Gone Again

Not sure whether it's 'good' to post this but at least it is positive and I really like reading positive posts on this forum.. so here goes..

Mine has gone again. For the last hour I've been listening & listening - went into a totally quiet room where I can always hear it more than the other rooms - nothing. I've tried so hard to find it. It's not there.

The last time this happened was at the beginning of September & I was giving up hope that it would happen again but it has.

I'm waiting for it to come back again now because it always has before but right now I have perfect silence and it's absolutely wonderful.

 

Click -
Great news. You should try to write down everything that you did the day before, to see if there was something that you did that made it better.

Did you sleep well? Was there a change in weather? What did you eat? Take any medication?...etc.

 

I agree with Karl.

Mine only goes away for minutes or so.

The good news about that is that there is a break in the "loop" that is causing the T .... I assume.

 

They'll probably have to take me away in a straight jacket if this goes on - I had total silence for 4 hours and then one tiny crackle in my right ear which went away. Then nothing. It's now 6.30 pm here and it's still gone - so it's now 7 & a half hours.

I'm not taking any medication at all - I have a cupboard full of things that people on here have taken (magnesium spray, mag tablets, selenium, q10... and masses more) - all still sealed. I've always been really affected by anything I've taken in the past - even multi vitamins make me foggy & sick - so I decided to have these things in the cupboard 'just in case' but I've not taken any.

The only thing I did do was give up tea because of Cookie's post and re-introduce Volvic mineral water because I really needed fluids (I'd given up volvic a few weeks ago in my 'process of elimination' & because of the calcium content - which is really low anyway). Oh.. and over the last few weeks I've eaten more fresh pineapple - I usually have it about twice a week but upped it because of its anti-inflammatory benefits.

All I can do now is, instead of really enjoy the peace (and it is totally gorgeous!!!), keep listening to see if its lurking there somewhere in the background.

In 34 hrs it will be precisely 6 months since this nightmare began for me.

Karl - if I ignore the first couple of months of T I think I've had fairly good nights of sleep for quite a while (maybe one or 2 bad ones but then we have those without T?) except 4 really bad ones last week... so don't think it's that. But... if sleep could make T go away that would be brilliant. It usually makes mine worse because mine is always at its worse first thing.

I don't think it's the T that 'gets' us - it's trying to figure the dam*** thing out! How can it possibly be so evil and then disappear completely and then come back If only I could figure out what makes it go away - it has to be something!

 

By the way - I've found myself walking around really carefully - like walking on glass... It's like something is telling me not to make any sudden moves just in case it brings it back - how daft is that!

 

Fabulous news, really pleased for you. Low level hiss still for me, but non intrusive. Managing to sleep even while jetlagged in Utah for the week

 

For me if t is bad the first hour or so after waking up then it is there for the rest of the day. I never had go away in at all if it is bad in the morning. However, if I wake up and no T the first hour it usually stays away all day. there seems to be, for me at least a correlation between T and and what happens during sleep.

for the last 80 days, I have awakened maybe 10-15 with very low T days. Granted not many, but I look forward to awakening in the morning hoping the T will be low.....

 

hi Gary, so yours goes away too? Mine came back late last night but kind of 'in the distance' - it was there all night & this morning - really soft and I suppose if I hadn't had T I wouldn't have really noticed it. I think it's letting me know that it hasn't gone!

Glad you're managing to sleep Dez - I think the worst days are when it's kept me awake all night.

Erik - maybe yours will do this too - disappear completely for hours - yours and mine sound so similar. Hope it does anyway .. although I have to say, even though I'm grateful that it goes away, it's like another bolt out of hell when it comes back!

 

I wish i knew how your story developed, click. Share some hope would ya?

 

Mine's always there in the morning, too, almost immediately after awakening. If it's real bad, the odds of it simmering down throughout the day are slim. If I am not forced by the high level to focus on it the first couple of hours, often it stays mostly in the background as the day progresses; then it's 50/50 whether it ramps up as the days duties and responsibilities wain. But like Click, I sometimes get a day, maybe even two, when I look back and say "no wonder I had such a nice day...I just realized that the noise inside my head hasn't been overshadowing everything I do!" Sure makes you appreciate it when it happens.

 

Funny, that's my story like 100% man! Worst in the morning and then it depends a bit on shear luck or something. The odds are 50/50. It keeps me wondering why it is worst in the morning?

- Because I laid flat for 7-8 hours? (Physical)
- Because it was really silent around me for like 7-8 hours? (Brain Reaction)
- Because I am used to it being louder in the morning, my brain kinda anticipates on it? (Psychological)

Now, let's find an ENT that can actually answer these questions. I wonder in which year he/she will be born…

 

Because I started breathing? I swear, it feels like that sometimes...only been awake mabe twenty seconds, and POW. Getting somewhat used to it lately, mostly because I know it could go either way in the next hour or two. I really don't think I anticipate it - It Finds Me. 'Tis a rare morning anymore when T isn't the first things I recognize going on.

 

I am convinced that there is defiantly a relation between what happens when we sleep and T. If I get up and it's close to a 10 on 1-10 scale it going to stay with me all day.

For me if wake up with low T, say 3-4 I may have a good day, but if it's high, I dig in for the duration. Been at a 10 for 6 days now.

