Martin Kemp: ‘I can never get away from the tinnitus’

Spandau Ballet bassist and former actor Martin Kemp's enjoyed adulation and fame during his 40-year showbiz career. But, he tells us he paid a price for all those hits...

Screaming fans and pounding music were the soundtrack to Martin Kemp's life in New Romantic group Spandau Ballet, but, for the first time, he's revealed the distressing personal cost of that success. His permanent souvenir of those heady years is tinnitus, a relentless high-pitched whistling sound in his head caused by prolonged exposure to loud noise, and he also recently discovered he has high frequency hearing loss.

The dual damage to his hearing is a legacy of playing bass in front of amplified sound systems while performing on stages around the world when the band were at the height of their fame in the Eighties.

Hard to ignore

He says: "I love the memories, but I can never get away from the tinnitus, which is very frustrating. It can drive me a bit crazy at times. When I'm busy, it's easier to ignore as my brain's distracted and seems to have learnt to block it out. It's definitely hardest at night when it's quiet and all I hear is a loud whistling in my ears."

Around 10% of adults (six million people) in the UK have mild tinnitus and the noise experienced ranges from whistling, buzzing and humming, to whooshing and hissing, according to national charity, Action On Hearing Loss.

It says around 1% (around 600,000) feel the condition affects their quality of life. It also estimates more than 11 million in the UK have some form of hearing loss. "It's classic 'rock band' hearing loss, which is hardly surprising as I've been in the music industry since I was 17," declares the 55-year-old, who was recently a judge on BBC talent show, Let It Shine.

"I wouldn't have dreamt of asking anyone to turn it down because I felt the ringing was like taking home a souvenir of success. As a young lad, I'd have said, 'Louder, louder' - you don't think of long-term consequences at that age.

“Anyway, at that stage, my ego was so inflated it had left the planet and I probably wouldn't have listened even if someone had warned me. We were 20-something boys on top of the world, in the biggest band in the world, and we had some fun with it. I have no regrets."

Battling the stigma

Although he'd have no qualms about wearing a hearing aid, his hearing loss is not yet bad enough to require it. "There shouldn't be a stigma about hearing aids because they're no different to glasses, and nowadays they're so efficient and tiny no one can see them," says Kemp, who's backing a Specsavers' Listen Up! campaign to encourage people over the age of 55 to get their hearing tested regularly.

I still love going to concerts. Music's my passion, even though the noise does make the tinnitus worse, but at least I don't stand in front of the speakers now!"

If Kemp appears laid-back and philosophical about his hearing problems, it's because they pale into insignificance compared to his life-threatening health crisis in the Nineties.

In 1995, he discovered he had two brain tumours and credits his wife, Shirlie - the couple have been married 28 years and have two children - for getting him through. They met when she performed on Top Of The Pops as a backing dancer for Wham!

The most traumatic period

"I've had a lot worse in my life than tinnitus. Having the tumours was the most traumatic period I've experienced, but I always say it was the luckiest time of my life.

“That's the only way I can deal with it really. I had two tumours and one was sitting right on the outside of my skull. If Shirlie - who's my best friend as well as my wife - hadn't spotted that one, I would never have found out about the inside one, and that one would have killed me. I was very fortunate," says Kemp, who had one tumour removed immediately after diagnosis and the second two years later in 1997.

"It was much tougher for my family than for me as they were coming into hospital day after day thinking each time it could be my last day. For about a year afterwards, I had this 'rose-tinted spectacles' view of life where nothing bothered me because it was so amazing to have survived. You get over that and life returns to normal, but it does give you a perspective on what's important," he explains.

"Over the years, I've also learnt that when you have success in life, you should stand back, breathe it in, and appreciate the moment. When I was young, I was always looking ahead to the next goal. Once we'd played 2,500 at the Hammersmith Odeon, all we thought about was wanting to play 10,000 at the Wembley Arena and then we focused on 100,000 at Wembley stadium. You're never quite satisfied, but the older you get, the more you realise how important it is to appreciate things and live in the moment."

Fuente: http://home.bt.com, Published: Thursday 16 March, 2017

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American Tinnitus Association Announces New Diagnostic Tool to Identify Tinnitus in Animals

How do you know if a rat has ringing in the ears, and who cares?An optimized diagnostic tool for tinnitus in animals has been developed by a team led by the chair of the American Tinnitus Association (ATA) Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC). 

The team of researchers developed the tool that may significantly facilitate investigations of the underlying mechanisms of tinnitus, and the development of drugs and other effective treatment methods for the approximately 50 million individuals in the United States who have experienced tinnitus. SAC Chair Jinsheng Zhang, PhD, and his team worked for more than three years to develop a conditioned behavioral testing method for tinnitus. Their findings were recently published in PLOS ONE, a multidisciplinary open access journal that accepts scientifically rigorous primary research.


