Tinnitus Forum - Mytinnitus

Hi Mike,

Welcome to the forum, and thanks for your thorough coverage of many important aspects. I don't want to discuss all your points in detail (as this would be way too much for one thread), but I just noticed two things:

you mentioned the loud background in gyms as beneficial; this may actually not always be the case, for me, gym visits usually aggravated the condition when the music was overly loud, so during the first year or so of my tinnitus (when I was generally over-sensitive to noises), I resorted to wearing ear plugs when visiting the gym. This noticeably improved things.

Also, under 'Pharmaceutical Treatment', I would definitely list painkillers (Paracetamol or Aspirin) as well, as these have helped me (and several others I know from this forum or through email) to get the condition under control.

Thomas

" (M)   Relationship of Poor Sleep to Tinnitus
I plan to explore the possible relationship of tinnitus to poor sleep. Might prolonged poor sleep directly cause tinnitus? Make one susceptible to tinnitus? Exacerbate tinnitus? Increase one's sensitivity to tinnitus? Increase one's emotional reaction to one's perception of tinnitus? Some combination of the above? What tactics and strategies used to address poor sleep might also be used to address tinnitus? "

In my case, other than being hit by panic attacks & depression, I feel sleep deprivation has a part to play, towards contributing to factors that leads to my current state of tinnitus.  It may not be directly correlated; yet somehow I am beginning to suspect it planted the bed for tinnitus.

I suffer from both pulsatile tinnitus after 2 weeks of bashed up nerves and affected sleeping.  After it subsided around the 3-week mark to a less-jumpy level, I notice the high-pitch eeee sound in my head. 

The new tinnitus is 4 days into its consistent pitch when I notice my arms tingling from fingers to elbow. 

The pitch and the tingle seems to match - except one is in sound form and one is in nerve sensation.  I did manage a good sleep last night, albeit it is under 8 hours. 

On the whole, I am trying to put myself back on track when it comes to normalising on sleep.  I read somewhere that with disrupted serotonin production that comes from sleep (especially the 12 midnight to 4 a.m. hours), the brain neurons may get affected.  I may be wrong in this recall about serotonin function, so serotonin's contribution and functions needs to be referenced from more reliable sources.

Since the tingling in my arm occured when I was relating to someone about an overstressed incident, it appears related to anxiety.  The tinnitus when it was at its top volume had brought me close to a nervous breakdown, making all that I've learnt about anxiety management lose its grasp. 

I am hoping that the high-pitch sound, which is possibly related to anxiety, would go away once I get over the devastating shock of tinnitus.  Prior to this, whenever I heard about tinnitus, I'd always thought it was something mild.  I never knew it could have such wild deviations.

An aside: Shortly before this whole tinnitus incident, I did notice, after weeks of sleep deprivation that I suddenly seem to be experiencing a little "in vertigo" feeling, and things appear slightly darker in shades.  But it was a brief spell. I put to lack of sleep.  I slept 2 days solid after those weeks of sleep deprivation, and thought I was none the worse for it.  Then wham!  Panic attacks for 2 weeks, followed by the tinnitus onset of both kinds.

Hope this helps your research..

Alena,

Thanks again for your thoughtful response to my post.

I do think that lack of sleep makes one more susceptible to tinnitus, and likely a variety of other maladies. I cannot address your arm and finger tingling, especially its association with tinnitus, or the vertigo. (By the way, I like to shorten "tinnitus" to "tin" for reasons which will become evident shortly.)

A few months before getting tin, and about two weeks after starting to have insomnia in early July last year, I, too, had one or two panic attacks, although they were very mild. It was if my classic defense mechanisms of rationalization and repression had forgotten how to work, so I had a little flood of unwanted thoughts from time to time. However, these minor attacks went away after I refused to respond to them and, especially, after I began sleeping better.

Yesterday I went for an audiology test as recommended a while back by my ENT. The audiologist found that I have hearing loss in the 6K range and that my tinnitus sound is also in the 6K range. I believe he suggested that some damaged inner ear hairs stopped receiving outside 6K sounds (high-pitched) sounds properly and, instead, started to send false, relatively constant 6K sounds for internal processing. I am still looking into this explanation as I had poor hearing of high frequencies for about twenty years without substantial tin. I think he also said that damaged ear hairs do not get better.

My inner ear hairs were apparently were damaged from loud amplifiers and, perhaps, the very loud music played in a gym I have been going to several years. I now take hearing-protection head gear to the gym. Sometimes I wear it and sometimes I just put Kleenex in my ears. I recently purchased a decibel meter (about $35 from Amazon). I confirmed, among other things, that the music at my gym is often played at an unsafe level.

Although you submitted your response to help me with my research into section (M) questions, please allow me to say a little bit about my strategies for addressing tin. These are ideas that are working pretty well for me, but they may not work for everybody.

Managing tin is largely a matter of attitude for me. I like to find the positives in having tin and to use these positives to help achieve my personal goals. Ideally, or almost ideally, I will eventually come to a point at which I would actually miss tin if it were to suddenly disappear, not only because it has become a part of me, just as my right little finger is a part of me, but also because it has become quite useful to me.
   
