Poll: Better and Worse Tinnitus Days, Do You Know the Phenomenon?

The mystery of better and worse days.

With my tinnitus, I have days when it is very intense and days when it is rather mild.

I myself have not yet found an explanation or pattern for the bad days, although I consider everything: Work, sleep, eating, drinking, stress, noise, exercise, etc.

I was told it might by due to a "limbic circle"...

 

My most intense days are right after I've had a loud noise exposure. Very tough to get through and I'm always anxious that the sound won't return to baseline.

 

Example of such exposure?

 

I got a somatosensory pulsatile tinnitus because of muscle spasms in neck / trapezius region, and the daily variation is mostly due to variation in muscle contraction (because of the posture, sleeping position, n. of hours on computer, etc.)

 

Very interesting that you mention the sleeping position. I also suspect that it has an influence.....

 

This happens to me, although for some reason it just seems to be a natural pattern my tinnitus falls into. I hear a piercing high-frequency tone for a day and the following day I hear a much less offensive distorted white noise tone, and it repeats. The tones couldn't be more different. This pattern can last for months before it changes. I have no idea why.

 

I don't really know how to reply to your poll options. I notice a big difference in that some days this barely bugs me at all and others it seems to be a piercing sound that borders on being physically painful -- but if I plug my ears, it always sounds more or less the same. So it's less that my perception of the sound itself changes, and more a question of the degree to which it penetrates my conscious mind.

 

I'm with you there @linearb . It seems to me that the quality of the sound is what can penetrate through to my conscious mind, far more-so than the volume. I find it changes up and down on a 72 hour (surprisingly precise) cycle with me these days.

 

It fluctuates based on what noise I was exposed to that day/week.

 

A very loud bar! Even with earplugs.

 

Only one vote for perception...., -
This means that a varyingly loud or intense tinnitus seems to be normal.
But is it all just coincidence, or are there some patterns?

 

Tinnitus definitely decreases when I am on holiday and/or less stressed. It does increase after heavy drinking (next day) although during and immediately after drinking it decreases.

 

Science should tell us tinnitus sufferers the reasons for better and worse days.
Why have we better and worse days?

 

Every day is different for me, usually if it's worse I can trace it back to certain loud sounds I was exposed to in the last 24 hours or so but some days it's just loud for no reason.

 

I would like to add that H, by which I mean sound tolerance and T reactivity to sound, also fluctuates from day to day. Which strikes me as odd because I would have expected it be pretty consistent, unlike T.

A couple of days ago I had a day where my T was almost non existent, didn’t noticeably react to sound and nothing sounded particularly loud (although my sound tolerance is not too bad usually) - it was an awesome near normal day. Next day it was back.

 

The same with me, but I need to add my C1 -C2 area. I had dental whiplash associated with jaw and neck where I received a straighten c spine. I shouldn't be forward bending over a keyboard.

 

That's not to understand. Once a mild day, when I almost have to look for the tinnitus, and on the following day the brain is blown out of my head with an eeeeeehhhhhhh.

 

Wouldn't it make sense to find reasons and causes for better and worse tinnitus days?

 

Four years of careful observation has yielded nothing so far.

 

lack of sleep.... and i could use it right now zZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZz...

 

Nobody seems to be interested to get the better days and avoid the worse days....

 

I've not been able to control it. I get better, then worse, then better ad nauseum. Once in a while I get an improvement after Clonazepam, but that's only happened a couple of times. Still at the time it seemed quite cause-and-effect. Points to muscle activity a bit doesn't it.

 

The most of voters know better and worse days.
Good days, where tinnitus is no problem to cope, and worse days you could get mad of the torture of eeeeehhhhh...
Usually tinnitus would be no problem, if I only had my better days.
Why is there so few interest for causes of the difference of better and worse days?

 

I always thought that this kind of phenomenon would be a diagnostic clue, before I learned that no-one else cared.

 

I have hell days and then days like today that it's barely noticeable. It doesn't make sense.

 

Mine is related to the quality of sleep I get and previous recent noise exposure. It's always there and I can hear it in most situations, but lack of sleep and loud noises can make it difficult to deal with.

 

I chose option 4, bit none of the option is perfect fit
Mine changes, but it is not just the perception, so it is only between option 3 and 4.

3.Yes, indeed, but I don't have an explanation for that, presumably randomly
4.Yes, I know the phenomenon and I have the following explanation (please explain in the forum)

I cannot choose 3, because, although i do not have always an explanation for fluctuation, the change in tinnitus is NOT presumably random.

How could the change be "random", with no cause? Tinnitus is an effect of a cause, so it cannot be random.

Option 4 is not a perfect fit either, because only sometimes i know the explanation, i do not have the explanations of all the changes.

Among factors that change the tinnitus i can mention: stress, tiredness, noise, diet, position during sleep.
Those are not all the factors, though.
There are some i have not identified yet.

 

Possibly TMI but mine goes crazy before my period. I wonder if hormones play a part..

 

@Holly1987
Before period not only large amounts of estrogen are produced, but a large amount of water is retained. It may not be the estrogen hormone, but the water retention, if the inner ear is not working properly. Inner ear is supposed to have mechanisms that maintain volume and concentration of salts in the endolymph constant, but if those mechanism do not work properly or they are lost, like in Meniere's disease and Secondary e
Endolymphatic Hydrops, and the volume and concentration of salts are out of balance, tinnitus starts. In these cases a diuretic is indicated.
So it may be due to the change in the overall body fluids, from the water retention.
http://vestibular.org/secondary-endolymphatic-hydrops-seh

 

Which explanations do tinnitus experts have according fluctuating tinnitus?