After Waking Up My Tinnitus Is Really Loud, Making Me Feel Like Hurting Myself

So it's 2:32 am right now. When I went to bed, my tinnitus was slightly elevated - not too much to really bother me. But when I woke up just a bit ago, my tinnitus was blaring loud and really bad... And it's keeping me awake and I can hear it over all my white noise machines.

I was at a movie last night which concluded at 8 pm so not sure if that has anything to do with it. But it's really bad and it's making me feel like hurting myself.

 

It's called the Awakening Response when hearing is the first sense to become active after waking. Cortisol stress hormone level peaks at this time too and slowly diminishes as the day progresses.

 

Well, today it's a bit quieter, though not by much.

 

Mine is always very high around 3:00 AM, so these days when I wake up at 3:00 AM in the morning (which is the norm) and the tinnitus is high, I know it will eventually go back to baseline by the time I get up and have a cup of coffee. But it is always, always, high in the very early morning hours. Interestingly, 3:00 AM is supposedly the time when cortisol is at its lowest. Coincidence???

@Abe, I am glad to hear you had a quieter day!

 

Bumping this thread, instead of creating new one - the cortisol mention is interesting. I am in the camp where tinnitus is the worst in the morning after waking up.

The Wikipedia page mentions a few interesting items - like low frequency noise (traffic?) at night lowers cortisol, or waking up in a dark room.

Also lowering stress overall, lower sugary food intake, avoiding caffeine and taking Omega-3 or Ashwagandha according to this article. Ashwagandha is not exactly benign supplement I believe, so one should be careful.

 

When I wake up, I seem to have a few seconds where I can’t quite detect my tinnitus even though I’m looking for it, then suddenly it kicks in... ah, there you are!