Hence my substitution of "tin" for "tinnitus". This allows a variety of unserious ways of thinking about tin as, for example, in "Tin Ear" and "Rin Tin Tin". In a similar vein, I like to take a song line like "I have a bird that whistles and bird that sings" and change it to "I have an ear that whistles and an ear that rings." Sometimes I like to think of my tin as "a new ringtone". Other times I try to personify it (for example, "It's you again, you pesky wabbit", "Tin can be a bully unless you stand up to him", and "Tin is a spoiled brat who just likes to annoy people.") At still other times, I like to think of tin as millions of tiny, smiling crickets such as one might pleasantly hear on a warm summer night.

I virtually forget about tin while I am trying to memorize song lyrics or compose melodies on my guitar. Or when I write song lyrics or poems, for that matter. Thereby motivating me to memorize song lyrics, especially while getting ready for the day and getting ready to go to sleep, is one example of how tin has made me more productive than I used to be. Tin similarly motivating me to create melodies on my guitar also made more productive.

I find tin does not bother me when I am doing something totally absorbing. Therefore, I try to use tin as an Interest-O-Meter. If I find tin bothering me, I reason that I must be doing something not very interesting. Therefore, tin can help guide me into activities which are very interesting to me (disclosure: I am retired, so I can probably use this advantage of tin more easily than many others can).

I also find that tin makes me more appreciative and tolerant of other people who may have a whole variety of "invisible ailments" I do not know about. In addition, it makes me more appreciative of people who work in steel mills and other noisy factory sites (and also suggests that I can just think of tin as a little daily "factory noise" that millions of others without tin put up with).

I sometimes look at tin as a minor side effect of an imaginary long-term medication which I must take to stay as healthy as possible. Often I am inspired by the idea that functioning productively with tin is just another challenge, although unusual, to be met - the tougher the foe, the more imperfect the instrument, the greater the glory (think David and Goliath).

I already mentioned in my original post the White Noise 6K track which helps me a great deal, although it does sound like a gas leak. I have also found that using a cheap record player to play 33 RPM records at 78 or 45 RPM is helpful (and funny). I find that general "hustle and bustle" of busy day can make me pretty much forget tin for extended periods. Sometimes I consider tin itself as just another part of the hustle and bustle of a busy day.

On "bad days", when, for example, a lack of sleep makes the tin a little more obnoxious, I think of the Myth of Sisyphus in which the hero rolls a rock up a big hill, allows it to roll back down at night, and then rolls it back up the hill the next day, ad infinitum.

I sometimes like to think of a Hierarchy of Annoyances (like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs) in which tin, if it disappeared, would likely be quickly replaced by some other annoyance. Other times I think of tin as an illusion, sort of an auditory hallucination. For example, tin often sounds like a river trying to come through a pinhole-size break in the dam. The body tends to react to this sound as if it is really happening. However, I think at least part of managing tin is to realize that there really is no river coming in - that it is just an illusion and, therefore, there is no need for the body to react to it.

If tin is caused, as it frequently is, by injured hairs in the inner ear, then perhaps it is erroneous for one to think of tin as "internal noise". From the perspective of the "thinking place" in one's brain, tin can be just as easily be considered "external", much like a hard disk inside a computer case is considered "external memory" in the computer industry because it is external to the CPU, the "thinking place" of a computer. This line of reasoning puts tin on a par with, say, the constant humming of fluorescent lights in an office environment, the clang of machinery in a steel mill, or the various sounds of the city streets as just another external noise.

So, how else might tin be helpful? It can prompt one to do things that may both help decrease tin annoyance and improve one's quality of life. For example, tin might prompt one to listen to more music, engage in more good reading, increase social activity, and get a good night's sleep. Tin can prompt one to learn how to better: problem-solve, avoid foolish activities (like exposing oneself to loud amplifiers), appreciate what hearing (and other senses) and various abilities one does have, concentrate in the presence of distraction, tolerate annoyances (tin might be viewed as a 60-year course in tolerating annoyances), think positively, appreciate the little noises which help to mask tin (for example, the sound of eating chips, running bath water, or a rattling car) and which might otherwise be annoying, think of others instead of ourselves, look outward rather than inward, and explore creative arts which might totally absorb one. Tin might also provide a portable white sound machine to help mask unwanted external noises. Tin is a useful portable laboratory in which to experiment to find ways to make tin more manageable for oneself and others.

Finally, tin can cause us to make "The Deal" which might substantially increase our productivity. Let's say that one could agree that tinnitus would be  perfectly acceptable, even desirable, if one were able to be, say, three times as productive as one is now - in other words, that this would be a "fair deal". Then assume that, as a result of this line of thought, one actually becomes three times more productive. Here is where "The Deal" comes in. One gains a benefit - becoming three times as productive - at a cost - being willing to tolerate internal noise. Of course, if one does not keep his end of the bargain in terms of becoming just as productive as agreed upon, then The Deal is off. In other words, The Deal only works if you actually become, in this case, three times as production.

When all else fails, simple distraction can usually come to the rescue. For example, on auto trips I sometimes read aloud to myself every street sign, poster, and so forth, I see. That, and just considering tin as part of an old car with a noisy bearing.

Thanks again for your response. Hope all goes well.   

Mike