q&A episode. And, but as far as I'm concerned. Because you were out of town and you made my life much more difficult and so it was hard to do other research I normally do. We relied on our listeners, our loving supportive listeners to help us out. Correct. Everything you just said is right. But the combo stands as far as I'm

concerned, the combo continues. Can I just, I'm just gonna, let me, let me pull back the curtain for a second, give you a little sneak peek behind the scenes. Just an ask if we were continuing the theme this week from previously. We had kind of like a daisy chain of episodes. Yes, we've been daisy of chain of things. And if you remember, before our Q&A episode, the last one was ear aches. And I said, well, this week it's tenidus. There you go, I already ruined it.

Sneak peak, it's tenidus. And Justin says, is that connected? I said, well, that's ringing in your ears. Well, I know. And he says, is that connected? Two ear aches. Two ear aches ringing in your ears. Do you get the connection?

Maybe, are you? Yeah, I mean, I get it. I get what you're saying. Like ears? Yeah, like I get what you're saying. Like they're ears, like they're connected by the fact that they're related to ears. Yeah, like I get what you're saying, but like, you know?

No. So I didn't know if you were intentionally trying to continue the combo because we did take a break from the combo last week. Can the combo continue? Is what I don't know the podcast combo rules since the concept we invented. Well, you just discounted an entire week

from human history. So I mean, if you have the power to do that, I think we have the power to create a daisy chain that actually leapfrocks an entire week that human history. So I mean, if you have the power to do that, I think we have the power to create a Daisy chain that actually leapfrogs an entire week that now is fictional. Sydney, can you please tell me about 10 of this? Justin, I'll tell you about 10 of this. Although I feel like you should already be well acquainted with this topic because I am somebody who's living with hearing loss. That's right. Well, you have played a million Americans that you know in your day-to-day life who are living with hearing loss. That's true. That's true. I ironically, I am suffering some

ear ringing right now because I was setting up a new mixer and in the audio, in the process of setting up a new mixer, I accidentally started playing a YouTube video about how to set up a new mixer at ear splitting volume So it's like the worst you can mess up setting up a mixer It's just like I pushed about it just start like blasting. I'd like tear my headphones off the thermos Justin you're never supposed to apologize on the front end. Oh, okay. You never should apologize to your audience No, no, where'd you go these showbiz? You never should so apologize to your audience. No? No.

Where did you go, these showbiz, a bomb monster? I thought that was a theater thing. No. Don't tell them ahead of time, like, ah, my voice is kind of going. So when I'm singing, when my singing's off, don't mind that. My voice is kind of going, are you supposed to not do that? Lowering expectations has been a huge part of my podcasting career. I don't plan to stop now.

You've got the theater degree, not me. I'll take your word for it. So what are you talking about? What are we, I know, I know basically, but what are we talking about when we talk about tenderness? So I'm going to tell you about tenderness. I want to thank a few people for thank you, Magdalene, Matthew, Andrew, Armand, Pat,

Janric, and Jennifer, all of you for suggesting this topic. I think it's a really interesting one because again, another little foreshadowing, I'm not going to have a lot of, like, groundbreaking answers for you on this one. Unfortunately, I wish I did. I'd probably be very rich if I did. So we, well, because I think you could attest to that it's pretty annoying, Tinnitus. Yeah, it's the pits. Tinnitus, or what some people will call tinnitus, it's the same thing. Tinnitus is usually how we... It's like a confunciation.

It's like the right one. I would, yes, I hate to be judgmental, but yes, I would say tinnitus is the right way to say it. But if you say tinnitus, I don't know what you mean. It's often... I've never said anything other than tinnitus my entire life. So imagine my relief. You've never corrected me either than tonight is my entire life. So imagine my relief. You've never corrected me there.

So kudos to you. It's even like on the American, whatever society of tennis or American tennis, whatever, it says like there are two ways to pronounce this. Tennis, which is the way it's pronounced by doctors and then tonight is, which is the way the rest of us pronounce it. Yeah. Tennis is like an awkward, it doesn't feel good to say. It doesn't have like a good mouth feel.

