Tinnitus Is Often Curable

Health

“Tinnitus Is Very Often Curable”

Understanding the Background and Targeted Treatment

An Interview with Dr. med. Michael Golenhofen, Prien am Chiemsee,
by Angelika Fischer, Wolfratshausen

Even at night or in quiet places it can be loud for tinnitus patients because the sounds come from within. About one-sixth of people in Western countries are affected by such a loss of silence. Many of them find no real help.
The approach of the tinnitus specialist, ENT physician Michael Golenhofen, MD, is promising.

raum&zeit: Dr. Golenhofen, when you talk to tinnitus patients, you often get the impression that they have given up hope of being able to change something about the ringing in their ears. In your opinion, is there a possibility to really help these people?
Dr. med. Michael Golenhofen: Definitely! In most cases, tinnitus can be improved and often cured. Unfortunately, however, the current orthodox medical procedure does not do justice to this clinical picture.

r&z: What do you mean by that exactly?
Dr. M. G.: Not only many, but almost all tinnitus patients feel that their problems are insufficiently noticed and treated by doctors. This is because we do not make any meaningful diagnoses in the ear, nose and throat doctors’ practices, we act as if there are no causes. It is always said that tinnitus is a multi-causal symptom, the causes are not clear. My approach, on the other hand: We must find out exactly which specific diseases are the basis of the respective symptoms.

Almost all tinnitus patients feel that their problems are insufficiently noticed and treated by doctors.

The Five Basic Illnesses

r&z: How do you  proceed with your diagnosis?
Dr. M. G.: First of all, it is important to listen to the patients when they tell us whether the noise is one-sided or bilateral, slow or insidious, what sound it is, etc. Of course, I also carry out hearing tests. And I take an X-ray of the teeth of each patient. Because when the teeth are diseased, hearing noises can develop very quickly. Through my diagnosis, I can find out which underlying disease is present.

r&z: In your experience, what underlying diseases can be present in tinnitus?
Dr. M. G.: In principle, I tried to find an explanatory model that was as simple as possible. I have made a subdivision into five underlying diseases. In fact, I have oriented myself in the division into five areas on Taoist teachings or Traditional Chinese Medicine. According to the Taoist approach, the five elements are the basis of all things. I figured if that were true, it would apply to all things, including the underlying conditions of tinnitus.

The Five Elements

r&z: That sounds very exciting. What are the underlying illnesses behind each of the different elements?
Dr. M. G.: There are the elements of wood, water, metal, fire and earth.
The wood element stands for muscle tissue. Those affected have cervical spine and temporomandibular joint complaints. This impairs the sensory perception of the ears and leads to incorrect processing of auditory information in the brainstem. Patients do not have reduced hearing, but have a high-frequency noise, usually one-sided and sudden. Good body therapy can help here and, if necessary, cooperation with orthodontists and dentists.
According  to Traditional Chinese Medicine, the water element is related to the kidneys, bladder and ears. This element is assigned to patients for whom the cause is in the area of the inner ear. They typically had sudden hearing loss, usually in one ear. The onset of tinnitus was sudden, the frequency of the sound is high. This area also includes the cause of hearing loss, which can result in bilateral tinnitus. In acute cases, I use medication and if there is a present hearing disorder, it must be treated or compensated for, for example with a hearing aid.
The fire element is represented in TCM by the heart and small intestine, which are closely related to mental performance. If the functions of the central nervous system are exuberant, the fire can – figuratively speaking – flicker up to the brain. The autonomic nervous system then goes “to the ceiling” and produces tinnitus. These patients often have psychosomatic clinical pictures, a limited quality of life, sleep disorders, etc. Psychotherapy can be a good way to calm feelings and ringing in the ears.
The earth element is assigned to the stomach and spleen and also to stagnation. As a cause of tinnitus, it stands for the fact that toxins have accumulated in the connective tissue, often through the administration of drugs, which must be drained out. The ringing in the ears is bilateral, high-frequency and not associated with hearing loss. Therapeutically, the drug administration often has to be changed in the first place.
The metal element is assigned to Meniere’s disease. According to TCM, it stands for lungs and large intestine, thus also for the exchange of water and minerals. It is precisely such regulation of minerals and water that is the basic problem of Meniere’s disease, in which an excessive accumulation of fluid occurs in the membranous labyrinth of the inner ear. Patients often have a low-frequency ringing in the ears, seizure-like hearing disorders and reduced perception of the low tones. In this case, treatment is carried out with medication, surgery if necessary and physiotherapy.

My message to the doctors is: You have to do tinnitus diagnostics correctly. If you do it wrong, the patients will not get well and medicine only costs a lot of money.

Common Tinnitus Therapies

r&z: Do you think the common tinnitus therapies do not make sense?
Dr. M. G.: The prescription of hearing aids and psychotherapy is common. As we have seen, this makes sense in some cases, but not in all. In addition, the type of psychotherapy is often not always the right one. Narrow-band cognitive psychotherapy is ordered, although sometimes a different method would be needed.

