Poll: How Much Does Your Tinnitus Volume Fluctuate?

How much does the volume of your tinnitus fluctuate on a day to day basis?

 

For me it doesn't fluctuate so much as increasing monotonically from morning to night. I typically wake up with a softer T, which ramps up all day until it's time to go to bed, at which point it's really horrible. Usually noon is the tipping point that turns it from bearable to unbearable.
The only consolation I have at night is that I expect it will be more "livable" by the time I wake up in the morning.

I don't know what "resets" my T, as I've noticed that when I wake up in the middle of the night, the T is sometimes screaming and at other times softer. Maybe it depends on how much REM sleep I'm getting.

 

i choose
Moderately; it never goes away, but it will fluctuate a lot in volume and intensity.
BUT
it has gone away for a few minutes before..but mostly its there changing in volume

 

I feel like the volume and pitch are pretty much constant, but it moves around in my awareness, sometimes seeming like more or less a boring background stimulus, and sometimes seeming like an emergent, painful siren. The volume is always quieter than the sound my fingers make if I rub them together right next to my ear, and yet paradoxically can seem overpowering, deafening at times.

Benzos cut the actual volume in half or more, though.

 

My T is not very noticeable at all in relatively noisy environments and when outside but in quiet rooms it amplifies and sounds pretty loud to me. The quieter the environment the louder it becomes and in this sense I perceive it's volume as fluctuating.

 

Interesting, you aren't the first person that has mentioned sleep seems to reset their T.

Similar with me, though I haven't gotten to the boring background noise state. The volume was matched in a sound booth to be about 30db, which I guess is pretty loud, but that was not frequency matched. Only seems to change depending on the environment, if I put in earplugs (which I have to often) my T screams when I go into a quieter environment with the earplugs still in.

 

Tonight, before I go to sleep it is 1 or2/10. 5 hours later, I had trouble sleeping, the pillow felt uncomfortable, wake up with neck pain, forehead pain and 6-7/10 tinnitus. Bad sleep and anxiety are like rocket fuel for my T.

 

My whole life it did not fluctuate or increase in volume. No food or supplement had any effect on it either. Recently I had ear damage from concert. I have developed some hyperacusis and with it the ringing is louder most of the time and sits on top of all other sounds. Sometimes it gets pushed to the back but mostly it's there and hard to ignore. My ears feel like poop and are exhausted by the end of the day too. Alcohol seems to trigger it getting much worse now too. Ugh.

 

Yesterday at 12 AM the tone in my left ear changed to a lower, 1700 Hz. pitch. No event whatsoever preceded this. I was wearing over-ear headphones at a safe volume at the time.

The volume of the sound is basically exactly the same, though.

 

recovering from a significant acoustic trauma can take months or longer.

 

Greg almost describes my T. And you nailed what helps reduce my noise - true REM sleep. I'm not sure how to describe my volume, but I can go weeks at peak volume and when I finally get some real sleep, it's almost "quiet".

 

Judging by the way things are going that seems to be the case. I have an appointment with an inner ear specialist but it's not until august. My ent gave me a script for some steroids today. Not really sure what that will do though.

 

Most of the time my T is in the forefront. Sometimes it takes a back seat. For me if I am fortunate enough to get off to sleep, when I wake in the eraly hours like 4 or 5am, the T is screaming insanely. It settles a bit by mid morning and the gradually ramps up, being really bad in the late afternoon, evening. But always when I wake it is riciduculously loud, making it impossible to get back to sleep. This is different from some of you who wake up to it being softer. There are no rules with this thing. I just know that overall it's gettin glouder over time, a lot louder.

 

If my mind is occupied and I'm working on something, I don't notice T. Just another reason why I need to switch from driving truck. I just sit there and listen to it ringing away as I drive down the road. That, and lately it seems that it's been aggravating it.. It's definitely not as quiet as it was a month ago. Took a day off today to relax, had a bad nights sleep last night.

I would also say that sleep actually improves T.. It's usually quietest upon waking in the morning, but sometimes spikes in the middle of the night, and also varies in intensity throughout the day, probably depending on how much noise I'm exposed to. I also still get fleeting T quite often. Way more often then pre T.

 

I hear several different frequencies, with one ramping up in volume, then fading back as another one ramps up. Pretty much a constant thing. My T is overall constant, day or night, active or passive, tired or fresh... makes no difference. Only thing I can do to alter it in any way is to either clench my jaw really tight on the rearmost molars; this accentuates one of the freqs quite a bit, or to do an isometric thing with my jaw, trying to both push it forward and pull it back at the same time; this produces a similar effect to the jaw-clenching, but hits a different freq, and makes it significantly louder than the clench thing. Other than than, it's a constant, 24-7-365 thing, never varying much other than the cycling frequency/volume thing described above.

 

No change at all...in the beginning it did...if i have no sound in the room it might...but overall the same...i do have moments in the day i do not notice it but it is always there

 

Slightly. No big changes. Gradually getting worse over time. But maybe that could be a number of factors. Not sure why my right ear started ringing too. How noticeable my T is depends where I am. Not a lot of ambience in my residence so whenever I am at home trying to relax, it's the worst.

 

Mine fluctuates more now than it did for the first year and a half, but this is not a bad thing, as the first year and a half were constant brutality of sound especially from my most affected ear following the trauma. Brain plasticity may be finally happening?

But compared to others I think my fluctuations are fairly minor, I'd enjoy it if I could have some fluctuations of quiet rather than just noticing minor spikes more frequently while being largely "habituated" to the constant tones.