Successfully Turned Tinnitus Off with Sleep Control

My neuro would probably agree with @Tony Phylactou as he feels that lack of oxygen to the brain may have something to do with tinnitus. It may be about veins and arties in the neck that carries oxygen and blood to the brain. Thoughts of sleep patterns, positioning of the neck with breathing may be a clue. Neuros placed a warning in the mid nineties for older people not to sleep in chairs as it could cause a stroke by a twisted neck. My neuro thinks tinnitus often connects to the neck and then to the brain.

 

Last night I had a full 8 hours sleep first time for a long while and in the morning and all day T is hardly noticeable
Must find a way to improve my sleep and then hopefully problem solved..

 

Dude this is the problem with me, my tinnitus is always associated with sleep.

 

My ENT usually prescribes Nootropil medications to tinnitus patients. The medications is thought to increase oxygen intake in the brain. He says after a month or so of taking the medications the tinnitus disappears. My Audiologist also confirmed this. So I think you're right.

 

There seems to be only one other post on this forum talking about Nootropil
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/just-recovered-from-a-month-long-tinnitus-spike.7344

Did anyone else have any experiences with this drug? It doesn't seem to have many known side effects. I wonder whether it could make T worse...

 

Did you start feeling better after you began taking Nootropil?

 

I never took it. I couldn't find it at the pharmacy

 

According to wikipedia it is not sold in the US and in Canada, but it might be possible to buy it online...

 

@Bill Bauer @Lesly This is the brand name: Piracetam - there's TT discussions on this. Markku used it with no benefit. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7657193

 

I found this link about neck massage to stop ringing in the ears no idea if it works or not.http://susangaer.com/studentprojects/earring.htm

 

It’s sold mostly in Eastern Europe, and has no proven clinical efficiency. I also tried, no effect.

 

Some comments from a youtube video I watched recently.
For the first couple of days I ve tried to use white noise to mask the sound but I found it useless because it was only a temporary relief; the same thing happened with the anxiety.
The more I tried to resist to anxiety, the more it gained strength. So I decided to go in the opposite direction, let the noise and the anxiety flow directly into my body without
resistance; it's been a trip in hell for about ten days, then I began to adapt to the situation relaxing my mind more and more with meditation (transcendental) and tinnitus eventually
back off completely. I think that the problem is not the noise itself but how you respond to the noise; if you shift the focus from the noise to your response (tension in the body,
anxiety rushes,etc..) you will learn that the response is the core of the tinnitus. If you learn to relax even in "spike moments", you will eventually become like a stone in the
stream,everything pass trough and can't touch you anymore.
I started to meditate one hour per day during week and on Sunday even 3-4 hours; I meditate in total silence, I live on the Italian Alps sorrounded
by woods and even in daytime is extremely quiet. To beat tinnitus you don't have to mask it, you don't have to hide, you have to accept it in a place where silence is louder than
noise! you'll find that in total silence, if you relax very deeply, tinnitus become insignificant. If you continue to do that, your mind will habituate really fast and eventually
eliminates it. But you must find a really quiet place, stay positive,relaxed and determined to face your fear.

 

First two weeks I woke up a lot due to T. Later I got a white noise machine when I turn that on I sleep better. When you are awake in middle of night if u listen to t you hear it more. Try to close eyes and focus on white noise or fan I know it's not easy. Many times I get scared but I focus on other sound fan etc and sleep off. But I used to sleep a lot in mornings on weekend and wake up late or roll on bed for hours... now with t I don't have that luxury I hate being on bed once I am awake because I hear it more when am half awake and try to fall asleep. Probably it's for good not to be lazy on weekends.

 

I've done this two days in a row and woke up at 4:30 am and 6...it works for me. Almost silent days. Then today I tried to go back to sleep after waking a 4 again....guess what. It was going all day long.

 

I am more convinced than ever that luck of sleep is why my T goes out of control.If I get a good sleep my T is negligible.I just wish I could find a natural way to get a good nights sleep.I hate taking sleeping tablets.Any suggestions anyone?
Relaxing music doe not work it rather annoys me.

 

@Tony Phylactou. Sleep disruption does figure quite significantly in relation to T. part of the problem being that because T is generated internally. even when you are asleep. Hearing is actually the last of the 5 senses to shut down as consciousness recedes. As regards to methods of maintaining a good nights sleep. there is no one size fits all answer( I wish there was though). A method I use quite successfully is a form of mindfulness meditation taken from Buddhist practice. in this process you observe your environment, thoughts etc., but do not allow yourself to react to them. its something you have to stick with so that, over time it becomes a natural habit. once you are able to monitor your environment none judgementally. do the same with your body sensations, then proceed to watching your thoughts. emotions etc. and finally follow the breath. as you progress, you might find , especially in the early stages that you seem to be "thinking more", actually what is really happening is that, because you are directly observing your thought processes you are more aware of them. same applies with body sensations, Eventually your mind will quiet down naturally, and that is when you can start progressing to the following stages. I probably haven't explained the process too well but that is a rough outline of the practice I apply. If this information helps in anyway, for anyone. then that is for the better.

