Multiple Tinnitus Sounds — Are There Others Like Me?

Hello,

I'm living since 20 years with high hissing tinnitus and had a few new tinnitus sounds since a burnout 4 years ago, I was happy to get on the better hand lately and got relief from a few supplements which even helped me to calm down my tinnitus at moments, I believe my tinnitus come from stress & anxiety, too little quality sleep and overwork and some traumatic events.

Sad enough two weeks ago after a very stressful period and a dispute with my wife I started to hear a new tinnitus sound during the night. The high hissing sound wasn't too much of a problem but now with 5+ tinnitus sounds I must admit it's a little hard to sleep at night.

Maybe it's related to the vitamin D supplement I take as well, I don't know, never really had issues with this before but there's definitely something not good here, I think it's the dispute that triggered the new tinnitus sounds, really sad after so many efforts during the last years to get better.

I definitely need vacation and a few weeks of nothing but sleeping but my family obligations push me beyond my own limits without any possibility to change as I'm self employed.

Am I the only one with multiple tones? Thanks

 

A lot of people have multiple tones, so it's not at all uncommon. Sadly. I hope you can find a way to habituate! It will take time but it surely can happen. Good luck

 

Thanks, good to know I've always thought that most people just had one sound. Yes I'll habituate, just a bad period, we've been there before

 

Up to seven months ago I had no tinnitus, then I fell down the stairs and gained a new sound every week on average, with twelve of them at the top... such a circus

Currently lying in bed with about six identifiable sounds. Don't worry, you're not the only one!

 

Damn!

I have multiple tones. I can't tell how many. More than three.

 

Sounds a bit like mine Tybs, they often change, and again stress is the real reason for the onset of some new and sometimes fleeing T's, so that's what I'll need to work on. Today is a little bit better, I took NAC yesterday and 3mg of Melatonin and Taurine this night to sleep more.

How did you get your Tinnitus?

 

I have 4 sounds... living hell!

 

Fell down the stairs. I wrote my post about it in the "Introduce yourself" section if you like to have details: it's a bit of a long read though, be warned

 

yikes not cool ... but this shows again the complexity of T, take care

 

Did you try the following supplements?

• NAC
• Calcium (I know a lot of people talk about magnesium but calcium also can have a positive calming effect in some cases if you don't have enough dietary calcium intake which is my case) it also promotes good sleep
• Taurine 2-3g
• Melatonin before going to sleep

These seem to lower my high pitched tinnitus quite a bit.

 

Most I’ve ever had at once is 5-6... siren, two types of alarms, two rings and a buzz. Absolutely terrible. Usually I just have two tones though.

 

Yes it's a complete concert in times

I had a terrible buzz (fortunately it's gone) which drove me nuts but again it was during extremely difficult periods with few sleep and financial issues.

From what I learned today, is that I can modulate some T's with supplements and stress management, I just need to find balance in what I'm taking.

As soon as I have a better grip on what works and if I can reproduce it I'll post more details. My high hissing T's have rarely been so low in volume as today, so the tings I took yesterday and today must have helped.

 

I’ve started taking higher amount of melatonin, took 20mg last night and hopefully will work my way up to 120mg.

 

Wow that's quite a lot. 20mg does that really works? And up to 120mg wow that's killer! I've been thinking of taking more and I read some people take 10-15mg and feel absolutely fine in the morning so why not. I had a terrible night, I'm awake since 2AM, it's 7AM now and work day starts, sigh I took 3mg this night and it did absolutely nothing. That's the real problem with insomnia, one day you can sleep then the other day nothing, go figure. The only thing that's positive is that for some reason my tinnitus is still lower in volume since yesterday, maybe because of the NAC I started two days ago.

 

I have three sounds I can count and I wonder if there’s a fourth one. In the beginning I thought I only had one, weeks after the onset of my T I would lay still at night trying to figure it out and noticed there was definitely more than one. As it stands today on a bad day I will hear a high pitched 8500 Hrz main sound in my whole head, a hiss in my right ear and a faint faint reactive 4500-6000 hrz eee sound in my left ear.
My guess is that most people with T have multiple sounds. The key is to get out of your head so to speak, easier said than done...

 

Mine is a symphony, that plays up and down and the best one is all around.

 

There’s a whole science behind melatonin for cell regeneration and function, it’s not only for sleep.

 

The pitch and the frequency of my tinnitus can change several times in a day; sometimes I hear the sound of an old radio that you are trying to tune to a channel. What works for me is melatonin before bedtime and hearing aids. The science behind melatonin and tinnitus is sound. Also, avoid THC products.


