Melatonin (Extended Release) Experiment for People with Fluctuating Morning Tinnitus Loudness

I have read that some on here wake up one day with low T and another day with loud T. It is random and they don't know what they will get the next day. I propose an experiment to try.

Take a 5 mg TIME RELEASE melatonin about an hour before you normally go to sleep and see how you do the next day. If you wake up low, try it again. Do this for about a week and see if the tinnitus is low every morning. If the T is loud after 3 days of trying this, discontinue.

YOU MUST go to bed around the same time EACH night. In other words, if you go to sleep at 10 p.m. every night, take your melatonin at 9:00 p.m. and try to go to bed around 10. If you fall asleep at 11 however, you should be fine though, but try to keep it within an hour of that main bed time. Always, take the melatonin at the same time each night.

Also, you MUST get TIME RELEASED melatonin. Regular melatonin will not work for this experiment. If you try this, please report back and share your experience.

 

I think it would be better if the tinnitus was measured more objectively and people were given placebo pills.

 

Jason,
Please tell us how many successive days you have achieved low T by using time release melatonin at bedtime and by contrast how intermittent your low T versus high T was prior to taking melatonin.

Thanks

PS: I have discovered why T is such a bother in your life. You always go to bed at the same time. ...joking.

 

Tinnitus can't be measured objectively.

 

You can do tinnitus matching. It's a little more objective method.

On the other hand there is something completely unmeasurable - how intrusive it is (for example tone vs hiss). And I think we all can agree that it is even more important than the "volume".

 

@JasonP Are you asking this because it works for you?

I repeat the same supplements every day and it doesn't make a difference, one day high and one day low (sometimes I get 1 low, 1 medium and 1 loud). It also doesn't matter how much sleep I get. I could sleep crappy and have lower T the next day.

There has to be some kind of homeostatic cause to this pattern as way too many of us experience it. Perhaps if it we could figure out the cause to the pattern and what makes a low day, low we could potentially induce more of those. This is the sort of stuff they should be researching. Maybe there's a chemical turnover that happens every 48 hours, or some kind of toxin purge once it gets too high, who knows.

 

silence one day ==> wake up with lower tinnitus the next.

noice one day ==> wake up with louder tinnitus the next day.

Noice can mean anything like the hum from the ventilation fan in the office. Silence can mean staying in the armchair at home reading a good book. People may not even pay attention to the various degrees of noice they are exposed to various days, and so it appears to them as random fluctuations.

Also the frequency of the sound matters.

One day they wake up with lower tinnitus and some other days they wake up with louder tinnitus. Tinnitus remembers the noise amplitude Noise(time,frequency) we where exposed to since we were born. Here time is the time since we were born and frequency refers to the frequency of the noice at the time *time*.

There is a universal tinnitus memory functional Tinnitus[Noise(time,frequency)] that determines the volume of the tinnitus we wake up with. Finding this functional would be very interesting. Roughly the tinnitus at time *time* could be given by

Tinnitus[Noise(t)] = integral_0^{time} dt' exp(-(time-t')) Noise(t')

if we suppress the frequency dependence. For example, suppose there is only one noise event at time T and silence all other times (a delta function, Noise(t') = delta(t'-T)). This could be simulating a rock concert at t'=T. Then

Tinnitus[Noise(t)] = exp(-(time-T))

Then as time >> T (many years after the rock concert) the tinnitus signal would be exponentially suppressed.

The response to a delta function is the Green's function. Finding this Green's function is the main problem, and then we are done. Once we know the Green's function, we can map any noise distribution in time into a tinnitus amplitude. Here I proposed that the Green's function was a simple exponential function, which of course might not be true,

However, I do conjecture that the Green's function is universal, same for everyone, the same way everyone has the same ear structure is universal (nearly everyone was born with two ears, an ear drum in each ear, and so on, this is universal).