 

Nodding and sleep turn my tinnitus on and off. I noticed that when my tinnitus isn't bothering me and I nod off I wake up with the tinnitus. This mostly happens when I relax after supper. I will be doing fine then I nod off and my tinnitus is there. This will happen even in the afternoon if I nod. Then it is hard to get rid of. One way I get rid of it is trying to get to sleep. I force myself to get to sleep and sometimes when I wake up it is gone. But not all the time. Sometimes when I'm doing good and go to sleep I will wake up like 2 o'clock am and the tinnitus will be there. I force myself back to sleep. When I wake up again and it is still there I force myself back to sleep again. I keep doing this until it is gone. Then I get up and have a good day. I have to make sure to get up if it's gone. because if I wake up and it's gone then I fall back to sleep it will come back.

 

This is exactly how my one was behaving

 

Hey Tony you mentioned REM sleep. What do you mean by REM sleep? I can relate to what you are saying about how sleep affects your tinnitus. I don't know what it is about the nods. It seems like my head gets weak and forces me to nod and kick in my T. I have an appointment with an ENT in a few weeks. I'm going to explain this to him and see what he says. How are you doing with your tinnitus? What does your T do? My T is a HISSING. I also get clicking in my left ear but this is not bad. It just comes for short periods like 5 or 10 seconds then goes away. I hope I can get a good long sleep tonight and shake my T. More than likely it will still be there when I wake up. But that's when I do a reverse nod to get rid of it. I have to keep making myself nod off to try to shake it. Usually I have a lot of short dreams when I do this. If I do succeed I get right up. Then I can have a good day or days.

 

I had cataract operation using ultra sound and my Tinnitus has reached the top ,and i have not been the same person since then.Mind you that happened about a week-10 days after,unless it started then and has been gradually increased.My doctors say it is due to stress but I am not 100% convinced. Before I had it done I asked the opinion of 4 Ent doctors and they all said ultra sound cannot damage my ears.I wish I never made that decision.because I could have my eye done 2 or 3 years later.

 

About Nootropil - my father takes these after a stroke. Some ENT doctors here prescribe it for hearing loss too. Some claim to see good effect. Haven't tried it.

About sleep - mandatory! The less i sleep, the situation goes beyond worse ... Adding more sounds and making the previous ones absolute hell. There are two periods when i was feeling fine. First was when i took Pregabalin, which calms the central nervous system. I slept like a baby for three months and T was almost gone. That was the best three months since two years, because i was suffering from severe lack of sleep. No matter how tired i am, i can't sleep more than 3-4 hours. It was hell ... and then came tinnitus. I think these things are totally related. Next period was last summer when i was eating very healthy and had a good 8 hours of sleep every night. T was there and has added more sounds due to stopping Pregabalin(i think so, because it happened when i started lowering the dosage and stopping it), but it was a no issue at all. I also remember something - one night i woke up with this horrible high-pitched sound in my head. I was freaking out for about a minute, but suddenly my brain decided "Whatever, get the f out.", i calmed down in a second ... and the sound disappeared completely.

Brain ... go figure ...

 

sleep seems to be the biggest factor for me as well. 12 hours and I'm golden, anything less and not so much. Worst day last week i was up at 6 am, by the afternoon it was driving me nuts. Its just how easily irratated are we that day in my opinion, battling tinnitus is a hard job, anything thats going to make us easily irritable like stress and lack of sleep and it gets on top.

 

“Melatonin also has studies linked to lower T, and sleep is a factor there as well.”

Great aid to longer sleep.

 

At what dose did you take Pregabalin (Lyrica) ? Why did you stop taking it? I have 150mg capsules.

 

I was increasing the dosage gradually. Then i was taking it 3 pills per day. Maybe 2 months. Then i started to lower it to 2 pills and finally 1 pill per day. At the second week when i started taking 2 per day, t started adding new sounds(like a broken radio). Then i went to ENT and made an audiogram - i had issues with left ear. Before Pregabalin i had none issuses with hearing at all. Then i made my research and it seems that this drug has such an side effect, just the risk is too low. Guess i am from the "lucky" ones. Maybe there are other factors. I don't know ... maybe never will.

I stopped taking it because my neurologist said so. It is not very good to take these for a long time.

 

My T still keeps switching on and off after sleep but it is unpredictable.I wish it stays the way it is now and has been for the last 2 days.iIwill not complain again.

 

Lyrica can have some horrible side effects.It put me off using it.

 

@Jazzer
How much melatonin do you take? It has zero effect on me unless I take 20mg or so. Like absolutely none. I tried different doses years ago and it didn’t work before the t. Tried again after t and I don’t even feel mildly relaxed until at least 20mg.

 

I must be super sensitive to Melatonin Steph.
My tablets come with the name Circadin.
They are just 2 mg tabs, and I use a pill cutter, and take just 1 mg.
The effect on me is amazing.

 

REM is rapid eye movements or dream sleep.Non REMm sleep is the deep sleep.