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

https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/news/20060224/melatonin-pills-may-help-ease-tinnitus

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9504599

https://www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcoverage/aaohnsf/82180

 

Thanks Alex and sorry for my late reply, I had some very hard and busy weeks here.

From what I read I guess there are a lot of people with multiple sounds then.

I managed to lower and even cancel out two sounds last week, don't know how I did but it seems the high dose melatonin + 5htp before going to sleep does something to my overal wel being, it also seems to lower my anxiety. In the morning I tend to take some D phenalaline or vitamin C to avoid getting depressed which seems to help, but my daily work and family stress seems to mess up all my efforts.

 

Yes you're right, melatonin seems to do a lot of good things, especially when taking it long term. For the moment 2mg works best for me before going to sleep with 5htp and then one other 1mg if I wake up at night, I even tried 7mg one night but then I wake up more often.

 

Thanks Picassocat for the links, I also found quite a lot of links on the benefit of melatonin on other health issues including cancer etc, and then my own conclusion might be that a lot of T sufferers have sleep issues as well, I have had sleep issues since I was young and it became worse since I started working as freelancer and with the birth of my children, from then on sleep became a real mess. Now with melatonin, I can at least get some sleep, in my good days I can sleep 6-7 hours, then I wake up and go back for another 2 hours or even more in weekends.

I never used THC products so that's not the problem for me, my problem is really stress, anxiety & lack of sleep.

 

I seem to have 'tonal' pitches of about 440 Hz in right ear and 880 Hz in left ear as well as a high pitched 'hiss' in each ear - the odd thing is that I notice the 'hiss' more in the day and the 'tones' more at night - I think I have had the 'tones' for years, but the high pitched tinnitus for 8 months.

 

I work construction and add a new tone every month. It's almost nice, I can pick which tone I want to focus in.

 

Yeah like a real orchestra ...

 

For me it's the other way around I started with high pitched tinnitus 20 years ago and then had a few more when I had my burnout 4 years ago. But again I manage to get rid of some tones in some cases, it's hard to reproduce but it has to do with emotional balance at least for me. Anyway, Melatonin is going to stay in my 1st choice of supplements, tried 4 mg last night and slept much better as usual, so will see what limit is best for me. It stacks best with a low dose of 5-HTP, feel good in the morning with it. I think that some of the tinnitus will progressively get better if I can manage to keep the sleep & emotional balance.

 

What is considered high dose melatonin? I take bio-melatonin which comes in 3mg pills. If I take one pill, it does not do anything for me. With 2, I'm able to sleep up to 4 hours, but wake up a lot. I'm so tired, I'm a mess all the time.

 

I think high dose of melatonine is more then 5mg ... I've personally changed strategy a little bit, now I take 2mg of Melatonin and 100mg of 5htp which helps to sleep at least 6-7 hours. I really felt very good the last two days thanks to that combo and in some situations T felt down to a very acceptable level. Melatonin alone even at high doses doesn't do this it's the combination with 5htp that seem to provide a good synergy.

 

I've had tinnitus for 12 months now. It has been a very long journey. It started with 1 tone in my left ear, fast forward 12 months and I have 5 tones (3 in left ear and 2 in the right ear), hyperacusis in both, ETD on the right, and TTTS on both. Keep in mind, I only had ONE tone at the start. I've protected my ears religiously with the occasional unavoidable sound exposures.

What gives? Am I the only one experiencing 5 different tones?

 

Just happened to come across this topic again...

@PeteJ @hans01 perhaps you already read about my progress in other threads, but physiotherapy and neck exercises eventually reduced my tinnitus to the point that I can have silence again. Not constantly yet, I have a few sounds left that are active roughly 50% of the time (with many ups and down), but on average the symptoms keep slowly improving as months pass by. Sleep has also been restored to 7+ hours a night, partly due to the reduction, but mostly because I learned how to fall asleep despite having tinnitus around.

No special method for that by the way, I "just" endured it for many months after I stopped using maskers... really rough period, but it worked out in the end

 

Hi,

Sorry to hear you’re having such a hard time with your ears. It’s truly beyond frustrating that there seems to be no rhyme nor reason to the fluctuations of our fragile ears. I have multiple tones; hissing, ringing, static buzzing and tonal eeeeee. It’s definitely not easy and some days are more bearable than others. We are all definitely warriors, fighting this battle every day. Keep strong! x