Theory About Tinnitus Fluctuations (Sleep)

Hi

Does anyone have a theory about tinnitus fluctuations?

When I woke up the morning I know straight away if it will be a good day or a bad day. Generally, my T remain the same all day from the morning to end the of the day.

Of course I tried to monitor what I eat, what I did etc. the previous day but nothing seems to be lined. It appears to be completely random.

Since my second onset in June 2015 until October I had only 2 good days per month. Now the "good news " since November I have more good days, I would say 1 per week . I try to remember those good days when like today I have a bad day and I hope, we ll all have more good days with time.

The only thing I understand is that only the sleep can make my T fluctuate from a good day to bad day and vice versa. Nothing else. But why ?

All the best
Jacob

 

@jacob21
Absolutely 100% the same here. Sleep resets T. I know the first second after waking up how T will be whole day.
Very weird. There is no pattern like diet, sleep, air pressure etc.

I think that somehow the nervous system is some days more active than on others. Or that the quality of sleep (REM sleep, dreams etc.) has an effect on it.

I haven't found anything that could influence it - like most here.

 

@Martin69
Too bad we can't find any reasons

do you have more good days with time ?

 

@jacob21
Difficult to say. If I am outside, productive, busy with not too stressful tasks, I do not listen to T too much - even though mine is tough (louder than the shower). If I sit at home, T takes over completely.
But overall, I have seldom real mild days (where T goes down to a 4/10 maybe). Maybe 1 day every 14 days.

 

@Martin69
Understood .
When i got my T in 2008 , it took me 14 month to habituated . the fist 14 month was VERY hard and then during 7 years , I never pay attention to my T while wearing hearing aids with a very soft white noise ( zen ) . I was "cured" .

Now since my second onset , I can hear my T over any sounds most of the day and I have to use some sounds 24/7 to give me some partial relief . And some days , 1 per week maybe , my T is lower and I don t need those masking sounds

Would be great to understand why we have those "good"days Means something happen in the brain...but what ?
Sometime , when I have a bad night , my T is ok the following day and vis versa

 

For me its all the same. Only that I have about 50% good days (low moderate) and 50% bad days (severe).

Having it like this makes it even more senseless to suffer from the bad days because you know your body is able to have good days. But why is our body not recovering? I don't get it. I believe in homeostasis and everything should balance out.
So I have no clue why we are having these patterns but I'm convinced there is something about it.
Currently I suspect some unconscious periodical mental mood/tension swing going on and triggering the bad days.

I try now amitriptylin, hoping it can maybe make me more relaxed and maybe help me getting rid of bad days.
After 10days no success though.
Maybe after that I gonna try xanax as kevin hogan suggests...

 

Do you have a snoring partner? LOL! I would walk the line with my T, but in the mornings I would wake up with an increase. I finally figured it out , my husband would snore really loud. On the side of my bad ear. So I now sleep opposite of him. problem solved. Also if i sleep on my right side with my ear completely in the pillow, that would cause an increase in the T because when the affected ear gets no sound, it strives to hear and the T & H increase.

 

Hi Marino

Agreed with you
I suggest you to stay away from Xanas on a regular basis. You can try every other day but not every day. Very hard to tapper off and effect work only if you don t havr any accoutumance.

 

wouldnt ever other day be enough to get into trouble? but i do here people like xanax for a T helper

 

how did amytriptyline work out?

 

did you try xanax? how you doing?

 

My T has no pattern to it that I can figure out. Screaming loud for a few days then quiter on others. Wixh i could figure out what made the quite days. Some days is like living in hell

 

Yes, ditto.

 

Bizarrely and contrary to most people, I'm better sleeping on my T ear. My T is much quieter if I do. Only ever wake up to loud T in the night if I sleep on my non T ear.

 

Well I took 10mg amitriptylin for a while and increased then to 20mg each evening.

All in all no improvement yet. I had a couple of days when I thought it might help. But now I'm in a bad state for 4 days again. These ups and downs are typically for my tinnitus and this makes it especially difficult to tell if some treatment helps or not.