Yeah. I understand. Well, on I mouth feel. Yeah. I understand one. I just so. Yeah. Right. Well, recognized as a, you know, as an ending for medical words. But it's, we call it ringing in the ears a lot. Like that's the definition, but I, that's not entirely accurate because it can be a lot of other sounds that you hear in your ears. It could be a rain.

It could be a wouching or a buzzing or a a whistling, or a clicking, or a hissing. There are a history, it's been called a whispering, or a singing. There are lots of different descriptions for this sound that you're hearing. And the vast majority of it is subjective. So it's not something that you could say, listen, listen, I have this reing in my ears,

and I could sit across from you and say, oh, yes, you do. 99%, I'm gonna say, I can't, I can't hear that. Yeah. There are about 1% that actually have something going on that might cause an audible noise for other people in the room, but that's a whole other ballgame. There are tests you can do though, right? To tell if you have tennis? Yeah. Well, no, you just tell me you have ten of us. Oh, okay. There are tests we can do for some of the underlying disorders, okay.

But not for the symptom. It's a symptom is the important thing to know about. It's a symptom you tell me about. Okay. It's not a sign. A sign is something I can see. I check you out, I examine you, I see a sign. A symptom is a thing that you report.

It's a pain. The pain is a symptom. I can't see your pain. I can't test for your pain. You tell me you have it. Okay. It makes sense. It can be acute or it can be chronic.

So you can have tenetas for a brief period of time or you could have tenetas your whole life. Hopefully you don't, but you could. And overall, it's estimated that about 15% of Americans get tenetas at some point in time. Either acute or chronic for some reason. So a lot of people get it. And it can be caused by a lot of different things.

So again, it's a symptom. So just like pain is a symptom and can be caused by a, you know, myriad different illnesses and then problems, it can be caused by hearing loss, trauma, it can be caused by some sort of blockage in your ear canal, sinus issues, trauma to the tympanic membrane to the ear drum itself, problems with your temporal mandibular joint or TMJ disorder, people will say often. Traumatic brain injuries can cause it. There are different drugs that can cause it,

neurologic problems, vascular problems. It's really endless. There's a long differential for the things that could cause tinnitus and as Justin you may attest to sometimes we don't we don't really get there. Yes. What the etiology is. I still don't know what has caused my, I mean I was assuming just regular or

well hearing loss but. Which is a very common cause. Which I guess I mean we still don't know why you lost your hearing. Yeah. I mean just to be clear this is is not, it is not that bad. There are certain frequencies that I have a hard time hearing in one ear. Like, you really use the phone in my right ear. I have to use my left ear for it.

It's not like the worst. So treatments for this condition date back to ancient times, probably because it is so annoying. It is, yeah. So people have been trying to find times, probably because it is so annoying. It is, yeah. So people have been trying to find something to do about it. And originally it was thought to be something that was either divine or evil. Sure. One or the other.

Either way, it was something supernatural. It was either like a curse, like the ancient Egyptians called it a bewitched ear. So something bad. It's referred to in the Talmud as a curse of Titus. So it could be something evil or horrible that's happened to you. But there's also some ancient civilizations that thought it was like a sensitivity to the divine that you-

A little more aware than the rest of us. Yes. Like another sense that you had that perceived a universe that maybe the rest of us weren't in tune with. A very annoying high pitched universe. you had that perceived a universe that maybe the rest of us weren't in tune with a very annoying high pitched universe. That doesn't make you feel more special. Does it make you feel like you're more in tune?

Uh, no, absolutely not. Would you call it a blessing or a curse? Definitely a curse. I mean, neither. I would call it tenetists. It's 26 or tenitis because I would call it tenitis. You know what? I'm going to stick by my guns

And so I mentioned the Egyptians thought it was a bewitched ear so they had various concoctions that they Had kind of devised to try to treat this They would actually take a hollowed out read and then kind of insert it into your outer ear Mm-hmm. I could see that and then use that as just a delivery mechanism for various honey, honey, frankincense, oils, tree sap, dirt, everything, everything, everything healthy, growing air needs. The Mesopotamian's wrote about tenetis as well. They called it a whispering or a singing in the ear and they thought one possible cause. So this is good Justin one possible cause could be that you're holding hands with a ghost. Uh, yeah, that's, I mean, that's definitely possible. God knows I've tried, but they are so vast

in ephemeral. So holding a handle that goes is like a pretty tricky thing. Did they mean like an actual ghost like the actual form of a ghost or like, whoopie Goldberg? I mean like Patrick's Waze, he's focusing all his energy after that thug in the subway. So when he actually, not when he is in whoopie Goldberg and like holding hands with her.

