Dear Ballerina
Thank you so much for your encouraging post. It might save my life.I have extremely bad tinnitus, very loud, high frequency, painful, 24/7, lucky to sleep three hours a night for the last year, not even sleeping tablets work anymore, so I'm off meds which were just poisoning me. I'm a complete wreck, feel I can hardly breathe, life seems unsurvivable, yet I have a lovely wife and six beautiful children who need me. For years I've had manageable tinnitus but a sound shock sent it screaming. After seeing your post which mentioned tinnitus, I noticed that there's been a ton of success with tDCS as a treatment,even potential cure, by somehow entraining / stabilizing over-active neurons.

I don't have much money and desperately need your help to find a machine with sponge electrodes. The only one on the market I could see at first was the Fisher-Wallace device which is supposed to be very good for increasing serotonin (precursor for GABA, an inhibitory neurotransmitter which might dampen down over-activity in the brain and reduce tinnitus). Then I saw your comment on it being a CES (cranial electrical stimulation) device, an Alternating-Current (AC) device. This was a disappointment as I was about to buy, eventhough I don't understand the relevance. Someone on another forum sums it up as follows:

CES and tDCS are similar, but different. CES uses an AC signal, tDCS
> uses a DC signal. This means that the two electrodes have polarity with
> tDCS but not with CES.
>
> With tDCS, (Transcranial direct current stimulation) the neurons in the area below the anode becomes more
> excitable, and the area under the cathode becomes more inhibited. This
> is great if you want to see what happens if region X of your brain is
> shut off, or if region Y works overtime.
>
> With CES, (cranial electrical stimulation) the polarity of the two electrodes switches around 0.5 to 30
> times a second. This results in neural activity occurring in bursts in
> sync to the oscillating current, with activity alternating between the
> two areas under the electrodes.


Anyway, still don't get it, I'm not very science-savvy, so I looked around for other tDCS devices. The only ones I came across (with sponge electrodes) were the SOTERIX DC STIMULATOR and the NEURO CONN DC STIMULATOR, but I don't think either are available to public. I might be wrong but I can hardly concentrate so you or another forum member might be able to clarify.
I then realised you named your device as TRIVARION ACTIVA DOSE. Could you explain what bits I need to get together and maybe best place to buy. The unit I saw online didn't seem to have the sponge electrodes but I'm probably not focused. Also, I don't understand why choose an Iontophoresis Machines (used for administering chemicals through the skin, they say) is it that they have dual uses, if so that's great. I also saw the HidrexGS400 which is suitable for home use. The other concern is power output (tDCS works very safely and effectively with low milliamps to the head) and adjustable frequency settings(HZ).

Can you help me get my ideas together somehow. Your post has given me a little bit of hope, thank you.