Currently, there is an urgent need to develop reliable, behavioral tests for tinnitus so a cure can be developed to help the millions of tinnitus sufferers. Particularly for tinnitus, finding an effective and objective way to test humans is essential in order to truly assess onset, severity, and other factors. Before this objective test can be administered to humans, it must be tested on animals based on their reactions and behavior rather than their opinions or thoughts about their affliction. Research like that done by Dr. Zhang and his is the critical first step needed in the journey to a potential cure for tinnitus.

The most frequently used method to evaluate tinnitus-like behavior in animals is the unconditioned gap-detection behavioral paradigm, according to this new paper by Dr. Zhang and his team, “A Conditioned Behavior Paradigm for Assessing Onset and Lasting Tinnitus in Rats.” Gap-detection has been widely used to assess onset and lasting tinnitus-like behavior and may provide characteristics of tinnitus-like behavior, including pitch, duration, and diagnosis of individual animals.

Recent studies, however, have raised questions about potential confounding factors, such as startle reflex reduction following acoustic trauma and the possibility that tinnitus may not necessarily impair gap-detection. While this paradigm remains to be validated using rigorously controlled metrics in both animal and human studies, behavioral paradigms that utilize conditioning procedures should also be explored.”

Dr. Zhang, who is a professor and Associate Chair for Research in the Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and Communication Sciences & Disorders departments for Wayne State University, said the ultimate goal is to help the millions of people who suffer from tinnitus by creating better methods of treatment.

“When we can objectively determine onset, severity, longevity, etc., in an animal, we can then do mechanistic studies, record brain activity to measure effectiveness of potential therapies and use that information to develop effective therapeutic treatments, including pharmacological agents and medical device approaches,” Zhang explained.


According to the paper, many paradigms “have been developed to assess tinnitus-like behavior in animals. Nevertheless, they are often limited by prolonged training requirements, as well as an inability to assess onset and lasting tinnitus behavior on the same animal subjects, tinnitus pitch or duration, or tinnitus presence without grouping data from multiple animals or testing sessions.”

Because of these limitations, the research team worked to establish a behavioral paradigm devoid of long training periods, and that would “determine onset tinnitus, lasting tinnitus and tinnitus pitch, and tinnitus presence in individual animals over time and without averaging data. These capabilities would enable us to address tinnitus in a realistic and clinically relevant manner.”

These studies spurred Zhang and his team to begin their research into a robust method for tinnitus detection. The scientists who worked with Zhang to conduct this research are Edward Pace (the first author of the paper), Hao Luo, Michael Bobian, and Xueguo Zhang, all from the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Wayne State University School of Medicine; Ajay Panekkad, from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Wayne State College of Engineering; and Huiming Zhang, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Windsor, Ontario.

Tinnitus affects approximately 50 million people in the United States, according to data analyzed from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control. The leading causes of tinnitus are exposure to loud sound and head or neck trauma. Tinnitus is also the leading service-connected disability for U.S. veterans

About the American Tinnitus Association 

The American Tinnitus Association (ATA), headquartered in Portland, OR, has been a publicly-supported 501(c)3 organization since 1971, with its Scientific Advisory Committee representing the top researchers in the field. The ATA fulfills its mission by: 1) funding targeted research projects; 2) providing education, hope and support for the tinnitus community; 3) advocating for effective public policies focused on advancing science towards cures for tinnitus and hyperacusis; and 4) collaborating with others to promote awareness, encourage prevention, and to ultimately silence tinnitus

Fuente: www.ata.org, Published 03 january 2017, Portland, Oregon

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Clinically Validated Tinnitus Treatment Gets FDA Clearance

November 29, 2016

Sound Options Tinnitus Treatments has announced today that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared the company to begin distribution of their cutting-edge tinnitus sound therapy. This clearance will allow Sound Options to work with US hearing clinics to provide sound therapies for patients with tinnitus; a constant ringing or hissing in their ears.

The Sound Options treatment is individually customized for each tinnitus sufferer based on their unique hearing and tinnitus profile, allowing the treatment to address a condition that varies from patient to patient. Approximately 20 million Americans struggle with serious cases of tinnitus and many are seeking ways to improve their quality of life. 

The FDA clearance of this innovative sound therapy provides a much-needed option for those struggling with tinnitus who have previously been unable to access clinical treatment options due to high costs.

It is very exciting to be able to provide our clinically-validated sound therapy to tinnitus sufferers in America,” says Sound Options CEO Michael Chrostowski, PhD.