Yeah, like when he possesses the pot that didn't be more shaping. That's not what happens. I think it's that she got that's not that scene. I think I've seen ghost pretty recently. I'm sure you haven't actually. It was treated largely with chance and they differentiated. There were different kinds like was it whispering tenetis was it singing was it speaking. A lot of it was treated with a certain chance. So one example was it half flown against me. It half attacked me. Oh, seven heavens, seven earths, seven winds, seven fires by heaven be Exercise. Oh, whoa, my tennis just got way better. Thank you so much. Thank you Sydney. Did the chant work? It did. It worked. Thank you

And there were all kinds of different chance to hand, which ear, and then of course, which type of tenetis it was. For speaking or whispering tenetis, they would also recommend something that would make you puke and a medic. An a medic? Yeah, something that make you throw up. So some examples of that would be mustard beer.

Ew. Which makes me, which kind of makes me, I love beer. That kind of makes me a little nauseous. Yeah, yeah. Must be beer. Or just a lot of turmeric, which I mean, I guess if you, that probably would make you puke, if you've just kept like down on it,

kind of like the cinnamon challenge, right? Like cinnamon's delicious, but if you kept swallowing, it's not a cinnamon you think. I can't think of many spices that wouldn't make you thorough of if you ate a whole myth of it. You know, like, I would think't make you throw up if you ate a whole miffle of it. You know, like I would think they're all pretty not really. And thank all the human history. We've just been downing like big bottle of spices to see like, does this one make you be a lot better?

Nope. No. Oh, okay. That one does too. Got it. Add it to the list of things that make you puke if you eat enough of them. They also recommended, um, op opium belladonna and cannabis as treatments. My guess is that if I was going to the Mesopotamian doctor

and they were like, do you want a chant or do you want some opium belladonna and cannabis, I would be like, well, you know, the chant didn't work last time. I'm just saying. I'm got an allergy. Chant allergy. The Greeks didn't have a lot of great ideas about tenetists.

Hippocrates and Aristotle just advised basically that louder sounds seem to make it better. What? You know? Guys, bad job. Just something louder will kind of make it go away. I mean, in one sense, I guess they're right that if you start listening to something loud, like you'll notice it less, I guess. Just drown it out. Just drown it out.

That's actually, as we get to the end of some actual treatments for this, you're going to be disappointed to find that they weren't completely off base, not completely. Now by contrast, Roman medicine had a variety of approaches and they actually divided it out depending on what they thought the cause was. So if you had what they would call a cold in your ear, which actually probably referred to what we would think of now as a middle ear infection, like a no-titus media, then they would say you need to treat it by clean the ear, like, or clean the ear, sorry, clean the ear, clean the ear. Clean the ear. Clean the ear. Clean the ear.

We invented a human afar, okay. I know, I know it seems crazy. Clean the ear and then hold your breath. I did not know the Romans had sharper image catalogs from when it's to order these air purifiers. They got them from SkyMall. They're like these air purifiers that don't look like air purifiers. They look like pot of plants and they also double ones like litter boxes for your cat. It's amazing.

They would be so stoked. When they got to the end of the plug and they also double ones, like litter boxes for your cat. It was amazing. They would be so stoked. They get, when they got to the end of the plug and they're like, and what do we do with this? You never know. They had aqueducts, right? Yeah, they just drop it into an... I just mean they were smart. Like they had, they were, you know, inventive. Get stupid Reggie and have him swallow the strange metal

wrong. So clean the ear and then hold your breath until all of the bad humor kind of comes frothing bubbling out of your ear. Okay. I would say don't hold your breath until then. Yeah. Because I mean, I guess I would cure the tentatus is another way of looking at it. Okay. I would say don't hold your breath until then. Yeah. Because I mean,

