Tinnitus Wakes Me Up 3 am Every Morning. Advice?

Anyone have any advice on this? 4 months into t, I have no problem getting to sleep, but t is loudest at 3am and always wakes me out of my sleep. It is not a problem sleeping/insomnia. It is t actually waking me up. Is this normal after 4 months? Any advice on how to overcome this?

 

Do you take any sleep aids?

 

Sometimes, I take Lorazepam .5mg, melatonin, calcium/mag supplement, 5HTP. Not all on the same night. What do you take, @cullenbohannon ? Also, I notice you mentioned an anti anxiety med in another post - which one?

 

So just to reiterate some of the reasons I think this may be: clenching jaw, neck position, ETD from not swallowing as much when we sleep so internal sound becomes louder, or brain scanning for malfunctions as sleep gets lighter. Any other thoughts? Or any advice to stop t waking us up out of sleep?

 

Ok well what I learned was that using to much of sleep aid makes me sleep for a few hours then I wake up and take more. That is what I would've have recommended also zzquil works well. I have been using sleep aids since before t. I have trouble sleeping more than 5hrs a night. But yes I took xanax when t first started. A low does still have it and use it once in a while. I would talk to your doc if you anxiety issues it works wonders but be careful. Also helps me sleep if I'm having a bad night.

 

I would just say try and relax during the day because that will affect you at night if your tense and on high alert when you wake up your on high alert and it becomes difficult to get back to sleep.

 

@cullenbohannon Thanks. Yes. I was thinking of switching to Xanax. Does it lower your volume? And if so, by how much, would you say? Lorazepam lowers mine. But it is the strongest and shortest acting of all benzos. Dangerous stuff.

 

Just also to add, my t reacts to white noise/static environmental sounds. It competes against them. Such a difficult place to be in.

 

It's anxiety/stress waking you up not t. I had this problem not that long ago but it was before I got t. My best advice would be to get exercise every day, try to eliminate stress and if you have any places near by where you can get a massage I'd do that as well. Also, try and sleep on your back at night as I think it helps with the jaw clenching. It's best to sleep without a pillow. Your spine will be aligned that way.

 

I have the same thing happen. I started taking .5 mg of klonopin and so far it gets me thru the night. My T for some reason will double at like 3am.?

 

From the studies I have read they use much higher doses than idid to treat t but it seems effective. When I take it I just pay a lotless attention to it and I definitely don't hear it as much but I don't know if it helped at all long term but some studies show it can be good. Just be careful with them.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/8343245/

 

Just saw this. I actually have this to. It goes down a bit when I stay away from sounds that agitate it.

 

Heh...I had the same problem a while ago before tinnitus. It would seem every night I would wake up at 4:12 in the morning. It turns out that stressing out about waking up at a certain time or constantly checking the clock can train your brain to wake up at those times or produce anxiety about sleeping.

 

Good point, Neom. Only thing is it is the t sound that blasts me out of my sleep at that time. I slept right through before t 4 months ago. I exercise, go to sleep at the same time each night. Sound is usually relatively low at that time. But then while I am asleep, it ramps up around 3am and wakes me up. I am not checking the clock or consciously thinking about my t for it to do that. Weird.

 

Another possible reason for this, in addition to the ones I listed above, I just found out might be to do with cerebral blood flow, which is altered somehow with t. Yikes!

 

Try stopping melatonin. It does the same thing for me. Melatonin's half time is quite short. I started to use L-Tryptofan and it seems to work well. L-T converts to 5-HTP (I would stop using that as well) and then to melatonin.

Related to sleep - just saw this nice infograph about sleep cycles: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/07/your-body-does-incredible_n_4914577.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

 

It seems so important for t sufferers to experience a whole night of deep sleep in order to help heal the CNS and calm the brain. Just took ambien (a crutch, i know(, and sounds are reduced by 80% this morning.

 

Xanax is one of the drugs known to lower tinnitus. If you wake up it could be anxiety related. Maybe put a glass of water and pills next to your bed. However be careful with sleeping pills because after around 3 weeks your body will get used to them and it is going to be more difficult to go to sleep normally.

 

I'm going through something very similiar. I wake up about 5 hours after going to sleep to loud T and the rest of my sleep is not a good rest. It sounds like my whole head is buzzing. I don't have trouble going to sleep. I was taking klonopin .5 mg and that would get through the whole night. The problem with that is I stay sleepy throughout the day. I'm going to try it again though. Maybe if I take it earlier in the evening I won't have as bad a hangover. I think I did try taking less but still found that stayed groggy. I wish I wasn't so senitive to medicine.

 

I was sleeping fine until about two months ago, then my T started waking me up 90 minutes after I feel asleep. Very odd - if I feel asleep around 11, I'd wake up at 12:30. 10:00, wake up at 11:30. Lasted about two weeks, and then I started sleeping through the night again. I found that I started "expecting" to wake up. After about 10 days, I just didn't care anymore, and the issue just resolved itself.

Whenever my T does something "new," it takes me a little while to adjust and then I no longer react to it.

Hopefully you will follow a similar course.

 

Lisa88, everything you are describing is normal and I wouldn’t stress too much about something you should or should not be doing. The good news is you have no trouble getting to sleep. This is a sign that you are already starting to habituate tinnitus after only four months since onset.

If you don’t already do so, I would sleep with some gentle, relaxing background sound – a sound that is easy to fall asleep to. Our auditory system is working even when we are asleep, and background sound will give your ears something else to do. Since white noise irritates your tinnitus, choose something else and play it softly.