Due to the conjectured exponential suppression of past history amplitudes, one can determine this functional experimentally by carrying a dB meter which has a memory everywhere one goes. Measure the tinnitus signal each morning and map the memorized dB levels from the past week into that amplitude and get the functional dependence out.

 

right, this might be true for you, but it's not for me so it's definitely not a tautology. I live in a very quiet place and seldom leave home during the week; indoor volumes here are in the low 30s usually, and I sleep with earplugs in.

Some days it's loud, other days it's less loud. It's not "random", clearly, but there must be a lot of other variables besides noise exposure.

If your conjecture was correct, people who are completely deaf and have no nerve connection from the ear to the brain, would not have loud T -- many of them do.

 

@MountainCreek This kind of goes back to what we were saying in the other thread. Perhaps we protect ourselves more on the days when our T is louder and are more laid back when it comes to environmental sounds when we feel relief. I have thought about this as well.

I think a true test would be sit in silence on a quiet T day and see what happens on the day that's supposed to be loud. I'm not convinced this will work but it might be an experiment worth trying as there are no other proven factors which could explain this phenomenon. I saw a thread where someone had asked Dr. Nagler and he had no explanation.

 

Are you using the time release form? Please post a link of the kind you take.

 

Sleeping on the side and on the ear with a plug inside ==> Louder tinnitus next morning
Sleeping on the back ==> Quieter tinnitus next day

?

 

John McEnroe - You Cannot Be Serious

 

@JasonP I haven't been using melatonin because the dreams were getting too weird and I didn't notice any difference.

 

nope, no connection. duration of sleep matters, not much else.

i am not really capable of sleeping on my back, though

 

I haven't tried it out completely. I am planning on trying it out tonight. Unfortunately, I have 10mg melatonin time release which I think is too much but it will have to do. Here is a study on regular melatonin:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21859051

 

Be careful with melatonin, it's not neutralto the body, especially in the young age when you probably don't lack any in your organism. Not only can you seriously mess with your natural hormonal cycle , but new studies talk about seriously negative imact of this hormon if taken too much. Mind you, in Europe you can't buy 5mg legally.

 

3mg almost seems like too much for me. Definitely let us know what happens!

 

Jason,
I hope you understand the responses to your thread. To me your suggestion is ill founded. You are advising to try something that not only you haven't tried yourself but per Gosia's post, it may even have negative consequences.
Unless you have a link or a study showing a clear benefit to reduction in tinnitus, your suggestion of taking a substance such as melatonin which isn't sighted in any study I have seen as favorable to reducing tinnitus...to me this is irresponsible.

For those considering Jason's advice, I suggest you carefully consider the consequences to taking any substance that is not proven to provide relief from tinnitus or address mental health issues contributing to tinnitus. If anybody has a link to such a study or even an anecdotal chorus of agreement that melatonin is directionally correct to improving tinnitus, please post. This doesn't even begin to address appropriate dosage for a particular person...whether a person weighs 100 lbs or 250 lbs.

 

...or not based upon lack of information available there are not unintended consequences to taking melatonin as it relates to dosage or otherwise.

 

I just suggested doing it for a week to see if it would help. Perhaps a better thing to try would be 3 mg melatonin time release instead of 5 mg. Or maybe .5 mg fast dissolve. Check out this study here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21859051

One thing I need to tell everyone that I forgot: DO NOT take naps during this experiment. The idea is to set the body clock roughly the same every day.

 

Actually I need to revise this experiment. 3mg time release would probably be better than 5mg. Also it is quite possible that a small amount of melatonin fast dissolve could be used to BUT make sure all lights are OUT and the room is as dark as possible before you take it. I recommend the same for the time release. If you decide to go past a week with this ask a pharmacist or doctor about that. In fact ask one before you start. I'm wondering if people can get their body clocks in sync if it will work on its own without taking additional melatonin after a week. Thoughts? Counter-argument? I am open to criticism.