I guess that would cure the tinnitus is another way of looking at it. Yeah. I mean, if you start hold, if you hold your breath until frothing liquid came out of your... Until humor came out of your because it's never going to happen. Yeah. So, um, if your head is messed up, now I don't know what that exact like in Roman terms, what they mean by like if it's a head problem, but if it's a head problem, you could exercise, you could gargle, you could rub your ear a lot, that might fix it, there were certain diets, or you could take a mixture of radish, cucumber juice,

honey, and vinegar and just put that in there. Just rub it on in. Yeah. And then sometimes they would tell you to stop drinking wine. Which just seems mean, you already have like this ringing in your ear. Yeah, it sounds some sleep, please. Yeah, at least let you have some wine.

Plenty, of course. My boy. As we covered in the earache episode, Plenty of the Elder had lots to say about ears. In addition to some stuff we already mentioned, things like earthworms, mashed earthworms, and goose grease that you would want to put in there.

He also recommended woodlice, oxgull, fox fat, goose grease that you would want to put in there. He also recommended woodlice, ox gall, fox fat, bore semen, good luck obtaining that. Carefully. Donkey Dung. Great. Rest milk or the foam from a horse's mouth. So he was just basically say anything that could double as an insulting nickname given to someone on salute your shorts. Just put that into your ear.

I don't remember the character on salute your shorts. Those call bore semen. No, that would have been a little inappropriate probably. Yeah, he just made it like a half season. He was like replaced swiftly. He got an awful waffle and couldn't handle it. He was the misbliss of the show, which is very early. Yeah, I, okay, Plannies' whole jam I've discovered is like, he just named so many things and I think his plan was like, listen,

if any of these are right, you gotta come back at your boy. You're like, like in a thousand years, he wanted to be like, and it turned out the solution to Tinnitus was Fox Fat. He could be like, I told you, it's like you named 20 things, plenty like of course you told us,

you named everything that you had. He named that and that was true for almost anything, especially ears though. He had a fondness for ears, I still haven't figured that out. He's like, he went and preserved his legacy, like his like of getting at least one right. Like because he thought he could just name so many things,

one of them had to be hidden sooner or later. Sooner or later, right? Galen recommended that you take some cockroaches and rose oil again, or opium. I always like that or opium. Or you know, opium. Or some opium. From all this came eventually,

there was the division of tenetis into different causes, at least that they thought at the time. You could have thick humors, then you would need something that would make you puke to treat that. If you had a fever, the treatment was, get rid of the fever. If it was secondary to excitement of the senses,

take opium, which I guess is good for excitement in general. Yeah, I mean, that will definitely handle the excitement. You will be less excited after that. If you have a cold hellbore was also, was often recommended. And then at various times throughout history, the usual kind of suspects, like onions, vinegar, mer, radish, anise, leeks, warmwood, human, just dump it in there. At some point, somebody figured out that the ear, even without knowing that the ear was like a closed circuit,

like that it ended with the ear drum and so that you could only do so much damage by dumping random inert substances into your ear. Somebody must have realized that and was like, just dump it all in there. Yeah, it doesn't hurt you and eventually something will work. Tinnitus is transient. Yeah, I mean, it comes and goes for some people

and doesn't for others, right? Exactly. Like, some people it's transient, some people it's permanent. I do think this continues a threat. I think where I think we tend to see more robust sets of treatments for things that are in a more varied sets of treatments

for things that are or can be transient. Like, you know, hiccups or warts, I think are two other good examples of things that like because they did sometimes go away on their own, it lent credence to a lot of other things that people just sort of like backed into, you know, as opposed to treatment for it because it did happen to coincide with when it stopped. I think that's very true, because there were several times

as I was researching this that I found recommendations from various physicians where they would name all this weird stuff, and then they would say, but in general, you should try to wait and see if it just goes away first, like these little caveats, like, yeah, you could pour radishes and vinegar or whatever in your ear. But at the same time, sometimes it goes away. So I think you're right because a lot of

times people would do this weird stuff. It would go away because it was going to anyway. And then that would cement for you that, well, who knew? Guess what? Bore Seaman works. It was, I was really hoping of the available ones. It would not be that one. And it turned out that it was. Why that was the first one I chose to go for and try and collect. And collect on my own. So short-sighted. I'm not getting anybody else's though.