 “We look forward to working with hearing healthcare professionals to provide an effective and affordable tinnitus management strategy."

Clinics and hearing healthcare professionals can find out more about obtaining this new tinnitus therapy at www.soundoptions.ca


About Sound Options: Sound Options Tinnitus Treatments works with hundreds of hearing healthcare professionals to provide tinnitus sufferers with a clinically-tested and affordable way to manage their tinnitus. A winner of numerous life science awards, Sound Options is committed to providing tinnitus sufferers with effective and affordable ways to treat their tinnitus.

Fuente: www.pharmiweb.com

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Exciting new research gives hope to tinnitus patients

An exciting new development into a health condition that affects an estimated six million people in the UK has been revealed by a leading researcher. 

Dr James Jackson, associate principle lecturer in psychology at Leeds Trinity University has led a pilot study, funded by the British Tinnitus Association, looking at the concentration of the stress hormone cortisol in tinnitus sufferers. 


His evidence suggests that people who report a high level of distress caused by their tinnitus also have a flat diurnal cortisol rhythm which could lead the way to developing more effective interventions. 

Tinnitus is an often debilitating condition that is described as a sensation or awareness of sound that is not caused by a real external sound source. It affects one in ten UK adults and there are approximately 750,000 tinnitus related GP consultations in England each year.  

The condition can greatly impact on a sufferer’s quality of life with approximately half of patients finding it moderately or severely distressing with complaints of intrusiveness emotional stress, insomnia, auditory perceptual problems and concentration problems.

As part of his study, Dr Jackson asked participants to provide saliva samples first thing in the morning so he could look at stress hormone levels. Says Dr Jackson: “Waking up is the time of day when you are secreting the highest concentrations of stress hormones, particularly one called cortisol, in anticipation of the day ahead and I wanted to investigate the mechanism which produces it.  

"In general, you pump out cortisol first thing, and you reach peak secretion approximately 40 minutes after waking up. Levels then fall back all day, and should be down to nearly nothing at roughly midnight, when you fall asleep and have no energy. There is a set rhythm for this called the diurnal cortisol cycle. However, it’s already known that if you secrete too much cortisol in the morning it’s an indication that you're under a lot of stress but secrete too little and it’s more 'burnout' - you've been anxious/stressed for so long that your body has turned the tap off. Having too much cortisol in the system for too long is very damaging. 

“High levels of cortisol first thing can indicate conditions like anorexia and OCD and low levels can indicate things like depression, chronic pain and chronic fatigue syndrome. 

“My research has been looking at the effect tinnitus has on this morning rhythm and I hypothesised that it would have more in common with conditions such as chronic pain. It’s been a small study but I can conclude that there is evidence suggesting a flat diurnal cortisol rhythm in distressed tinnitus sufferers. Right now, this appears to be related to 'burnout' where, due to issues these particular patients have such as a lack of control, an inability to relax and emotional distress caused by the tinnitus, their bodies have shut down cortisol production. 

“The most logical explanation is that this is about whether or not patients feel a sense of control over their tinnitus - those that don't have a more blunted rhythm than those who do. This suggests three important elements. Firstly, that chronic tinnitus has real physiological effects. Secondly, it is caused by certain aspects of tinnitus which would allow for more targeted intervention and thirdly, that if we can measure distress, we can also measure effectiveness of any interventions.” 

It is estimated that 6 million people live with tinnitus in the UK and it can affect people of any age. In a bid to help find a cure for tinnitus, the BTA has spent over £575,000 in 2015 on research studies into the condition including funding Dr Jackson’s work.  

Dr Jackson added: “There is some excitement here about what we have found. Being able to distinguish between the most distressed individuals with tinnitus and those that have adapted more effectively, or have learned to live with their tinnitus would be a huge boon. We can aim to move people from one group to the other, and have an objective, physiological measure of whether the intervention has worked and has increased well-being too.  


“It also suggests real physiological changes in tinnitus patients, and that it is ‘real’. Evidence of physiological change frames tinnitus as being something more than irritation. It is early days though, due to the size and breadth of my study. What’s needed now is funding for a much larger study that can replicate these findings across the board in a more realistic sample.” 

David Stockdale, chief executive of the British Tinnitus Association, said: “When someone first experiences tinnitus it can be very frightening and have an enormous impact on their quality of life. Here at the BTA, we are committed to finding a cure for tinnitus and in that vein we fund a large number of research projects every year. We are really pleased to hear the results of Dr Jackson’s work and hope more research can be done in this area.” 

Fuente: www.tinnitus.org.uk, Publicado: 02 November, 2016

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