 

Update. Some of this is just rambling but I felt like I needed to post this for those interested. It took me a couple of days to try to get my "body clock" set. I am no scientist but at least that is what I thought. The following details on what happened may be pretty unique to my case:

I believe my tinnitus is partially due to gaba and glutamate issues but it's extremely hard to figure out. There may be some serotonin issues at all. I do have a little bit of noise damage but I think most of it is in my brain.

Anyways, I was fortunate to have some sunny days recently and was able to wake up to bright sunlight which has a good effect on the body clock. After 3 days of taking melatonin time release at 12:00 a.m., I woke up with relatively lower tinnitus. However, because of some irritability last night, I had to take some klonopin in the evening. (Usually though, that does not have an effect on my T in the morning, although again it's haphazard)

The problem was however, when I woke up, I was thinking I only got 2 hours of sleep because it seemed like I was only asleep for a short time. To avoid looking a bright clock which might upset my circadian rhythm, I took 3mg melatonin again and a small amount of klonopin to go back to sleep to wake up a little bit later. My goal was to try to get it to where I woke up around 8 a.m. on my own. Well, after I took the melatonin, I found out it was 6:15 am not 2:00 am! I immediately tried to throw up my medication but I was unable to vomit it up though I tried multiple times. I went back to sleep and woke up around 10:00 am with louder T. Really unfortunate.

I want to point out a few interesting things. When I woke up the first time, not only was my tinnitus low, but I also felt really good and refreshed. The second time I woke up I felt blah, low motivation, somewhat of a brain fog, and the T was loud. Another point is this, the second time I took the melatonin I was in bed and after some time my body got cold. I believe this is due to body clock issues. Normally, people are asleep when this happens but I was awake. Check out this chart:



Important things to note at this point. I don't know if I made a mistake or not and I knew very well what would happen if I did but I grabbed an extra comforter. When people wake up for the first time in the morning they can be dehydrated because they may have not drank any water for hours. Secondly, I woke up, didn't drink much water, went back to bed and woke up more dehydrated which could explain some of the blah feelings. In addition the blah feelings were probably caused by the melatonin still being released because it can last up to 6 hours. The lack of energy can be caused klonopin too. (Very complex, unfortunately. I would like to take as small amount of klonopin as I can before bed) Maybe I can get on track again and see if this regimen will help me any. I screwed up in going back to sleep but I didn't know what to do because I took the time release melatonin again and just hoped the result would continue on.

 

Actually, some people are going to absolutely find this post absolutely weird or hilarious but when my trash can was emptied, I looked at the bottom and found what could have been the remains of the melatonin and klonopin tablets. Since, the vomit was reddish and clear liquid and at the bottom of the can, I was able to see what looked to be two half dissolved tablets. At any rate, they had to have had some effect on me but maybe not as much as previously though. Funny stuff!! I just post this, just for the sake of science!

 

The best objective measurement is counting how many fucks you say as you are getting out of bed. Less than five and it's a good day

It's very scientific and very accurate.

 

Okay, so I have another experiment to try and maybe you guys could give feedback to see if it works. I found some apps for smartphones that are supposed to wake you up during a light sleep cycle. Depending on what you read, there are sleep stages 1-4 which are NREM sleep and then there is REM sleep. You can read more about it in an encyclopedia. During these cycles different neurotransmitters and changes happen in the body. The theory is that waking up during a certain sleep cycle may give you insight if this is the cause.

I found some apps here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.northcube.sleepcycle

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.azumio.android.sleeptime&hl=en

Maybe you all can find some others. Please feel free to give feedback if you find this interesting or if you tried it.

 

According to this scientific study .3mg of melatonin at night was beneficial for people over 50. Of course I think the lowest dose possible would be best even though scientists do experiments on people with higher dosages. Who knows the long term consequences of that? This article seems to say that .3mg is superior.

http://news.mit.edu/2001/melatonin-1017

In fact, I found this:

https://www.amazon.com/Life-Extensi...keywords=melatonin+300+mcg+timed+release&th=1

300 mcg time release! Maybe this would be a better experiment. What do you think?