So everybody get your own board, Simon. Did plenty of a store, did he sell this stuff? That's what I'm thinking. He had like a general store that he sold this stuff. I'm going to tell you in some future episode of he has story. Tell me about some other cultures how they did with it. I'm gonna tell you that in just a second, Justin, but first, why don't you come with me to the billing department?

Let's go! The medicines, the medicines that ask you let my God for the mouth. So you were gonna tell me about some other cultures that have their own takes on tinnitus. That's absolutely right. So I think just as interesting as some of the kind of stranger treatments that we've been discussing for tinnitus are some of the, some of the stranger theories behind it. So one in particular comes from the animal tribe of Eastern India who thought that tinnitus

was due to the presence of a small animal that was just kind of living in your ear. Just getting crazy up there? Just chilling in your ear. And it actually was probably not causing you a lot of problems when it was just living there. They specifically thought that the problems were due to another small animal of the same type, getting inside and the two of them fighting. So I don't know if it was like a physical fight

because what I like to imagine are two tiny little imaginary ear animals. Just like chip and Dale, wait, wailing on each other of her gadgets and fictions. I can't believe you left the sick full of dirty dishes again, Dale. Boom. Bunched him?

You punched him? In this reality, Dale just laid out. Okay, when you said fight. Chip? I thought fist fight. Okay. I was thinking like an argument. I was thinking like a odd couple style argument from tiny animals that are happening

in the inner ear and you're talking about Dale punching Chip. First off, my sisters are going gonna cry when they hear this. Chip would flatten Dale. Like absolutely no question about it. Chip would destroy Dale. He had on that cool bomber jacket. Yeah, that's true. Which made him the cooler one.

That's the cooler one. Didn't you ever think about that? I always shipped him and gadget. Okay, we're moving on to the next thing that you're going to say with your mouth. So it's a treat to treat this problem with these tiny animals that are living in your ear and fighting and causing noise. You could get a non-vitamous snake, at least that's a relief. You can only have a picture, a non-vitamous one, skin it, and then burn the skin and kind

of fumigate your ear with the smoke from that and that that could cure it. In the middle ages, this is another particularly lovely treatment. So you take a loaf of bread, freshly baked bread. Delicious. Right. Make sure it's really hot. Cut it in half. And then I'm already getting hungry. And then stick half in each year. Okay, now that's, Sydney, what you just said is a dumb thing. It doesn't make sense. Stick half a loaf of bread in each year. I know how big ears are. What are you talking about?

You know how like when you smish bread, it can get a little, like, small, like you just put, like, you got to push all the air out of it, you know? Like a skull roll when you curl up into a ball. You can do a ball and then dip it in your mashed potatoes. Yeah, for sure. Like that. In the Renaissance period, they actually started trying to do surgery. They thought that this was based on a really old idea that there was wind trapped in your

inner ear. And so the way to fix tenetus was to get rid of that wind that was trapped in your ear. So you could cut a hole in the bone there, like kind of in front of or above your ear. Okay. And then just let the air out. I can see it. I can see it.

I can see it. I can see it. I can see where the sensation why you would think that would be like helpful. You would certainly have something to take your mind off of the tentative environment. Yeah, you have a hole in your head. Yeah.

Paracelsus, who we've discussed before, had an interesting approach. So if you had ringing in your ears and you went to him, he would say you could cut the ear, cut the outer ear, cup, do cupping behind it. Okay. And then do venicexion, so bleeding under the tongue, cut the vein under the tongue. Such like a cool day. I gas my ears really, really must have been very, very bad off,

huh? He also recommended a plant called cyclamen, because the leaves of this plant look like ears. So if you took a decoction involving these leaves, then it might fix your ear problem, tinnitus or whatever. Based on, remember, paracelsus was a fan of the doctrine of signatures. Right. Which said that like things that look like none of the things would help it. Right. So if it looked like warts, it would help cure your warts. Exactly. That's the actual doctrine of signatures. Not referenced in the signature of all things, which I am a fan of. Exactly. That's the actual doctrine of signatures, not referenced in the signature of all things, which I am a fan of. Yeah, that's a great book. Not the actual doctrine of signatures. Got it. I'll let you. Loud noises also became a popular treatment

after a while. Like I mentioned, you know, loud noises. Just make some loud noises and then it won't, you won't notice it. And then in the 1700s electricity was around, so like let's use that, let's use it for ears. Let's just, you know, electrify your ears, see what happens. We finally started to make some progress with this stuff, with Jean-Marie Gaspard Etard in the late 1700s, early 1800s. He wrote a great deal about all kinds of different ear problems.