Little Resonance

r&z: How did the experts react to your approach? There should have been a wave of enthusiasm?
Dr. M. G.: I tried for ten years to bring my approach closer to the professional world. It has not broken through. There is no interest in such a differentiated view in research institutions. They are interested in doing research for which there is money so that the research institute can be preserved. Money is available from industry, thus from the pharmaceutical and medical device industry, so that research aims to generate profits for the financiers. Therefore, our modern medicine is corrupted. That is the reason we have to spend so much money on tinnitus and yet the treatments do not help.

r&z: But there are some colleagues who watch your lectures and are interested in really helping tinnitus patients?
Dr. M. G.: Yes, there are a few for whom I have given an extensive course. But currently I am taking a different way to spread the knowledge.
I address the patients directly. I enlighten them directly – if possible all 150 million tinnitus patients in the world – via a social media marketing project that has just started. Every patient who is sick with something like this should stumble across my site.

The message is: Tinnitus conditions are usually curable.

Education for Patients.

r&z: Can you explain in more detail what you bring to the patients?
Dr. M. G.: Yes, the message is: Tinnitus diseases are usually curable. Please let us help you! – Patients can find a lot of information material online that they can download freely. It’s all in English, but nowadays it’s no longer a problem to translate digital English texts. For seven Euros, they can also order a small booklet that simply summarizes the theory. There is also an online course that explains all 5 types. There is an app, a blog, a library of clever publications.
Twice a year we offer a tinnitus retreat in Sardinia. People can use all of that and then turn the tables by going to the doctor with that knowledge and telling him, “I have a ringing in my ears and it probably comes from here and there. I need this and that.”For patients, the message is important: Do not let yourselves be unnerved. You need clarity about why you have this suffering and the meaning behind it. With the help of the five elements, you can also make this even clearer for your own understanding.

r&z: Is help really possible for all five underlying illnesses?
Dr. M. G.: You can improve something everywhere. But that doesn’t mean that everyone loses their ringing in the ears. All five elements have a basic therapeutic idea:
The wood element – neck-jaw problem – wants to be touched. Muscle cramps want to be relaxed.
The water element – relevant for patients with sudden hearing loss or hearing impairment – needs support and strengthening because it has solidified. It wants to be warmed up, supported and strengthened.
The fire element – psychosomatic background – wants to be organized and grounded.
The earth element – poisoning – wants to get out of stasis and come back into exchange.
The metal element – Meniere’s disease – wants to find its way back into rhythm, wants to learn to let go and return to the natural order.

The important thing is that you need clarity about why you have this suffering and what the meaning is behind it.

The Basic Therapeutic Principles

r&z: What do these basic principles look like in therapeutic practice?
Dr. M. G.:
Wood: For patients with a somatosensory background in the area of the cervical spine, the best body therapy available is indicated. I am happy to recommend Pohl Therapy here. I know the founder, Dr. Helga Pohl,  from a sensorimotor training, “Hanna Somatic Education”, whom we both know from the USA. Ms. Pohl has expanded the concept even further with connective tissue or fascia therapy. I consider her method to be the best body therapy, because it is based on body perception and on this basis has many other starting points to harmonize the body.
Water: If tinnitus is due to inner ear problems, I do everything I can to regenerate the inner ear. First of all, I’ll try to do this with cortisone. If this does not succeed, the goal is to substitute for the hearing, for example with a hearing aid. I don’t achieve a cure with it, but it helps with the ringing in the ears. At some point, the brain turns off the noise. There are deaf people who developed tinnitus when they became deaf. However, after a few years they no longer have it because the brain – according to the principle of habituation – has turned off the noise.
Fire: For people with a psychosomatic background, psychotherapy can help them understand what they could do more harmoniously in their lives. It’s about transformation, for example about the questions: Am I trapped in a hamster wheel that I want to get out of? Do I have enough opportunities to relax? Sometimes deeper basic problems have to be solved first, which is possible via hypnotherapy or analytical therapies.
Earth: For patients with poisoning, the goal is to get the metabolism going again The simplest way is to stop taking medication that is disruptive, such as psychotropic drugs, painkillers, antibiotics or blood pressure medication.
Metal: In patients with Meniere’s disease, exchange must be promoted. It supports the gastrointestinal tract and thus also the immune system – two-thirds of the human immune system is located in the area of the large intestine.

r&z: Is it ever possible to get rid of Meniere’s disease?
This is a completely misunderstood clinical picture. There are different subtypes. If the disease is purely autoimmune, thus if one’s own immune system attacks the body’s own structures, it is very difficult to influence.
But if it comes from the musculoskeletal system or through poisoning by a diseased tooth, then it goes well.

r&z: Do you see a connection between tinnitus and electrosmog?
Dr. M. G.: I would not deny that there are people in whom geopathogenic zones or electrosmog play a role, but on the whole I tend not to take this into account. It is most likely to play a role in the metal element.

r&z: Thank you very much, Dr. Golenhofen, for the very understandable and comprehensible presentation of your diagnosis and treatment principle.
Dr. M. G.: With pleasure. For me, comprehensibility is one of the three principles of salutogenesis: comprehensibility, manageability, interpretation. And people are so grateful when they understand what condition they have, what they can do about it and that there is a possibility of improvement.

An Exclusive Translated Article for P2P Supporters
From the Monthly Publications of P2P
Published September 2025

From an article in raum&zeit, Volume 43, No. 256, July/August 2025
Translation & redaction by: Carolyn L. Winsor, P2P Consulting
© Copyright 2025, raum&zeit, Michael Golenhofen, Prien, Germany
AI Digital and online translation assistance utilized.