Intermittent Tinnitus — Resets Pre-Dawn

I've suffered from tinnitus for several years. It was miserable for the first six months or so but has improved quite a bit. I've been fortunate in that it's only in my right ear and that after ~ 6 months of continuous tinnitus, it became intermittent and less intense. I have days off where it's almost imperceptible which is very nice.

One thing I've noticed is that it resets just before dawn. Not every day - I might have 3 or 4 bad days in a row when it's about the same. When it does go away, it happens when I wake up. Example: it's bad for a few days, then one morning I wake up before the alarm at ~ 5:00am and it's still bad, I fall back asleep, wake up at 7:00am and it's gone.

A couple of days ago it was gone. I woke up pre-dawn and it was back. I fell back asleep and woke up an hour later and it was gone.

Whatever state my tinnitus is in when I get out of bed in the morning, it will remain throughout that day. There's nothing I can do to change it. Does anyone else have this experience?

 

@cómo_vicete, something similar happens to me. I have generally very mild tinnitus which has "2 modes". One mode is my usual - a mid tone and some white noise hissing and the other mode is something that happens if I wake up at night (4am - 7am) and then it changes back to one.

It's almost more of a sensation than a sound, like there is a very high frequency vibration/buzzing that I cannot really hear. The other stuff kinda disappear.

Lately it happens very very rarely, but it always changes back during the morning.

Would be interesting to know why or how these happen, but I guess no one can really explain...

 

Me too.

Ringing which gets worse at night with distortions.

Morning basically those are gone, but replaced by hellish wavering droning sounds in both ears.

The morning droning crept up and happened after steroids.

Before this I could sleep in earplugs, hear the ringing die going to sleep and wake up to silence.

 

Thanks for the responses. There is some kind of interior mechanism that modulates my tinnitus during my final period of sleep before sunrise and I feel that it's important to my recovery somehow.

I've always felt that my tinnitus would improve and it has to some degree. I'm now unaware of it for hours at a time and have days where it's almost imperceptible and I feel like my old self. Even on a bad day I can drown it out in the shower, at the beginning it was too loud for that.

 

I experience this as well in two different ways:

1) Sometimes I go to bed with tinnitus, wake up without it, and then it progressively shows up over the course of the day.
2) Sometimes I go to bed without tinnitus and wake up with it.

More often than not it's the first one. In my case, I'm fairly certain it's related to stress and muscular tension. One slightly "out there" recommendation I have is getting a good shoulder/neck/head deep tissue massage and see what that does to your tinnitus.