Tinnitus, bane of my existence

Originally Posted by Redglyph
Isn't white noise susceptible to exacerbate it? It contains the whole frequency range.

Yeah, possibly; I certainly haven't found the standard white noise (i.e., TV static) helpful.

My wife has had troubling getting enough sleep for many years, so she sleeps in our other bedroom. She plays super deep pink & brown noise together. I hooked up a subwoofer to a tablet so she can have some deeper bass for the brown noise. Don't think I'd like that for myself though. She wears earplugs and I've never been able to fall asleep with them. And now I find wearing an ear plug makes my tinnitus more noticeable.

Right now I'm trying out various nature sounds. Last night I played "stream sounds" I found on youtube for awhile. It seemed pleasing at first, until I realized there were bird noises in the background. I love birds during the day, but not so much for when I'm trying to sleep. So I'll try stream / waterfall sounds without bird calls. Might give cricket sounds a try. If that helps, perhaps I won't need to play anything once the weather warms up .

Originally Posted by daveyd
Yeah, possibly; I certainly haven't found the standard white noise (i.e., TV static) helpful.

My wife has had troubling getting enough sleep for many years, so she sleeps in our other bedroom. She plays super deep pink & brown noise together. I hooked up a subwoofer to a tablet so she can have some deeper bass for the brown noise. Don't think I'd like that for myself though. She wears earplugs and I've never been able to fall asleep with them. And now I find wearing an ear plug makes my tinnitus more noticeable.

Right now I'm trying out various nature sounds. Last night I played "stream sounds" I found on youtube for awhile. It seemed pleasing at first, until I realized there were bird noises in the background. I love birds during the day, but not so much for when I'm trying to sleep. So I'll try stream / waterfall sounds without bird calls. Might give cricket sounds a try. If that helps, perhaps I won't need to play anything once the weather warms up .

I think that very few people have a good sleep. Well, hopefully you'll find a good trick, or it will subside with time.

My "trick" is these days, to just lay down on my bed, and close my eyes, but with the "reading lamp" (which is not very bright) being still turned on … I do not know how this works, but I reach slumber very fast this way.

You have my sympathies. My father and brother have had tinnitus for a few years. I had it too after an ear-related accident, but it subsided after a couple months. Don't know of anyone who had it back in the old country, so maybe it's a USA thing: country's too noisy, or too stressful perhaps.

It sucks because the more you think about it, the more annoying it gets. My father has had some success sleeping with rain ASMR. Other times he just leaves the TV on. For me, the tinnitus really compounded my sleep issues. Here's a tip that might work: lots of physical activity. This was before the tinnitus, but the one time I slept like a baby was when I visited Japan. I had to walk everywhere and was so physically exhausted by the end of the day that I snoozed off listening to Mike Duncan's History of Rome podcast. Tried the podcast thing on its own with the tinnitus but it was a bit of a catch 22: too boring and it wouldn't distract me, too interesting and I couldn't fall asleep. I did find that it got quieter or louder depending on my head's position, so maybe try that? Also singing or humming (in my head or in a low whisper) for a bit helped.

I didn't think my tinnitus would go away, but it did before too long. I do use headphones and earphones a lot less than I used to, though. Something else I learned from the incident: don't put stuff inside your ear, especially not pointy stuff. Q-tips are the devil. Clean the outside with a wet cloth and leave it at that.

Funny thing is, when I hear other sounds, my tinnitus often goes away … it's as if my own ear was doing some kind of … what's the word ? Cancelling noise ?

Just found this via the web page of a scientific magazine : https://www.jci.org/articles/view/155094