He was one of two leading ear guys at this time period. And he was the first one to actually recognize, like, hey, I think this has something to do with hearing loss, which was a really smart connection. However, again, when he started talking about ways to treat it, some of his recommendations were bleeding or an irritant foot bath, so just dip your feet into something that really bothers you.

Mm-hmm. Which I guess would take your mind off the reen in your ears. Yeah. He would sometimes even put leeches on the ear or on the head around the ear or even cut the jugular vein. What? Which I didn't think that was called treatment. or on the head around the ear or even cut the jugular vein. What? Which I didn't think that was called treatment.

I thought that was called murder. Murder most foul. Personally. Yeah, that's like, like I know, listen, listen, I know it's annoying. I do, I get it. But like, I wouldn't trust those guys to treat a sunburn. But like when they're like, I'm just gonna open it up, okay?

Kufner, I'm gonna open up your check, like, what are you saying? Absolutely not. That's it. How bad. And you see, you can answer this for me, because I don't know, I haven't had tenetists before. But how bad is it that you're gonna let somebody swiney-tod your neck?

Okay, well, here's a helpful way of remembering it, okay? Imagine somebody slicing your neck open, okay? It's not that bad. It's better than that. Like it's... I mean, that would be my guess, but I try not to, you know, I haven't walked a mile in your shoes, so. That's not treating your tenderness, that's quitting,

because you're hate having tenderness so much. Stop me such a wiener, okay? mile in your shoes. That's not treating your tennis. That's quitting. Because you hate having tennis in so much. Stop me such a wiener. Okay. Now to be fair, he did admit that often these treatments didn't work. Good. That's good. Which why anyone. Why anyone continued to submit to them. Who knows. So what I want to do is I want to cut your jug of air. Well, that helped. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Why does that have to help? What's up with the labels? Yeah, and steady would advise. Again, we're back to covering up the noise. Any specific, like, if it sounds like this,

then a roaring fire is your best bet. Or if it sounds like this, then water falling from a vase into a copper ball with a hole in it will be a better plan. Burn some damp wood, or a clockwork motor might be a good noise. In fact, there was one of his patients that he actually advised to go live in a water mill. May just didn't like them.

Which would work. I mean, that would, you wouldn't notice the reigning so much. Right. Probably. By contrast, the other leading, like I said, there were two leading ear guys at the time, John Curtis, he basically just said all the stuff that people had been doing for a really long time, all over their body for various ailments that wasn't working. So like blister it or

bleed it or give you something to puke a lot. Also, take a rest and go to the spa, which I guess you're going to need. Because of all the blistering, right? Right. How do you quantify somebody as a leading somebody when they're just talking a bunch of, yay, about nonsense? They're just two guys who wrote a lot about it. I think they were both advisors to various schools at the time and institutes that were working with,

not just tennis, but hearing loss and all different kind of ideological complaints. So they were both well known at the time. I mean, which I don't know, like back then, if you just wrote enough about something, I don't know if that made you the most well known. There you are. And then people said nice stuff about you.

We didn't keep a lot of books from back then because they were so stupid. So like if you just kept your one, if you managed to make a book that was like thick enough and hard enough to like lose in a century, to like stand the test of time, your book was big enough. If you wrote enough stuff, we really some of the stuff, but we didn't lose all the stuff. So you win.

Right. You're one of the guys. Yeah. You want a book that's so big that when people are doing book burning through the centuries, they're like, oh, not that. I'm not carrying that away. Just hide it. Just scoot it under the bed, Scott. I'm not gonna care that all the way down the fire, Scott.