 

The only downside, for me, about using masking sounds during the night, is that I then have to switch them off in the morning, thus making me aware of the T first thing in the morning. Still, swings and roundabouts...

 

@click: What kind of T did you have? If it was from noise I'm amazed. Mine only goes away during sleep.

 

I still have it Sven - wish I could use the past tense but it does keep coming back!

It wasn't caused by noise because I wasn't exposed to any. I've considered many causes but I always come back to 3 weeks of sleeping in absolute silence after previously living next to a busy road (and keeping the windows open). Jastreboff is quite clear that lack of all noise can cause T and I was living in a Cornish granite cottage with 18 inch thick walls - the street was so silent that you could hear a pin drop.

I sold the house after getting T and will never sleep in silence again.

I still have hours or almost whole days with no T at all and it is sheer bliss but when it comes back it's worse than having T for a prolonged period - it hits me like a bolt out of hell.

Also - mine doesn' go away during sleep. The moment I'm even slightly awake it's there and first thing in the morning has always been the worst time for me.

It's now been well over a year since mine started and most days it's either not there or very very low thank goodness.

I'm sorry that yours only goes away whilst you are asleep.

Click
@Sven

 

That is so weird... how it comes and goes. Early in the morning (or actually, when I wake up in the middle of the night) is the worst for me as well.

 

Well i guess we all have different experiences with tinnitus then

Mine, i can barely hear it in silence before going to sleep. When there's some noise around like street noise, i can hear it better. The morning is usually where i hear it the less then after 1 or 2 hours it stays the same for the rest of the day. I get a spike after eating i guess...

 

My situation is somewhat similar. I suspect that my tinnitus has something (at least, partly) to do with a minor neck injury and, on the days that it starts early, I think I've either done something to my neck when I was sleeping, or "click" it when I do a big "wake-up stretch/yawn".

If not, then it's related to something else I've done the night before: food, hydration, or whatever.

On a general note: from what little I know, I figure that those of us who have intermittent tinnitus are "lucky" compared to others.

 

Hi this is Avril, that happened to me Saturday morning when I woke up, I thought I had gone deaf cos I coudn't hear anything, it stayed away for a few hours, I really thought it had gone for good, but yesterday back again, so annoyed with this T .

 

I would do almost anything to get a break, even just for an hour or so. Absolutely constant for me.
18 months or so .... Man, I am tired of this.

 

I am not so sure that intermittent tinnitus is that rare. In a 2010 paper by Rauschecker et al., the authors state, "A sizeable portion of tinnitus patients suffer from what is known as “intermittent” tinnitus, in which the ringing sensation disappears completely for days or weeks, only to resume at full force. It appears that, in addition to changes in auditory pathways, a “switch” exists elsewhere in the brain that can turn the tinnitus sensation on or off. In neurophysiological terms, such a switch may be referred to as an inhibitory gating mechanism."

My tinnitus follows this pattern. It is either there or completely gone: like a binary event. The only thing I know for sure is that sleep is the primary trigger that turns it on or off.

-Golly

 

That's an excellent article. Rauschecker, like other researchers, does focus on serotonin and dopamine pathways as affecting tinnitus. It's also notable that many people find melatonin supplements not only enables them to sleep better, but also helps reduce the tinnitus sound. The effects are more striking when melatonin is combined with sulpiride, both of which decrease dopamine.

Here are some articles of interest:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17942035​

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2898164/​

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19924014​

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Getting a good night's sleep with melatonin was the first significant reduction of tinnitus I achieved. Prior to the melatonin supplementation, I would wake up approximately every 45 minutes all night long.

Golly, you are so lucky to have intermittent tinnitus! Mine fluctuates, which is better than loud 24/7, but I wish it would disappear for weeks at a time. Sleep no longer affects my tinnitus; but I still take melatonin (3mg, time released). Interestingly, if I don't get adequate sleep my tinnitus does not spike. I do attribute this to my melatonin supplement, for most people (perhaps everyone?) report louder tinnitus if they don't get enough sleep.

Do you take any medications or supplements for your tinnitus? And how did you get tinnitus? Noise or trauma induced? Stress? Aging?

Here's Rauschecker for anyone interested:

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ttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2904345/​

 

Hi Jazz:

Thanks for pointing me to these articles!

I take 15mg of Remeron nightly. I may reduce the dose, however, as I take it only for the sleep benefits (Remeron, paradoxically, makes you sleepier when you take less!) and not for its antidepressant properties.

I have tried other medications, which I am happy to discuss with anyone. Nowadays, the only drugs I take, apart from Remeron, are OCCASIONAL benzodiazapines (like Xanax or Klonopin). I stress "occasional" because I understand their dangers and only allow myself these medications once or twice a week. Taken at night, they seem to lock in a good following day; so I time them as needed!

The onset of my tinnitus coincided with a bad cold and sinus infection. But I have no idea if that was the cause. My hearing is normal (although I understand that ENTs only test up to 8KHz); however, since onset of tinnitus, my ears "crackle" all the time---especially when I move my head or swallow. This is most pronounced when my tinnitus is "on." When it is "off," I barely notice this symptom.

 

Hi Avril,

Thanks for replying to my post. Somehow it's comforting to know that there are others experiencing the same kind of tinnitus. Mine went away completly yesterday for most of the day and then came back really, really low last night. It's still really, really low know but I never know for how long.

I do think the volume of my T is linked to the food I eat.

Jane