Another hope destroyed.
Habituation seems not possible on my bad days. Its just to painfull.
Nobody should be tortured like this, if not terminally ill. Its so senseless.

 

Anyhow I will continue with ami and invmcrease the dossage. Just to be sure...

 

thanks for the response, I wish you well, I dont think there is much we can do about our Tinnitus, mine is severe and has changed my life completely, hard to go on some days, but for now im fighting looking for something that can help in terms of relief, the medical so called professionals dont understand how bad this can get and what it does to people, I am in a depression and have anxiety and other feelings that are just hard to describe, I think the best we can do is try to get in the most relaxed state of mind that we can get into, easier said than done! I hope you find relief!

 

For you the same.
I totally understand you and what you describe. Today I am so tortured that I don't care about anything anymore. After 4 severe days in a row it broke me. Again.
If I have better days in a row I can live actually quite well. I still have tinnitus and it bugs me but I can cope and have a fulfilling life. It takes a couple of good days to forget about the bad ones though.
Funny thing is that now I cannot remember how good days feel right now. And on good days I cannot remember the torture for long.
This is why I know that nobody can understand it, when not suffering by himself.

 

Onions are bastards for my tinnitus. I always get a spike after eating them. But I like them so will still eat them maybe once a month.

 

Onions, wow, hmm. I cook with onions a lot. I might have to start watching for that relationship.

Champagne, apparently, triggers my T (said since I had some yesterday and woke up to T.) Or more specifically, more champagne than is good for me. I guess that goes without saying now that I know. 1 glass is OK, more is not.

Also: snoring. I think I will start a thread with this in the title so more people will realize that a snoring partner is NOT just a funny thing but can absolutely trigger your T from 0 to max in one night!

 

The only pattern I can see for me is that when I wake up during a vivid dream, my T is very loud. Like my nervous system is already on high alert. But that does not mean that waking up without the alarm clock automatically makes it low.

But somehow our quality of sleep and dreams are related to T next morning. At least this is my theory.

 

I have the same thing. Yesterday when i woke up my t was very silent. So I thought what if i stay awake?
And yes almost no T the whole day long. Loved it. But this morning T was screaming and it still is.

My T resets with sleep.

 

Mine for the first time woke me. It was the highest and loudest pitch of ringing the next morning it was very loud to where I thought I'd go mad. One thing if my sleep is restless my T gets really going. Sleep and dreams definitely play a part in this

 

My T resets with sleep, too.

Since I also suspect a somatosensory explanation for my tinnitus, I also think about the head and cervical spine position during the night. And one possible explanation for the beginning of a bad day was the nocturnal cervical spine posture.
Or - perhaps sleeping on the tinnitus ear, or the opposite?

 

Agree. The only thing that always quiets down my tinnitus is getting 10 hours of sleep. Unfortunately the only way I can force myself to get 10 hours of sleep is by getting only 3-4 hours of sleep for a few days in a row...

 

up

 

When we sleep, the brain clears out toxins that accumulate during the day. Maybe those of with fluctuating tinnitus don't have an efficient cleanup mechanism, so sometimes it clears enough toxins to give a mild day and sometimes it doesn't. Maybe we need more hours of sleep than the average person to remove the toxins.

My experience has been that a lot of sleep makes me feel rested and better able to handle stress, but it doesn't seem to make a difference regarding level of T. Now when I wake up during the night for whatever reason, my T is barely there, but in the first year or two it would be blaring if I were to awaken during the night.

I think there's something going on biochemically that causes the change in tinnitus when we sleep, but that's just my opinion. I have no idea if there's been any research where frequent blood samples are taken of people whose tinnitus is variable, to see what differences there are in blood panels between mild days and intrusive days. I hate needles, but I'd be more than willing to participate in such a trial if it would provide some answers.

 

A few times a month my T increases with whatever side of the pillow my ear is down to, makes it hard to sleep bc the T increases..

 

Yup - sleep resets it. I had a few loud days, yesterday with an especially noticeable spike, and right now it seems to be back to baseline. I'm still anxious about it so probably monitoring it more than I should.