In my opinion, you are waking up because tinnitus is still on your mind to some extent, and that is normal after a few months. This may sound funny, but the key isn’t that tinnitus is waking you up. It is what you think about when tinnitus wakes you up. Another way to say it is that although tinnitus may be waking you up, your own thoughts may be keeping you up.

I suggest trying to catch hold of what goes through your mind about tinnitus when you wake up. It may be possible to short-circuit your thinking at those times so that you can easily fall back to sleep no matter what tinnitus happens to be doing at the moment. Cullenbohannon may have described this in one of his posts where he talked about being on high alert.

I would say it is all about the meaning we give to tinnitus that can either keep us on high alert or not. Go easy on yourself as well. Habituation is a process and you are doing fine.

here2help

 

@here2help, I like your posts very much.

You have a nice way with words - and it is backed up by knowledge, experience, common sense, and compassion.

sp

 

Although this is just my opinion..xanex is the last benzo i would want to get prescribed for anxiety caused by T.. Its a short term drug and its gonna be out of your system before you know it.. And that anxiety is still going to be there afterwards therefor you take another one. Klonopin is longer lasting which means it stays in your system longer and you dont have to take as many. Perfect for sleep in my case cause i tend to wake up often in the night with just anixety in general even pre T.. My doc said it would be the best choice.. And i only use it as i need it which is like 5 times a month if that cause i got control of my anxiety pretty well but now gotta take care of my T anixety which is mostly worry and usually isnt a probem knock on wood. But i do agree with here2help with where you know longer have thoughts or worry about your T then it will no longer wake you up.. And it takes time but if your gonna choose a benzo to help with that process id try klonopin

 

Lisa
Four months is pretty young (in T time); I know it doesn't feel young (after all, it is four months of a new and profound anxiety). I took sleeping aids for a year (up until about six weeks ago); I needed them just to calm me down (and take my T down). I did, however, discover they messed up my sleep patterns. I would wake up after 3-4 hours thinking I'd slept for 12; then I had to try and go back to sleep.

My T would compete with white noise at the beginning too.

Add the two together (waking up + T competing with WH) and it means your brain is still hyper focused on the T (and it is forcing you into an anxious state of mind). Anxious state of mind = higher T; it is very difficult to deal with (I hated it). The strange thing is that I didn't 'feel' that anxious; but I was. My brain was really prioritizing the T over everything; it was so loud. It takes a long time to really settle down; then you realize just anxious you were.

I found that when my T woke me in the wee hours of the morning simply doing some breathing exercises, and reminding myself that it's just 'that part of my brain' focusing on the T and then, personally, I would just start praying; I learned to go back to sleep after a while (quicker). It takes a lot of practice to really calm yourself back down; especially when you may be upset about waking up (again!). The other half of the issue was that I started getting into a habit (a routine) of waking up @ 3 a.m. (rats!).

All of this added up to a 'wake up call' @ 3 a.m. for many months. Unfortunately I learned to expect it as a way to cope (don't get as upset about something you expect).

Getting off the sleep aids (Ibuprofen PM or Z-Quil) helped a lot (from a biochemical point of view) but just getting my anxiety down (finally!) is what really helped. I still wake up @ 3 a.m. some times, but not too often and I don't even have to give it a thought to go back to sleep.

Take heart, what you are experiencing is very normal for a T sufferer; once your brain stops focusing on it so much, it goes down pretty quick and sleep comes a lot easier.

Mark

 

at 3am your liver is at work. So to jump to conclusions it means you are not following a healthy lifestyle of fruits and veggies, no-alcohol, juices and drinking alot of water ... Change to this lifestyle and the liver will be more at ease and you will not wake up anymore, i promise you ... another think you can try out is something called `kambo` it is the resin from a south american toad that is ingested in the bloodstream through little holes on the arm cause by a burning incense stick. It will cause the body to go into a state of extreme ... hmmm .... don`t know the word ... you`ll feel your heart beating, blood rushing, you`ll need to shit, pee and vomit (not all at once - don`t worry) ... the experience is non-hallucinogenic and lasts about 15 minutes ... I used to suffer from extreme rashes, burning rashes on the upper part of my body ... could not sleep and had to put soks on my hands or i would scratch till I was bleeding. I had this for yeeears ... untill i did 3 sessions of kambo. That stuff cleaned my out totally. Did n`t ge trid of my T but it was a massive liver detox. So you will need to find a shaman working with the Bufo marines toad if you want to follow that path. Or go the steady slow way of juicing and wheatgrass. Good luck.

 

Thank you All so much. @Mark McDill and @here2help - your posts are especially calming.
It must be the stress of t that is causing it to double while I sleep.
But, I also wonder if there is something physiological that is going on as well.
I used to sleep like a baby pre t.
I wonder if t has changed blood flow in the brain or some neuroscience behind this to cause the volume spike also. I know at this point nobody knows. But looking forward to one day scientists giving us a few more answers.
Thank you for your kind words. I will persevere and try to take deep breaths

 

So are you healthy and with good diet? 3am is is really liver time, I studied a bit of chinese medicin that`s why i`m interested to know. So if you eat alot of fats and junk food the liver needs to process all of this ... doesn`t even need to be a lot, I always thought I was pretty healthy. was vegetarian for 15 years. but i liked pizza and bread and cheese and fries ... that stuff is what makes us ill.

 

@nills - I eat extremely healthy and take all the right supplements for t too. Vegetables, fish, fruits. Could drink more water though. No alcohol, never smoked, no msg, low sodium, no sugar. Slept perfectly well pre t 4 months ago.

 

no worries, keep doing what you`re doing than

 

About the background noise to help you sleep, I have been using iOS apps called SimplyRain and Sleep Pillow which are great. I just connected my iPad to an active speaker. SimplyRain is my favourite at the moment.