That'll be the next person who answers this house's problem. Yeah, scoot it under the bed. I don't care what, I don't care what he says. I don't care what he says. I'm not gonna burn this one. It's too heavy. That's one whole trip. I can carry a whole box of my Daniel Steele senior,

senior senior novels down to the fire I'm absolutely not kind of this huge talk about ear pain that you bought a garage sale for three co-packs I'm just not gonna do it. I've placed it in several different centers now. I don't know in this time of book burning This mini this I'm covering my all my bases here. Let's just hope it's not in the future, right? Okay, so do we have a solution for this now? So, so, well, let me, I'm going to tell you about your about tennis now. Let me, real quick, if you do have tennis, you're in some fine company. Joan of Arc had tennis, Beethoven, Michelangelo, Charles

Darwin had tennis and actually kept a daily log of the frequency and amplitude. Real hit at parties that one. The show of arc that I've heard people have credited her hearing voices maybe as tendinists, right? That's, and the question is, which one was it? Do we think she had tenedists, or was it really that she heard voices and we, at the time, couldn't distinguish between that and tenedists?

Like writing to her. So maybe she heard, you're saying maybe perhaps she was divine. It was either she was divine and hearing voices or she attended us. Well, that or I mean, I'm not trying to like call anybody's religious beliefs into question or maybe she had like auditory hallucinations. There's also that. All right. All right. So in all throughout history, there were people who had auditory hallucinations that were probably lumped in with the same treatments for tenidus. So, you know, we didn't know how to distinguish all that. That's why we call it whispering and singing sometimes.

So now it's still hard. We don't completely understand tenidus. I told you that there were a lot of different possible causes. And certainly if we can isolate the cause sometimes we can do something about it. Like for instance with hearing loss There are some different treatments for it like actually electricity sometimes as you what? Yeah, for different kinds of hearing loss in some specific situations not for other kinds of tendus We actually do sometimes use sound therapies

Yeah, like louder noises Wow, that's actually used sometimes and then there actually sometimes it's just a theory of like cognitive behavioral therapy and things like that that might help you like habituate to it. Just learn to adjust to it. Just like we've always been in or with your Asia kind of thing. Like oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, my ears are always sound like that. So this is like the normal baseline for your hearing. Well, because sometimes we can't fix it.

There really aren't a lot of medications that routinely work. There are some medicines that might work for some people, but as far as like a silver bullet for tenetis, it's just not there, unfortunately. I wish I could tell you it was, but this is still a little bit of a medical mystery for a lot of us.

It's a very, I can tell you that it's a very frustrating complaint for me as a physician, because I often know I'm not gonna be able to fix it for my patients and I hate that. Folks, that's about going to do it for us. Thank you so much for making the time to talk with us and hear us out about 10 of this. Hopefully you're not struggling with this in your day today, though. I'm certain some of you are. And I'm sorry that we didn't have a secret solution at the end. But still go talk to your doctor. This is not meant to discourage you

from talking to a physician about it. If you experience this, go check it out. Because there are some things we can address and actually help you out with. And nobody's going to try to like stick a leach on your ear or dump or semen in there now. So it will be a fairly harmless visit, don't worry. So we want to say thanks to the taxpayers for less user-cialms

medicines, it's the Intro and Natural Repair Program. I did a quick sidebar, you know, you mentioned the sink-turball things, and that's a book, our friend Liz Gilbert wrote, you probably know her from you, if I love, but she's written a lot of great books. And she is working on a new project called the Compassion Collective, and they've got a big push to as they put it take back Mother's Day with some acts of love helping homeless American youth and an unaccompanied refugee children and they're asking people to give and you can do that by

going to the CompassionCollective.org. They didn't pay us for this or anything. I just think it's a really good cause and and Liz does really good work. So go to the compassion collector or you can text or compassion to 91999 and receive the donation form right there on your phone. The maximum donation is 25 bucks and donations of 510 or 15 dollars will change the world. So it's it's a very worthy cause an act of motherly love. Great way to celebrate Mother's Day. We got a lot more great shows. The maximum fun.org network. You should go check all those out. But until next Wednesday, I'm Justin McAroy.

I'm Sydney McAroy. And as always, don't chill a hole with your head. Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artist Owned Listener Supported